“Found it!” Iyona exclaimed. It had been another couple of what Orme assumed to be days of nothing but books, food, and sleep.

“What? What did you find?” He asked. He was bored of all this, and looking forward to finding something, anything, to break this routine.

Wren and Orme got closer to Iyona and she put her book down, open, on the floor. 

It was a picture book, but not for children. It depicted the story of life before the war began. There were a few tomes of it, that Iyona had been reading. This particular page showed the fae Prince of the time, who was now King. He was talking to a group of humans.

The humans were drawn with fancy clothes, they must’ve been a special envoy from the then-Queen.

The fae Prince was shaking his head. The words weren’t written in the Common tongue, nobody could read them. But the humans seemed upset, shaking their fists. There was one word that Wren recognised.

War.

“Wait. Hold on. That’s it? The war started because of a badly gone talk between our envoys and their Prince?” They seemed shaken. “That’s ridiculous!”

“What’s more ridiculous is that we started the war. Unlike what we were always told.”

“Someone wanted to hide the truth. And hide it well,” Orme said. “It’s a wonder this place wasn’t completely destroyed, with such a book in it. This changes everything.”

Iyona seemed deep in thought. Wren, revolted. Orme, for himself, didn’t know what to do with this new information. Humans had started the century-long war that ravaged the land. Not the fae. Them. And why? For nothing big, it seemed. That was preposterous, there must have been something else. Maybe this book was propaganda. Maybe it was all a lie. But it felt truer than whatever else they’d learned as kids. If nothing else, it felt like simple, unsullied truth.