Renea did a double take. “What? Ele—that makes no sense! Then she’d be at least—”

  “Three hundred years old. Right. Pull out the perspective finder,” Ailn said. Then, after a moment, he turned to Ellen. “You were a little obvious when you showed up this morning with a hat.”

  Fumbling with her cloak, Renea finally produced the perspective finder. Her eyes flickered with curiosity, but it faded into guilt as she noticed Ellen still wearing the hat. She glanced back and forth between the hat and the finder—perfect symbols for the secrets Ellen wished to keep hidden and their unwanted prying.

  Slowly, the hand holding the perspective finder wilted.

  The sight of Renea’s sudden remorse just made Ellen sigh again. She pulled off her hat and Renea, almost apologetically, raised the finder.

  “You’re an elf,” Renea gasped. “You actually knew her… You painted Noué’s portrait!”

  Dropping the finder again, Renea noticed that Ellen’s visage began to change. Her jawline slowly tapered into a thinner, more petite shape. Her nose took on a slight upward tilt, giving an almost haughty impression.

  And finally, her elf ears revealed themselves.

  She’d always looked pretty, but now…

  “You’re beautiful…” Renea murmured in appreciation. “I can’t believe you’re truly an elf…”

  “I thought we were on the same page,” Ailn frowned.

  “I just… I thought she was a fan with unhealthy feelings,” Renea said, blushing. “Who would guess someone’s an elf in disguise?”

  Then her hand flew to her mouth as she pieced it together. “Your name! That’s why both of your names are from the ancient language. So you didn’t change it because of a title…”

  A wistful smile touched Ellen’s—Elenira’s—lips. “That’s right. I was Elenira Lirathel from the start. And I’m an elf who’s been maintaining the illusion of a human appearance.”

  “No one ever noticed you living here for three hundred years?” Ailn asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “I would move away every few decades and return as my own child,” Elenira shrugged. “No one cares enough about an ‘art historian’ to investigate.”

  “What was Noué to you?” Ailn pressed.

  “She… was my friend,” Elenira said, her voice softening.

  “Was that all she was?” Ailn asked.

  Elenira’s face fell, sorrow deepening in her eyes as her ears drooped. “That’s all I was, at least.” Then she held her own arm and looked away. “...Not even a very good one, since I’ve been acting against her last wishes by hiding this place.”

  Ailn winced, wondering if he should say the quiet thing out loud. “Three centuries is a long time to pine after someone. Especially after they’re dead.”

  Renea kicked Ailn under the table. “Why would you…”

  “Too long,” Elenira agreed quietly. “You must think I’m deranged. Living in her house. Making her already convoluted treasure hunt even harder.”

  “...Can you tell me why?” Ailn asked.

  “Because if someone else finally opened the vault—” Elenira mumbled, “it would mean they understood her better than me.”

  How could anyone understand someone who never tried to understand others? The mutual bridge of empathy was never there. Noué didn’t let anyone in. And she didn’t let anyone take anything away.

  Elenira had spent so long trying to understand the woman she loved that her unrequited, unresolved feelings had come to define her. Noué lingered in every corner of her thoughts. Her past life, with all its messy romances, felt like a prelude. Everything after Noué’s death made for a long, painful denouement.

  Two lives and three centuries of existence, but for Elenira, only those thirty years with Noué truly mattered.

  “Can you tell me exactly what you mean by that?” Ailn asked.

  “It’s exactly like I said,” Elenira said, her voice lifeless. “Noué’s vault… to enter it, there’s one last puzzle in the antechamber you have to solve.” She paused, looking down for a moment. “You have to understand her.”

  “...You haven’t managed to solve the puzzle in three hundred years?” Ailn asked, his brows raising slightly.

  “You have to make a choice. And if you’re wrong…” Elenira’s expression darkened, “the vault collapses.”

  “That’s pretty ruthless,” Ailn muttered. “Still, after all this time—you don’t feel confident, huh?”

  Elenira’s dull expression took on a tinge of annoyance. The longer she dwelled, the angrier she got. “I’ve tried. More than anyone else in the world. I’ve always tried to understand Noué.”

  Then she felt it sneak up. That flicker of despair, which seized her chest when she failed to catch it, and stole her breath away like a plunge into icy water.

  Her gaze drifted aside and she exhaled shakily.

  “Noué was always… looking somewhere else,” Elenira said. “She never saw anyone. Not me. Not the emperor. Not even her own parents.”

  When she closed her eyes—even in her fantasies Noué was still looking away. Always somewhere distant. Always searching for something true.

  “So, she only ever focused on her art,” Ailn said.

  “Not quite,” Elenira said softly. “Something beyond it, I guess.”

  “...You mentioned the emperor. Does that mean the story about The Dragon’s Promise was true?” Ailn asked.

  “I know he gave her the ring,” Elenira said, pressing a hand to her heart. “I don’t know if it’s actually in the vault.”

  She couldn’t stop the pang of pity in her chest when she thought about the emperor she used to hate so much. Time and death had turned a rival into an old friend.

  At the end of the day, after all, they' both lost her.

  “The moron Claude really thought she’d come back to him.” Elenira chuckled bitterly. Then her smile slowly vanished as she talked. “He was still waiting for her when she suddenly died. And when she was gone, he never even tried to find the ring.”

  “I guess… he really was hoverhanding in her painting,” Renea said sadly.

  Ailn looked uncertain of something. Or maybe it was a look of concern? The young duke had the strange habit of fiddling with something on his wrist. At first Elenira thought he was adjusting a cuff link or button, but then she realized his hand always slipped beneath his sleeve.

  As if coming to a decision, he firmly met her gaze.

  “Elenira,” Ailn said, “what happened to Noué’s eyes when she died?”

  “...You mean her divine eyes, I assume,” Elenira replied. Her expression tightened, as she weighed whether she should share the truth. “You’re a smart kid. But you missed the mark on one of your deductions.”

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  She let her eyes manifest, golden and radiant. His sister gasped, and even the composed duke’s eyes widened, caught off guard by the brilliance.

  “I was the one who helped Safi and the rusalka hide,” Elenira said. “I cast an illusion with my divine eyes.”

  “They’re even brighter than the portrait’s…” Ailn muttered.

  “They’re hers. Noué’s. And… mine,” Elenira said. Her voice softened. This was the closest, most intimate connection she still had with Noué. “You mentioned ruby eyes earlier. I have no idea what those are. But…”

  Her breath caught, a once-sweet childhood memory flickering through her mind. “Both of us had divine eyes.”

  Back then, it felt like destiny. An elf and a human, separated by their species, yet linked together by their lives in another world—and by their mysterious golden eyes.

  In the distant past, Elenira’s manifested eyes, were like vivid amber. Beautiful, yes, but they could almost pass for ordinary. Noué’s, however—her eyes looked like gold in the midst of smelting, waiting to be worked and reshaped.

  “After Noué died…” Elenira’s voice dulled. “...Mine grew brighter. Almost as if she’d bequeathed hers to me.”

  After Noué’s death, Elenira had been stunned to see just how brilliant her divine eyes had become. They were purer and brighter—her irises shone like gold catching sunlight. They were more beautiful than Noué’s had ever been.

  And that made Elenira miserable.

  “So, fragments can combine I guess…?” Ailn leaned back in his chair, eyes closed as he frowned in thought.

  “Combined… Sounds about right,” Elenira mumbled.

  They were together now in a way Elenira never wished for. She used to stare at her own eyes so desperately, convinced they were some sign from fate—that they were meant to be together, that Noué would eventually look her way because their love was ordained by something greater and inexplicable.

  Those were the kinds of hopes she nursed, like an idiot.

  Looking back, it was obvious why she clung so tightly to the fantasy. Noué had never once returned her feelings. Not even in the smallest way. And Elenira knew deep down that if their love wasn’t written in the stars, then it wasn’t written at all.

  “Did anything change after your eyes turned brighter?” Ailn asked.

  “My illusions grew stronger,” Elenira said.

  “Your illusions, huh?” Ailn crossed his arms. Staying silent for a long while, he seemed to be trying to sort something out. “....Elenira, did you ever try to understand the nature of your divine eyes? Were you, say, curious why Noué’s eyes seemed to help her create art, while yours made illusions?”

  “Curious?” Elenira said. She gave a chagrined smile and her voice turned harsh with self-loathing. “The answer was obvious from the start, wasn’t it? Noué’s eyes helped her see the truth—to draw inspiration from something beyond herself. And mine…”

  She scoffed bitterly. “Mine helped me lie.”

  Fidgeting with her fingers beneath the table, Renea felt a growing sense of dismay. She’d been listening quietly, but the weight of Elenira’s pain became harder to ignore. The bitterness, the meticulous upkeep of a long-gone childhood home…

  It just hurt to hear.

  “You’re being needlessly cruel to…” Renea stopped herself, her voice fading. Who was she to talk?

  “My name even means ‘good sight,’” Elenira gave a dry, humorless laugh. “I’ve hidden my heritage as an elf. I’ve pretended to be my own descendant for centuries. All just to cling to this house and keep people away from the vault.”

  Her eyes—still manifested—started to water, her irises shimmering like gold coins resting at the bottom of a fountain. “Sometimes I wonder if even my time with Noué was just a fake and pretty memory.”

  “Truth and lies, huh?” Ailn seemed to roll it over in his mind. “I’ve heard about Noué’s preoccupation with truth more than a few times now. To the point she chooses it as her surname—and paints herself flying after a truth goddess.”

  Then he frowned. “Are you telling me everything she painted was a depiction of the truth? Events she never saw… people she never met. How am I supposed to interpret ‘There She Is?’ Or ‘Angel Looking in through the Window?’”

  “Of course some works are more or less literal than others,” Elenira replied, sounding somewhat vexed by Ailn’s tacit skepticism. “Noué would see… visions. She’d have dreams.”

  “How do you know they weren’t just dreams?” Ailn asked.

  “Because she just knew,” Elenira snapped.

  “...Alright, let me put it this way,” Ailn said, softening his tone. He leaned in slightly. “I’ve heard even her critics say her art was conversant with something divine. And I’ve got my own reasons for thinking there's something to that. What I’m asking is—why did they think so?”

  “When you see her paintings you just know, Ani,” Renea cut in, though she felt a bit sheepish. “Haven’t you seen ‘The Saintess and the Wolf?’ It’s like Noué painted Celestia straight from life, teaching us who the first Saintess truly was. Even across the distance of thousands of years, she somehow… saw.”

  “This was the norm during Noué’s Divinity Period,” Elenira said, her tone didactic, her eyes believing. “She could just see.”

  Renea bit her lip. The passion in Elenira’s eyes was a step away from zealousness.

  It was disconcerting. But she could understand it, even as a regular admirer of Noué’s art. Long before Renea ever entered Noué’s mausoleum, she’d been enamored—like most of Varant—with The Saintess and the Wolf.

  Her love for the portrait led to fascination with its creator. Then she discovered just how malevolently irreverent Noué could be.

  “Was Noué fond of… pranks?” Renea asked, choosing her words with care.

  This, surprisingly, pulled Elenira out of her mania.

  Her expression wrinkled. Then, as if a specific memory suddenly came to mind, the corner of her mouth twitched. At first an irritated smirk, it settled into a plain scowl.

  “Yes.” That’s all Elenira said, before she looked away while giving the heaviest eyeroll.

  It was comforting, somehow, to see that at least a little bit of annoyance had managed to survive centuries of grief and longing.

  Still, Renea just couldn’t understand Noué. There was a disconnect between her obsession with truth and her penchant for jokes that were… repulsive, frankly. Certainly, humor could be a weapon for truth—that had nothing to do with shoving your own corpse in people’s faces.

  Ailn, after a long stretch of contemplative silence, stood up. He’d had an expression of consternation, but it seemed like it cleared up.“I feel like I’ve got a better sense of her now. I appreciate it.”

  For her part, Renea felt more confused than ever.

  “That said,” Ailn gestured toward the back of the house, “before we can even open the vault, we’ve got to find it. Mind if we move our conversation over there?”

  “...Sure,” Elenira said. Brief upset quickly gave way to resignation.

  Something about Ailn’s phrasing struck Renea. As they made their way, she shuffled closer to him. “You think the answer’s in the bedroom?” she tilted her head hopefully.

  This house was the end destination of the only hints they’d been given. Some part of her had expected—or at least hoped—that once they found it, the final step to finding the vault would be trivial. Maybe nothing so silly as a map where ‘X marks the spot,’ but surely something.

  “I’ve got a hunch,” Ailn said, though the look in his eyes seemed to be telling her to manage her expectations. “It’s been bugging me that Noué’s portrait itself hasn’t been a clue… yet.”

  Renea blinked a few times. That was true, actually. For all the discussion they’d given it, the portrait never pointed them anywhere. Even the phrase ‘home sweet home’ which led them to Sussuro was actually on the perspective finder.

  “It’s not in the bedroom, though.” Then Ailn paused, and shrugged again. “Probably.”

  “Huh?” Renea asked.

  “Well, there’s only one bedroom here, right?” Ailn asked, gesturing toward it. “We can check it out later, but… what kind of kid plays in the bedroom they share with their parents?”

  “I-I guess, yeah. Mother was a little…” Scary. But Renea didn’t say the last part out loud. “But why does that matter?”

  There was an always dull ache in her chest, one that had been there for as long as she could remember. Usually it just faded into the background. But when she thought about the lord’s chamber—the bedroom she’d shared with her mother—her heart twinged rather sharply.

  When Renea was small, she’d felt safest there the days her mother was away.

  “I’m just trying to…” Ailn searched for the right words, “...see it from Noué’s perspective, I guess. You noticed how the portrait’s eyes flick up, when you use the perspective finder, right?”

  Ailn halted in his tracks. “Noué was sitting with her back toward the entrance in that portrait. So, she was looking toward the rear of the house. The bedroom’s here, but why would her eyes flick up?”

  He pointed toward a spot on the ceiling between the arches of the bedroom and the storage room—right in the cleft of the heart, so to speak. “That’s where her gaze was.”

  Elenira had been silent this whole time, but her brows were beginning to knit.

  Then, rather than the bedroom, Ailn led them into the storage room. About half of the room was dedicated to foodstuffs that were presumably Elenira’s, while the other half contained an assortment of tools and fishing supplies, with a single shelf for linens in the corner.

  Stopping to scan the room, Ailn’s eyes settled on the shelf. Then, with just a moment’s consideration, he moved toward it, pushing it aside without much effort. Hidden behind it was a narrow door. “I’m guessing Noué spent most of her time here.”

  For a moment, Renea was speechless. And her heart felt like it might crack.

  “Noué’s parents…” Renea whispered, “... made her stay in a cupboard?”

  The hand on the knob stopped, and Ailn turned his head to stare at her for what felt like half a minute. Giving her an expression somewhere between perplexed and amused, Ailn opened the door to reveal a narrow, steep staircase. “Uh, not quite. I’m guessing she played in the attic.”

  “...Ah.” Renea’s face slowly turned red. “That makes more sense.”

  Behind her, Renea could hear Elenira sputter for a moment, as she fought back laughter.