The Heart of the Matter is a book written by Lord Cassius Sencen. It is intended to teach readers about empathy and to get a better understanding of emotions. The book describes how different emotions come from the head and the heart, and Empaths can only read the emotions coming from the head. According to The Heart of the Matter, emotions from the heart are purer and are elves' true emotions, because your head can think out or convince yourself of certain feelings (or the lack thereof), but your heart's emotions are raw, and you cannot choose the emotions in your heart. Lord Cassius also outlines the elves respond to guilt in different ways, such as being unstable or reclusive. The Heart of the Matter is also the title of one of the sections in Keefe Sencen's registry file. However, we don't know what it says because Keefe edited his entire file section, but the heading remained.
Mentions[]
Book 4: Neverseen[]
Keefe was forced to read the book by the Black Swan as part of his Empathy training and then discovered that it was written by his father, Lord Cassius. He slammed down the book and said that it was "torture of innocent readers." He also said that it was all a big ramble about how Lord Cassius was the only one who understood Empathy. Later, however, Keefe admits that the book did help him understand the differences between head and heart emotions.
Book 5: Lodestar[]
When Sophie, Grizel, Linh, Tam, Fitz, and Sandor all searched his room for items he might hide, Sophie found that Keefe had glued all the pages together and cut a hole in the middle to hide pranking elixirs. Keefe also said that he "would rather gouge (his) eyes out with a prattles pin" than read it.
Book 8.5: Unlocked[]
There is a section in Keefe's registry file titled this. It was edited out by Keefe, so the information written by the Council on the topic is currently unknown. Keefe wrote his own section on it that included a basic summary of Lord Cassius's theory.