Chapter 29
Icouldn’t sleep.
No matter how many times I shifted beneath the blankets, I couldn’t seem to get comfortable for long.
I turned onto one side, then the other, kicked the covers down only to drag them back up moments later, frustration slowly mounting as sleep continued to evade me.
Beyond the glass, wind sighed faintly through the cliffs of Noctharis, the sound low and distant in the dark.
I knew dawn wasn’t far off, and already I dreaded my training with Rìan.
I doubted he’d go easy on me simply because I’d spent the night tossing in bed.
I tried closing my eyes again, willing myself toward sleep, but exhaustion and restlessness seemed locked in battle with one another.
Every time my thoughts began to drift, my eyes opened again of their own accord, refusing to stay shut for long.
With an angry huff, I rolled onto my back and turned my head toward the nightstand.
The Book of Old Tales sat there exactly where I’d left it.
Honestly, I half wanted to throw the damned thing across the room.
The fact that it was bound in Fae skin made my nose crinkle with disgust all over again.
Levinica spoke of it so casually, as though it were no stranger than leather, but the thought of someone’s centuries-old skin sitting so close to where I slept made me shudder.
How old was the thing? Who had made it? Worse—whose skin had it been?
I grimaced and looked away, only for my gaze to drift helplessly back.
As grotesque as the binding was, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I’d never seen illustrations like those before—not even close.
The detail of them, the impossible beauty, the way every creature seemed to pulse with life despite existing only in ink and faded pigment…
And the stories themselves stayed with me just as stubbornly.
Knowing they were real somehow made every word more wondrous.
More extraordinary. Was there anything in there about the Eidrae? About Dreamwalkers?
Despite how thoroughly the thing revolted me, I pushed myself upright and lit the lantern beside the bed.
Before I could dwell on what—or who—exactly I was touching, I flicked it from the nightstand onto the mattress with the tips of my fingers.
Propping myself onto one elbow, I eased it open atop the blankets and began leafing through the pages, searching for any mention of the Firstborn.
The Tharuun were easily recognizable as the Keepers of Storms. Not only because I knew, from what I’d learned in Dheren, that they wielded the elements themselves, but because the illustrations left little room for doubt.
Unlike the hurried description of the Bone-Wrought, the Keepers of Storms were the subject of an entire legend—one that told of a cataclysmic flood they’d unleashed, so devastating it severed a portion of Elantis from the mainland and sent it slowly drifting out to sea.
Though the tale never named the land outright, I was almost certain it told the origin of how the Dusklands had come to be.
The accompanying illustration sprawled across the page: giants, immense and leathery-skinned, their features harsh as weathered stone. Broad and ancient, they stood atop mountain peaks with their arms lifted toward the heavens as storm clouds gathered overhead.
I skipped past the account of the Keeper of Return. Just seeing the image again sent my pulse racing and I hastily turned the page, eager to skim past it as quickly as possible.
I landed on The Keepers of Self. The pictures stopped me cold. They were portrayed as impossibly beautiful women—graceful, radiant, flawless in a terrifying, almost unnatural way. Yet around them, the scenes descended into horror.
People fled screaming. Some clawed at their own skin. Others turned blades upon themselves. Cities burned in the distance while crowned rulers knelt at their feet with empty eyes, devotion warped into something grotesque.
The Eidrae.
Unease prickled down my spine as I turned to the passage scrawled across the top of the opposite page.
“And where the Keepers of Self walked, disorder followed.”
I slowed over the words, reading them twice to be certain I understood.
“For unlike all others, they did not diminish with time, nor surrender their gifts to death. From mother to daughter passed the gathered inheritance of ages—power layered upon power, knowledge amassed across lifetimes, until even nature strained beneath the weight of it.”
The lantern flame guttered softly beside me.
“And so the Keeper of Self chose mates not for affection, but for strength, for only mighty blood might bear daughters capable of enduring such inheritance.”
Outside, rain began to patter softly against the courtyard stone.
“For where the Keeper of Return restored the order of all things, the Keeper of Self strained ever against it. No power was meant to gather without end. Thus they stood as opposites—perfect counterweights upon the Star.”
I frowned, blinking down at the passage before me.
The way the author wrote of the Eidrae, they sounded terrifying. But more so than Tharnyx? Than creatures capable of infecting corpses and puppeting the dead? I found that difficult to believe. Perhaps whoever had written this had never encountered the Bone-Wrought up close.
Or perhaps they’d simply hated the Eidrae. After what they’d done during the Firstborn Wars—the way they’d reduced the Court of Flame’s army to ash—it was no surprise they were feared.
But this book was far older than three hundred years. Which meant the fear had existed first.
I squinted at the words.
What in the gods’ names did the author mean by the Star?
I yawned, my eyelids beginning to grow heavy at last. Perhaps if I skimmed ahead, I might find another mention of it.
I turned a few more pages, pausing here and there over shorter passages as sleep slowly began pressing at the edges of my thoughts, but nothing else caught my attention for long.
Then, closer to the back of the book, my hand stilled.
Sprawled across two full pages was an illustration unlike anything I’d seen so far.
I reached for the lantern on the nightstand and dragged it closer, the warm light spilling over the parchment.
The image was strange, abstract in a way the others weren’t.
No creature stood at its center, no battle, no tale unfolding in painted scenes.
Instead, the pages had been overtaken by sweeping strokes of faded ink and color that slashed and curled across the parchment in every direction, crossing over one another in tangled sweeps that somehow seemed deliberate despite their chaos.
Blues threaded into bright reds, charcoal swept through muted gold, the colors winding and twisting through some larger shape that contoured the spread, though I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at.
It was as though someone had tried to capture movement itself. Wind, perhaps. Or currents beneath water.
I leaned closer. There were three marked points within the storm of lines—one near the middle of the left page, another toward the bottom center, and the last far to the right.
Each bore the same strange symbol: a narrow black line ending in a pointed tip, angled sharply downward like an arrow indicating due south.
Strange.
Maybe there was an explanation for the drawing.
I flipped back a page—and recognized the image immediately.
It was the well that had caught my attention earlier when Levinica and I had skimmed through the book together. Ancient but plain, its smooth stone was bare of any ornamentation, its dark mouth a black abyss. I understood at once why it had drawn my eye. Etched into its side was a star.
Not seven-pointed.
Eight.
I froze. My pulse quickening, my finger traced each point again, just to be certain I wasn’t imagining it. But no—one point extended directly downward where no point should have been.
Exactly like the carving on the bone knife my father had given me.
I'd always thought it was an error. A flaw, a mistake made by whoever had made it. But here it was again, staring back at me from the pages of an ancient book bound in Fae skin, hundreds of miles from home.
An eight-pointed star.
The hair rose on the back of my neck.
I turned back to the swirl of ink and color sprawled across the next two pages, my eyes darting at once to the curious symbols marking the three places within the chaos of lines.
Arrows.
Not south.
Down.
The eighth point of the star.
I rifled quickly back to the image of Tharnyx, pages rustling hurriedly beneath my fingers. My eyes swept across the illustration until I found it—so small I’d missed it entirely before. A tiny mark worked subtly into the edge of the image. An arrow angled toward the lower left diagonal.
I sat up straighter.
The Eidrae. I turned back several pages, my eyes racing across the rendering until I found it again: another small arrow, half-hidden near the bottom of the parchment, this one angled toward the upper right.
My eyes rose to the written passage.
Thus they stood as opposites—perfect counterweights upon the Star.
My mouth went dry.
I flipped backward again to the Keeper of Storms—the Tharuun. Sure enough, tucked subtly into the picture of storm-wreathed giants, another mark waited for me, this one angled toward the upper left diagonal.
The seven-pointed star was the symbol of the Seven Gods, though Aedric had taught me long ago that they were not gods at all, but the seven Firstborn—beings whose magic humans had mistaken for divine.
So what did this eight-pointed star represent? And why was each Firstborn tied to a different place upon it?
I turned back to the illustration of the well.
Shaking now, I gripped the book in both hands, ignoring the sickening smoothness of the aged skin, and brought it closer. At first, I’d assumed the dark scrawl beneath the stone face of the well belonged to the illustration itself—roots, perhaps. But now I saw it for what it was.
Handwriting.