Chapter 110: Expert View

Ilaria sighed and sank more comfortably into the sofa, letting her gaze drift over the scattered tomes she had gathered earlier. Pages of old maps, half-translated myths, and dense political histories stared back at her. None of them promising answers anytime soon.

She could spend hours flipping through them and still come away with nothing but questions.

Maybe asking directly would be faster…

Her fingers brushed the nearest book, hesitating. But asking directly meant revealing how much she wanted to know… and why. And she was not ready for Lysander to snitch on her husband about everything discussed in this room because she thought he definitely would.

Still… a hint would not hurt. Something harmless. Something that sounded like simple curiosity. She drew in a quiet breath, stealing a glance at Lysander before asking, “Actually, I had a question about— well, about the expedition. The one I went on with my husband.”

Lysander nodded immediately, as if he had been waiting for her to bring that up. “Yes. I heard about that little journey.” His tone was breezy, but his eyes sharpened a fraction. “Quite the unusual destination for a first outing, if I must say.”

Ilaria swallowed. “Right. Well… I was wondering about the place itself. That region.”

Lysander arched a brow. “The Expanse? You mean its history? Or its reputation?”

“Something like that,” she said, attempting nonchalance. “You know how it is. When you see something strange, you want to understand it. That’s why I came here, to find the answers to my questions in the library.”

Lysander’s gaze slid over the scattered books when she was done talking. His expression did not give away anything, but The Archivist had a way of peeling back the layers of a room with just a glance, cataloguing details, weighing silences, noting what someone did not say as much as what they did.

He did not need to ask why she chose these specific books. He did not need to question or wonder why her hands hovered a little too long near the sleeves she kept tugging down. He did not even need her to finish a sentence to chart the rest of her thoughts.

Lysander was simply too perceptive, in a way that felt less like he was reading the atmosphere and more like he was reading her. And that made something anxious tighten beneath her ribs, even though he was merely looking.

Lysander tapped a knuckle against one of the covers. “These won’t give you what you’re looking for,” he hummed, almost gently. “None of these truly speak of what lies out there. Some reference the void between realms, some romanticize ancient wanderers, but not one of them captures the thing itself.”

He leaned back again, elegant as ever, but his eyes were quietly assessing, the kind of gaze that reminded people Lysander was far more than a man buried in books and forgotten lore. He did not just read history; he read people, too with the same precision and unsettling accuracy that made secrets feel suddenly transparent.

Ilaria felt a prickle of tension along her spine at that. His words, so measured and calm, sounded as though he knew precisely what she was after, even though she had barely said more than that she was curious about the Expanse.

She shifted slightly on the sofa, subconsciously pulling a sleeve over her wrist where she still hid the faint mark. Her pulse quickened. How could he seem so… aware without her telling him anything at all?

“Most of these repeat secondhand accounts,” he continued. “A few touch on border anomalies, yes, but none of them describe the true nature of the place.”

A faint smirk ghosted his lips. “I suspect whoever compiled these shelves wanted to pretend they understood it.”

Ilaria blinked, confused. Her gaze swept over the tomes briefly before looking back at him. “So… gathering all of this and reading all of this… was just going to be a waste of time?”

Lysander’s brows lifted, almost offended on the books’ behalf.

“Hardly,” he said, voice slipping into that smooth, scholarly warmth he carried so naturally. “No knowledge is wasted, Your Highness. Even misinterpretations teach us the limits of what people think they know.”

He tapped one of the tomes. “These may not tell you what the Expanse truly is, but they tell you how generations attempted to explain it. What frightened them, and what little they understood. That alone has value.”

He shrugged. “And besides, every book is a door. Some simply open into hallways instead of rooms.”

Lysander’s expression softened into something thoughtful as he tilted his head, assessing the princess patiently, smiling when she glanced at him. “Now tell me,” he said, “what did you see that made you curious?”

Ilaria froze for a heartbeat, caught between what she wanted to say and what she could safely share. She drew in a slow breath, trying to steady the fluttering in her chest.

“Uh…” she started, then shook her head, almost laughing at herself. “There were… ruins. And… I don’t know, the air… it felt alive, somehow, almost like it spoke. And we encountered beasts there, and it sounded so human, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Her voice faltered, and her gaze fell to the tomes scattered around her. She hated how much she wanted to sound normal, but the memories of the bloodbath dream and her sister’s face made it impossible to hide her unease.

Lysander’s eyes remained steady on her, but there was a faint flicker of curiosity in their depths, the kind that made her feel simultaneously seen and utterly vulnerable.

“I…” she swallowed again. “I don’t know how to explain it properly. It’s like… like everything is trying to tell me something, but I can’t quite catch it.”

Lysander leaned back slightly, tapping a finger against his chin as if weighing invisible scales only he could see. His gaze drifted to the scattered tomes, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere, narrowing possibilities, sifting through half-remembered accounts and obscure reports.

“Our world,” he began, voice low and even, “is… fraught. The Blithe, though seldom spoken of openly have been threads in our history for centuries. Kingdoms rose and fell, often without the common folk realizing that a shadow brushed their lands, leaving whispers of calamity in its wake.”

“Wars were waged, alliances were formed, sometimes to fight men, sometimes to fight forces that could not be named in polite company.”

He let the words hang, letting her mind paint its own pictures of unseen threats and centuries of struggle. His cadence was storytelling, almost casual, but every sentence carried knowledge honed by decades of reading, watching, and catalouging.

“Even now,” he continued, eyes sliding back to her, “the Blithe are persistent. Not entirely corporeal, not entirely benign. They exist in stories, in memories, in fear, and in opportunity. Those who understand them best are often the ones who feel their presence the most.”

He tilted his head slightly. For a second, she thought he was merely bombarding informations she already knew, until he dropped the question like a bomb, “You were affected, weren’t you?”

“Huh…?” Her mind scrambled. Only Levan and Melyn knew was supposed to know about the incident that happened in the The Dawn Gallery back then. It was too risky of an information to be spoken carelessly in the court. A Caelwyn princess affected by The Blithe. It would stir a lot of rumours.

And now he is asking so casually.

Her fingers fiddled with the edge of her sleeve, hiding the nervous twitch of her hands. For a heartbeat, she considered denying it, but something in Lysander’s calm, knowing gaze made her hesitate. Instead, she asked, voice small and hesitant, “Did… did my husband tell you?”

Lysander chuckled softly, the sound warm and a little amused, as if her naivety was utterly endearing. “No, no,” he said, hands resting lightly on his knees. “I’m merely making an educated guess. And it seems, I am not entirely wrong.”

Ilaria blinked, cheeks warming. The library suddenly felt smaller, and the scattered tomes around her seemed to hum with quiet intrigue.

“Educated guess…” she repeated, unsure whether to be impressed or mortified.

Lysander’s smile lingered. “Curiosity brought you here, yes? Then it’s only fair to observe before presuming too much.”

He went on. “But what is it that truly made you seek knowledge you were never meant to have?”

“Because if it is the Blithe you speak of, truthfully, as humbling as it is to say, my expertise is only in the history of such things. The council knows the force is unpredictable. The patterns of the current events are far harder to grasp than the chronicles of the past.”

“I can guide you through what has been recorded, but if you are searching for answers to what it is now, Princess, I would caution patience. Much of the knowledge is fragmented and incomplete.”

Ilaria sank a little deeper into the sofa, her fingers absently tracing the edge of one of the tomes stacked beside her. She let Lysander’s words wash over her, thoughtful and precise as ever, while her mind began to wander down more dangerous paths.

Should I… she thought, her pulse quickening, just ask him?

Her eyes flicked toward her sleeve. The unnatural sensation that had gripped her chest like a vice began to pulse again. How could she explain that without revealing too much? And what if Lysander, with his uncanny ability to read people, guessed more than she intended?

She bit her lip, debating silently, balancing curiosity against caution.

The sofa felt suddenly too small, the room too quiet, and Lysander’s calm presence unnervingly sharp. She drew in a steadying breath and tried to anchor herself in the mundane task of flipping through the pages of a nearby book, but her thoughts were far from ordinary, tangled between secrets and dreams.

Finally, she looked up, catching Lysander’s gaze, calm and observant as ever. Her fingers trembled slightly as they brushed the edge of her sleeve. And then slowly, she began to lift it, inch by inch, the faint mark beneath coming into view.

Her voice caught in her throat, barely above a whisper. “You see… I…”

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