Ballad of Whispers (The Sunchosen Chronicles #1)

75. Gilded Tomes

Chapter 75

IRIS

Light bounced off the gilded mirror before me.

I squinted against the brightness, a sharp, dull pain forming directly behind my right eye. Tilting my head left and right, I examined my reflection. Nothing was out of place, but something looked different. Like that game I’d played as a child—finding the object in a portrait that didn’t match the rest.

Perhaps it was my eyes? They were…

I leaned in to scrutinize further, but the shift caused the rest of the room to come into view in the mirror. I spun to find a grand library stretching before me, its floor-to-ceiling golden bookshelves glowing in the soft light.

I ventured further into the space, the marble floor beneath me stirring something in my mind that I couldn’t quite place. A large sun was inlaid beneath my feet, each ray stretching outward, forming its own row of shelves. As I ran my fingers along the outer ledge of one shelf and moved to another, I realized?—

The room was a circle.

The sun was its epicenter.

The space was warm, a soft breeze whistling through. I closed my eyes, tilting my face toward the sunlight that poured through the stained-glass windows, inhaling the spices and herbs wafting in.

A tug in my stomach pulled me down an aisle, my hand reaching for a book above my head without even reading the spine. I cracked it open, but the pages began flipping of their own accord, finally settling on a page midway through. The writing was odd. Entire words were missing from the paragraphs of text, some letters swapped with symbols or tiny pictures.

And they were moving.

Slowly, the words floated across the page. Ignoring another prick of pain behind my eyes, I stared at them, willing them to stay still. Black ink smeared as letters and symbols smashed together, swirling into a dense mass—until the ink lifted from the page.

And became a picture.

But the picture was moving.

I was no longer reading; I was watching a scene, as if I were back in a theater.

Whatever sort of new enchantment this was, it was breathtaking.

A young girl—her fiery hair bright against the gilded walls—ran barefoot through an empty hallway. I held my breath as she turned a corner, pressing a finger to her lips before slipping behind a large bronze statue. Her arm reached out?—

The picture faded.

I turned the page, then flipped back, hoping to bring it back, but the words remained still.

A heavy thud caught my attention—a book had fallen from a shelf several paces away. I tucked the first under my arm, moving toward the second. Its pages were presented in much the same way, though even more garbled than before. This time, the picture never fully formed—just flashes, blinking rapidly in the space above the pages.

A head of dark hair.

A blinding light.

Dirty shoes.

Blood.

Another book fluttered in the air. I followed the movement, snatching at books as I moved deeper into the archives. I opened book after book, scanning them for anything recognizable. I watched what looked like a classroom lesson on another language unfold in the pages of a thick green tome, and I swore I could smell the wood of the desks in the image. In another, I saw nothing but arrows slicing across a bright green expanse of land.

And in a heavy silver volume?—

Two girls.

One with white hair, one brunette.

I strained to see the picture better, my nose nearly brushing the haze that shimmered around it. Just as the image began to fade, it turned—toward trees. Toward another flash of white hair.

Striking blue-grey eyes.

Colors and sounds and emotions slammed into the corners of my mind, filling every crevice with awareness.

These weren’t stories.

These were memories.

My mouth dropped open as I truly took in the shelves before me, really looked at the endless rows. Numbered and labeled, the books I had already touched had somehow finding their way back to their places.

Dreams are made of memories, you know?

Her words sliced through my mind like a knife, more memories spilling open. The throbbing behind my eyes became deafening, events of the night crashing around my skull. with such force I doubled over.

The locket. A violinist. The groan of a workbench.

Flesh pulled tight over bones.

Snow.

Earth.

Agony.

The cold marble tile was cool against my hands as picture after picture swarmed in.

“Dearest, are you here?”

Zinnia.

I swallowed hard, taking several shaky breaths before pushing myself to stand. I wiped the sweat from my palms, willing my body to become completely still. I knew now what this was.

What she planned to do.

I wondered how many times I had been here, in this room. How many books I had plucked from the shelf and handed to her.

“I need your help, Dove! You must show me the new additions to your collection.”

I retraced my steps to the center of the room, slowing to a casual pace, wiping any hint of emotion from my face.

“Yes, Mother?”

Zinnia beamed as I came into view, heaving a sigh of relief. She stepped forward, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and guiding me toward the other end of the sun motif.

“I’ve been so curious to see your new collection, dear. We must go through them together.”

The ray we traveled down held books with far less wear than the ones I’d explored before, their spines ranging from white to sky blue.

No.

“Show me, dear,” she coaxed, nudging me toward the shelf. “You can choose where we start.”

I didn’t know this place, yet those hazy, broken pictures… the glaze that covered them…

They looked like my nightmares.

Was this where my dreams started, before she sank her claws into them?

She grabbed my wrist, and the heat made me wince.

“Show me,” she growled, her lips still pulled back in a wide smile. She grabbed my other wrist and guided them to the shelf. “Pick one.”

I held back a scream as the heat grew, the flesh beneath her fingers beginning to bubble. A book fell from a nearby shelf, the sound distracting her for a moment.

But her grip did not relent.

The scorching flames only multiplied as I pulled and twisted and fought to free myself.

Persist.

“Foolish girl,” she snapped. “Stop it, we must begin.”

No.

No. She couldn’t have them.

Not these.

If I could just…

Another book slammed to the ground.

I gritted my teeth, blocking out the searing pain crawling up my arms. I emptied my mind and thought of the pictures. I let go, became weightless, and counted.

In. One. Out. One. In. Two. Out. Two.

In the dark of my mind, I saw us, as if from above.

Floating above the room, I watched the first memory again. Except this time, it played out in the center of the sun, ignorant of the blaze occurring in the shelves. Pain didn’t pierce me here, away from my body, even as the flames around my physical being grew. I only observed the memory, without trying to understand it or place the face that it held. I simply cradled it and folded it into the corner of my mind.

Again, and again, I repeated the process. I gently embraced each memory, each broken piece carefully placed next to the other. Then, I tucked them away. I nestled each one into its own space. But instead of simply leaving them there, I left behind my Threads. I bound the spines in gold string—braided, woven tight, heavier for the most fragile volumes.

When I had finished with the first ray, I tore my eyes from the shimmering strands below and looked back at my body.

The flames burned brighter from above while Zinnia pulled my body down to the edge of the ray we stood on. She forced my arms out, but nothing moved toward my limp body.

Books fell in some of the other rays, flying sideways and crashing into other shelves. I focused on the ray with the blue spines, casting the Threads like a net over them. The strings interlocked, weaving between each other, but my hold on them was weak. I braided golden light over every memory I could recall with moon-white and emerald tattoos, every wing and dagger and tavern song. The Threads sank around images of powdery snow and skylights and singing magic and silver armor. I did not stop until every single book that had any trace of those eyes—blue-grey, and teal, and emerald green, and dark mahogany, and amber—shimmered with its own ward.

Whatever control I’d garnered was rapidly slipping, and I could no longer make out the two bodies in the room below. A large flame stood in their place, the books nearby catching the blaze.

Nothing but bright, hot fire surrounded me when I forced my eyes open. I could barely see the outline of Zinnia, shouting through the haze and ash.

“ You don’t get to have them, ” I growled.

And then I sent the command.

Fall .

The library shuddered.

Shelves collapsed. Books flew.

The cracks in my mind became fissures. The floodgates opened.

Pain was the only thing I recognized as my mind fractured.