Betrayed by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #5)(63)

“Of course. Please come back to my office, ah, Sunaya.” She cleared her throat. “You may also use my first name, if you like.”

She led us between the shelves and to the back, to her administrative office. It was a comfortable space, with powder-blue curtains, cityscape paintings hanging from the walls, and, of course, book-laden shelves. The shelves were made of birch wood, as were her desk and chairs. She gestured for me to have a seat.

“Are you certain you wish to have your guard present?” Janta said as she pulled a file from one of her desk drawers. “This is a private matter, after all.”

“I can wait outside,” Rylan said, bowing to us both. “So long as I can trust you with Miss Baine’s life.”

“You can,” Janta said, smiling. “We will only be a half hour or so.”

Rylan disappeared back into the library, shutting the door behind him. I wondered if he would tune out our conversation, or if he would listen in beyond the wall—his shifter hearing would be able to pick up our conversation easily. If I knew him, he would listen in. It didn’t matter either way—we were family, and I trusted him not to use this information to hurt me.

“So,” I said, settling back into my chair, “what have you found out?”

Janta opened the file in front of her, revealing a photograph of Coman ar’Daghir, the dark-haired Legal Secretary from Rhodea who shared my hair and eye coloring, and who I’d suspected was related to me in some way.

“I started by tracing back the lineage of your friend here,” she said, tapping the facsimile of Coman’s slightly hooked nose. “His dark hair and green eyes, which you share, come from his mother’s side of the family, which is far more distinguished than the ar’Darghirs. Something of a misalliance, in fact. His mother is a scion of the noble ar’Rhea family in Castalis.”

“I see.” Excitement shot through me at the mention of an actual name—we were getting somewhere! Castalis, I dimly remembered from school, was a peninsula at the southwestern edge of the Central Continent. “So this family is well known?” If they were, it might explain why Iannis had suspected my lineage from the get-go.

“Very,” Janta confirmed. “They are particularly notable for their green eyes, strong magic, and the fact that their lineage boasts a direct descent from the First Mage, Resinah.”

“Wow.” My eyes widened. “Does that make them more noble than other families? I have to admit I don’t really understand how classes amongst the mages work.”

“All mages who have the prefix ‘ar’ in their surnames are direct descendants of one of Resinah’s twelve original disciples,” Janta explained, clasping her hands together as she rested them atop the desk. “These are the nobility in our society. There was a time when only mages of noble birth could hold influential positions, but that is not the case today. Our current director of the Mages Guild, Lalia Chen, is a good example of this, as was her predecessor.”

“Right.” I nodded, recalling that neither Chen nor Chartis had the “ar” in their last names, nor did Minister Graning. “So how is it that the ar’Rhea family is directly descended from Resinah?”

“Two of Resinah’s children, her son and daughter, were disciples of hers. Her daughter, Miyanta, is the ancestor of the ar’Rhea family.” Janta’s nose twitched ever so slightly in disapproval. “According to history, Miyanta was as gracious and noble as her mother, but the same cannot be said of all her descendants. The families descended from Resinah consider themselves to be superior to all the other noble mages, and the ar’Rhea family is particularly snobbish. The purity of their blood means everything to them.”

“Great.” I rolled my eyes, trying not to show Janta that, inside, my heart was sinking. If my father was an ar’Rhea, it was no wonder he’d chosen to abandon me. As a shifter-mage hybrid, I had to be even more of an abomination to him than I was to ordinary mages. And considering how I’d been treated when I arrived at Solantha Palace, that was really saying something.

“Since the ar’Rhea family is so ancient and proud of their heritage, there is plenty of information about them in the historical and contemporary records.” Janta flipped the photo of Coman to the side, revealing a page filled with elegant handwriting—research notes, from what I could read upside down. “I checked the Foreign Mages’ Log to see if anyone from the ar’Rhea family had visited Solantha in the year before your birth.”

“That’s smart,” I said—I would have done it myself, if I’d known which name to look for. Any foreign mage visiting a Federation state for longer than a month was required to go to the local Mages Guild and fill out a form. My heart rate jumped up a notch, and I had to restrain myself from squirming in my seat like a little kid. “So what name did you find?”

Janta smiled a little, amused at my enthusiasm. “For some reason, the relevant page was missing, but, fortunately, we keep a duplicate that was still intact. A mage by the name of Haman ar’Rhea filled out the form about a year before your birth. He came from Castalis to Solantha to study for some months with Jonias Ballos, an eccentric old mage who is well known for his mastery of divination and binding magic. According to the form, Haman ar’Rhea lived in Ballos’s house the entire time. That would have been the only way to learn from him, because Ballos has not left his home in several decades.” Her nose twitched again. “He seems to be something of a hermit.”