I tossed and turned in bed, the sheets sticking to me from the especially warm night that had presented itself. Everything seemed like it wanted to elude me. Calm, peace, answers I was so desperate for. Even sleep avoided me now.

The conversation I had with Lady Lorella earlier kept running through my mind. Her father was planning to attack Icrodeia at the slightest inconvenience which would do nothing but make everything worse. I was a prince, so I could remove his forces from the potential battlefield the lord was going to create, but would that really stop him from enacting his scheme?

I sat up and ran a hand over my face, through my hair. If I wasn't going to sleep, I might as well be doing something productive in the meantime.

Throwing on some decent clothes to wander around the castle in, I headed over to the archives. I had told Lorella I would continue to look through the records being stored there, so that was what I would do. The quicker we could rule out one method of searching for an answer, the better. However, if the papers in the archives didn't produce anything, one of the only options left was to head to Icrodeia. A notion that sounded quite similar to suicide.

As much as it was a decent plan, it was something I didn't want to do. It was clear we weren't welcome in the frozen lands of Icrodeia from how well they treated us in our own kingdom, it wouldn't be safe in the slightest.

The large hall filled with books was deathly silent during the middle of the night. In the day, there had been a gentle hum of noise, people murmuring and walking around. Now, there was nothing but my own breathing and footsteps. It was difficult to navigate my way around the shelves in the darkness, the only sources of light being the lanterns of late-night scholars catching up on their work.

My fae eyes adjusted after a moment, letting me find my way back to the stacks of paper piled on top of a desk at the back of the archives. It made me sigh inwardly. I certainly hadn't missed the tediousness of looking through every sheet. I would have to ask Sabre and Auron if they fancied helping me out in the morning.

I forced myself to sit down, hoping by the end of it I would be able to hand over what Mace wanted to him on a silver platter. Though, I did still need to ask my mother in the past, about what she may or may not have done to the Icrodeians. Questioning her about it in front of Lorella hadn't felt like the right move to make. I needed some time to get her alone.

As I sifted through the information around me, I noticed it was mostly the same as before. There were the usual trades between our two kingdoms and the odd enchantment that had been picked up from the forbidden market. My eyes stung from trying to read in the darkness with only a lantern powered by fireflies to help me and my spine ached from slouching over the desk, but, after a few hours of reading through the papers, something caught my attention.

The item being traded was something I had never heard of before: an Idaphite shard. It had been sent from the castle in Icrodeia and arrived straight to the Racaea castle with no stops in between. If I knew anything, that seemed quite suspicious and important. But where had this shard gone once it had arrived?

My eyes scanned the dates written at the top of the paper and found scrawled there was the fifty-seventh of Spring, year eight hundred and three. That was almost eighteen years ago.

What even was an Idaphite shard?

I called over a servant who didn't seem to be too keen on working the night shift in the archives, but he changed his expression once he noticed my pointed ears sticking through my unbrushed hair. I asked for all the information he could find on the shard and where it could have gone. While he did so, I resumed looking through the papers surrounding me in case this peculiar stone led to a dead end.

This wasn't the only thing I needed to look specifically into. The Sephirans hadn't escaped my mind just yet, I wanted to help Sabre in the search I knew she would be conducting.

The servant returned a short while afterwards with only a few pieces of paper in his hands. "I couldn't find much on it, so all of its information could be stored under another name," he explained. "But, I did manage to find an address as to where it went next." Placing the information on the table beside me, he bowed deeply. "If you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask." Although he offered, I had the feeling he didn't want to do more work than he had to.

"Thank you," I responded, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and watching him as he left.

There was another trading log on top of the measly pile and only one other sheet that contained a diagram. This Idaphite shard was a golden chunk of crystal that seemed to glow even from the drawing. It was rough around the edges, either having broken away or purposefully been cut away from a larger section of the same material. Next to it on the paper was its name followed by several translations into different languages. There was nothing that provided me with anything useful.

I still had next to no idea as to what it was or what it even did. Was it a fancy ornament? An heirloom? Something to be used in jewellery or weapon-making like Sabre and Auron often used?

I had to straighten my posture, forcing myself to not lean on the table, to stop myself from falling asleep. My eyes could hardly stay open. It didn't help that it was the middle of the night and my wound had begun to itch. Although it was a good sign that it was trying to heal properly, it was driving me insane.

Taking the papers of the Idaphite shard with me, I headed back to my chambers. I didn't know if I was allowed to take them with me seeing as they were likely the only copies of this information on the entire continent, but I was the prince, surely there had to be some leniency there.

Besides, I would be returning them in the morning when I was well-rested and I could fully concentrate on finding the answers everyone needed.