The restricted archive was not on any map.
Ren said this with the confidence of a man who had personally checked every map in the Ministry of Records, which I suspected was exactly what had happened at some point in his career.
"Then how do we find it?" Kaien asked.
"We follow what doesn't make sense," I said.
They both looked at me.
I had died in this palace nine times. And in every life, there had been a room I was never supposed to enter. A door that was always locked. A corridor that the servants avoided without being told to.
I had assumed it was coincidence. The first three times. After that, I had started paying attention.
"Sub-level," I said. "Below the eastern archive. There's a staircase behind the document storage that looks like it leads to a drainage passage. It doesn't."
Ren stared at me. "How do you know that?"
I didn't answer.
