Chapter 27
I kept my head low as I stalked down the hall, evading the looks of curiosity, the fists pounding against hearts in honor, the sneers of mistrust—few of those, luckily, but that was due to the fact that everyone was in the northern part of the castle, helping with the avalanche.
A young elf sprinting by had been nice enough to direct me to the archives, where Olivia told me she’d be. I thought I was heading in the right direction—nothing looked familiar.
I traveled up a spiraled staircase, pale light shining through the window slits.
The paintings lining this corridor were darker, more sinister. Fallen soldiers, contorted creatures, deathly stares frozen in time with eerie accuracy.
A set of silver-edged doors waited at the far end. I swallowed, the air stale and scratchy. Sputtering torchlight cast shadows over the tales of battle and blood etched into the wood.
Gut twisting, I reached for the handle. The metal was cool against my palm as I pushed the doors open, holding in a cough at the powerful whiff of must.
Darkness spilled out, heavy on my skin.
“Olivia?” I squeaked.
I wavered on the threshold, the cold curling out from the depths, before stepping in.
A bob of light flickered on—Galdur. It hovered near the ceiling, washing the room in a yellow light. Long, wooden tables filled the immediate space, matching chairs tucked in.
I took another step, which triggered more elven magic, revealing rows of metal cabinets stuffed with boxes of files that traveled further back, into the pitch-blackness.
The archives.
It was so quiet, so still that even the soft pad of my steps echoed through the circular foyer. But none of that was what took my breath away.
All along the curved walls, the domed ceiling, the floor, everything was covered in a vibrant mural.
The carvings on the doors were nothing but a window to the story painted here: the whole history of the elves almost coming alive through the stone.
Such raw emotions were etched onto the faces of the beings: elves, angels, demons, wolves, dwarves.
They were so lifelike I felt like a voyeur, their eyes weirdly following me as I ventured further into the room. My feet itched to step over them, as if I were walking over a grave.
“Olivia?” I said again. No answer.
A fabric-bound book lay open on a table. I strode over—my eyes catching on a thick silver band glinting against the wood next to it: a ring. Someone must’ve accidentally left it, I thought as I looked down at the page, where a hungry open maw waited and a dozen eyes stared back at me.
With a mane of hair, long muscular body, large head, round ears, and wide muzzle, the creature reminded me of a lion, but at some point, during its creation or perhaps after, something had gone very wrong.
A leg, hoofed and limp, grew out of its chest. Two more hung off the sides of its gut. A feathered pair of wings jutted out of its back, the tips extending past the title.
Jelmadag, it said. I flinched, as if the grayscale animal—monster? demon?—drawn onto the paper could snap its jowls at me.
There were details, formulas scribbled along the edges of the pages, and blocks of text beneath the creature’s giant paws. I wasn’t sure what any of it meant. Everything was written in a different language.
Prickles swept over the scars on my shoulder blades, a faint inkling of déjà vu.
Where on earth would I have seen this thing before? I racked my brain for a memory—a drawing, a dream—and came back with nothing.
“River?”
I spun around, tailbone digging into the edge of the table, foolishly looking at all the hyperrealistic faces on the ground before settling on the familiar one of my old therapist. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.” Olivia’s eyes flared with curiosity—or maybe it was concern. “I went to my rooms to freshen up. I thought you might…” Her gaze roved my bloody outfit. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, my skin getting hotter, itchier, every drawn-out second. “Do the same.”
“Oh. That would’ve been smart.” I brushed my fingers against my temple, the light touch sending searing pain to the bone. “Ow.”
“Don’t touch it.” She held a stack of folders against her chest. “We’ll make this quick so you can make a pit stop at the geothermal pools.”
“Great idea,” I mumbled.
“How are you holding up otherwise?” The gossamer layers of her burnt-orange dress spilled over the floor art like rays of the sun.
“I—” I started, the painted eyes, the cackle, the magic from the cave flashing through my head.
“I’ll survive. But… something doesn’t feel right.
I don’t think that was a natural disaster—I mean, you heard what I told Freyja.
There was this thick fog, and tendrils of shadow running up the mountain.
I saw the same thing yesterday in the frozen moat. It looked like dark magic.”
“Did you relay this to the queen?” Olivia emptied her arms onto the table, the thick files thudding on the wood.
I rested my elbows on the surface. “I tried, but you know how she is.”
“Defensive.”
“Dismissive.” Despite being alone, I lowered my voice. “What if it was Gryla?”
“The ogress?” she said, flipping through her materials.
I nodded. “The queen called the cave I found on the mountain Gryla’s lair. And I know everyone said she was a myth, but every story around here seems to hold quite a bit of truth.”
“A long-standing feud with the elves is one thing, but if Gryla is real and caused that avalanche… she didn’t aim to break a few things. She aimed to kill.” Olivia pulled a crinkled sheet out of a folder and set it down in front of us. “Let’s come back to that. I found something.”
Peering over her shoulder, I skimmed the numbers, the illegible comments scribbled into neat rows. “What is it?”
“Incident reports for their Galdur.” She ran a finger along the date column, thin coils of raven hair framing her face. “The earliest recorded event is a century ago, near the end of the Cross-Realm War.”
Brows pinching together, I scanned the top of the paper. She was right.
“There are no details around what happened exactly, but the issues get worse over time.” More paper, more records, slipped out of the folder. “This isn’t normal. Magic can grow weaker with disuse, but that’s not what’s happening here.”
The memory of the Coffin Seeker’s cell came on so strong I could feel that whisper of cold running up my spine. Source is like a muscle. It can weaken over periods of unuse, but it’s still there just the same.
Olivia tucked her knuckles beneath her chin. “This whole kingdom is run by magic. And it’s breaking.”
“What would cause it to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip. “How do we figure it out?”
“It’s got to be somewhere in here.” She gestured to the rows of shelves that led into the darkness, then said nothing more, the shuffle of papers and the quiet hum of silence falling over us.
He’d been right, the Coffin Seeker.
He’d known Hildur wouldn’t take me to Jarearbaeli today. I cleared my throat, fighting down the creeping burn. What else had he been right about?
As I considered this, my attention fell on the portrait of the lion-monster, its twelve eyes staring back.
“What’s that?” I asked, chin nodding in its direction.
Olivia glanced at the open page. “A jelmadag. A demon.”
Unease pinged through me. I fought the urge to slam the book shut, as if the illustration needed to be contained.
“Did you stop by before you went to your rooms?” I asked.
“No.” Hunched over the table, Olivia stilled. “I thought you’d been looking through that book…” Her spine slowly unfolded as she stood upright.
“Definitely not.” I shook my head. “Who else would come here?”
“Well, there are scribes, but they’re usually sorting, not reading, and certainly not during a crisis.” Her eyes narrowed. “Let me take a look at that.”
I grabbed the book’s worn corner and slid it towards her, the frayed red cover swishing against the wood.
The air around us grew heavy, haunting, a cold draft sweeping through.
She flipped to the front, the paper thin, nearly translucent.
“This is a grimoire.” She turned the page to a table of contents. “With instructions on how to summon and banish demons, spells to contain…”
“That’s—I’m sure it’s—” I stammered. “Someone was probably just curious. Or maybe it was for a class? Demonology for Beginners?”
A muscle in her jaw ticked. “People don’t normally look up how to summon demons out of pure curiosity. And any professor would be a fool to teach them how.”
“Maybe they were looking to, um, put one back?” It was a useless suggestion to cover up what we were really feeling, and we both knew it. “One that slipped through the wards?”
Angling the book towards me, she asked, “Remind me, what page was this on when you got here?”
I flipped through the first half, the entry lying somewhere in the middle. My heart raced at the chapter headers flashing by: How to Conjure, How to Bind, Realm Walking, The Nature of Demons, The Witch Trials, Relationships with Mortals, The Devil’s Contract…
I slowed when I reached The Encyclopedia of Demons (Condensed), creatures with too many limbs and claws and fangs getting even scarier, toothier, the further I went. Finally, the lionlike silhouette of the jelmadag appeared.
I positioned the book towards Olivia. “What does it say?”
With a tight inhale, she began reading.
“Among the most formidable entities in Chthonia, the jelmadag stands as a paragon of predator and prey. Manifesting with the majestic build of a lion, subtle marks of its inverse—the lamb—are scattered over its body, usually in the form of an extra leg, hoofs, ears, or snout.”
Palms clammy, I twisted my fingers together, the shadows seeming to listen and creep closer.