Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Aurelia
Agreeing to stay hadn’t magically made Frithhold feel less like a cage.
It just meant I’d picked my prison. Night came anyway, sliding down the mountain in slow, gray sheets.
Lamps were lit one by one, a warm glow in the great room that made it look almost inviting from the shadowed corridor outside my bedroom.
Almost.
I tried—and failed—to sleep. Restlessness drove me out again. I wrapped my arms around myself as I stepped into the main space, half expecting to find Keres waiting with a smirk and a new way to insult me. But the room was empty.
The fire banked low in the hearth, all coals and soft orange light. Shadows climbed the log walls, licking across stone and leather and wood.
Weapons lined every surface that wasn’t already taken up by shelves.
Blades older than anything I’d seen in my lifetime.
Axes with double heads and inlaid handles made of gemstones.
A spear whose tip shimmered faintly with its own internal light.
Each one mounted on a plaque etched with curling script I couldn’t decipher.
I drifted closer in spite of myself.
The nearest sword had a bronze hilt, the metal worn smooth where countless hands had gripped it.
A dragon’s head curved along the pommel, jaws open in a silent snarl.
The plaque beneath it was a small strip of metal bolted to the stone, the words engraved in the old tongue, the letters sharp and elegant.
My fingers itched to trace them.
Eventually, my gaze drifted back to the shelves.
If I was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, I might as well learn something. The thought surprised me. A few hours ago, I’d been plotting escape routes. Now I was thinking about settling in. The thought of sitting by the fire with a good book left an ache in my chest.
I thought of all the endless nights I’d spent in the library at Sunspire, scouring every book in Tyrion’s royal collection for some clue about how to break the curse on my kingdom.
I’d drunk a lot of whiskey those nights. Amanti had too. Some nights, we’d laughed more than we read. Other nights, I scoured page after page, tome after tome. And come away without a single answer in the end.
I wasn’t sure if trying it again in this library made me a fool or utterly determined.
Sonoma would’ve teased me as the former. Then she would’ve picked the heaviest, driest tome on the shelf and made me read it out loud until we were both cross-eyed.
The ache that thought left in my chest nearly sent me back to bed. Instead, I crossed the room.
Up close, the collection was even more intimidating. The nearest shelf held thick volumes bound in dark leather, their spines tooled with unfamiliar characters. Some looked like claw marks. Others like vines. A few were stamped only with a single symbol in the center.
The Old Language, I assumed.
I reached out, then hesitated as something tugged at the skin of my wrist.
My sleeve had ridden up. The mark there caught the firelight—a small, inked curve of lines and arcs, the Verdant rune the oracle had etched into my flesh back in Grey Oak.
A favor owed.
I rubbed my thumb over it. The skin warmed, the magic stirring faintly like a sleeping animal shifting in its nest. Someday, she’d come to collect that favor. I could only hope it would be one I was capable of giving.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered to the mark.
It didn’t answer.
When I lowered my hand, my gaze snagged on a spine directly in front of me.
A symbol had been stamped there in faded gold. Not identical to the one on my wrist, but close—same shape, same curve, the lines intersecting in a way that made my skin prickle.
My heart thudded once, too hard.
Slowly, I slid the book free.
It was heavier than it looked. The leather creaked. Dust motes spiraled in the firelight as I carried it to the table near the hearth and set it down.
Up close, the rune on the cover was even clearer. The same shape as the one on the spine, with additional flourishes at the edges. A more elaborate version of the Verdant mark on my skin, but undeniably related.
“All right,” I murmured. “You have my attention.”
I reached for the cover.
“That’s an ambitious choice,” a dry voice said.
Every muscle in my body tensed.
I turned.
Thorne Varros lounged in the archway, one shoulder propped against the stone, arms crossed loosely over his chest. The lamplight traced the edges of him—broad shoulders, hair pulled back and braided at his nape, eyes sharp enough to slice.
He’d traded his cloak for a simple black shirt and worn leather trousers, but nothing about him looked relaxed. Even leaning, he was all potential energy, like one wrong move would snap him into motion.
As a child, I’d heard horror stories of midnight fae—blood-suckers and teeth-gnashers.
Creatures of nightmare. These fae were much more civilized than the legends claimed, at least as far as I’d seen, but I hadn’t seen a whisper of magic from a single one of them yet. That didn’t mean they weren’t a threat.
“Do you make a habit of sneaking up on people?” I asked.
“Do you make a habit of talking to books?” he countered.
He pushed away from the wall and walked toward me, steps soundless on the stone. When he drew close enough, the air shifted. A faint hum threaded through it, just below hearing. It might’ve been my imagination. Or it might’ve been a warning that Thorne was a threat.
“I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d see what sort of contraband my captors keep around.”
“Rescuers,” he corrected automatically, then sighed. “That one isn’t exactly light reading.”
“You say that like you know what it says.”
“I should hope so, considering it’s part of my collection.”
“All of these are yours?” I slanted him a look. “Trying to impress your dates?” I asked. “Or are you just compensating for something?”
His mouth curved, almost but not quite a smile. “I’m not the one who can’t read what’s in those pages.”
It dragged an unwilling huff of amusement out of me. I hated that. I turned it into a scowl.
“What does this mean?” I nodded to the rune on the cover while making sure to keep my own tattoo covered. “I’ve seen something like it before.”
His gaze dropped to the symbol.
“The old tongue has many layers,” he said. “But if you want the simplest translation?” His fingers brushed the edge of the cover, not quite touching the rune itself. “Life.”
Life.
The word settled in my gut like a stone dropped into deep water.
On my wrist, the Verdant tattoo warmed again, responding to the echo of his word. Life. Favor. Promise. Debt. All knotted together.
“Of course it does,” I muttered.
His gaze flicked up at that, from the book to my face and then lower. To my throat.
I realized too late that my hair had shifted, exposing the small crescent of ink just below my ear. The moon-and-stars mark I’d woken with after Heliconia’s curse had failed to hurt me seven years ago. The one the bounty sketch artist had apparently gotten a good look at.
Heat climbed up my neck. I resisted the urge to cover it.
“There’s magic in that,” Thorne said quietly.
“In what?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
He didn’t bother to hide his look. “It’s humming like a nest of hornets.”
I swallowed. The tattoo tingled, a slow, spreading warmth under the skin. It had always felt like a part of me, but lately, the magic inside it had grown more insistent. Like it knew something I didn’t.
“It’s just ink,” I said.
“Nothing in this realm is ‘just’ anything,” he replied. “Not if the gods had a hand in it.”
“And you would know?” I asked, arching a brow.
He tipped his head as if considering how much he wanted to say. Then, with visible reluctance, he sat on the edge of the low table opposite me, the book between us.
He drew his hand up, and slowly, dark lines appeared from his fingertips. They seemed to draw upward from the floor rather than shooting out from his hands. Like he was drawing power inward rather than pushing it out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Ley lines.”
Ley lines were a reference to the very magic that gave Menryth life. The courts whose season sustained itself year-round—that was all thanks to ley lines. The magic fae fed on and in turn dispersed back to the land as a renewable source—also, ley lines.
I’d never known anyone to wield them.
“What can you do with them?” I asked.
He closed his fist, and the dark webbing vanished. “If a ley line flows near me, I can draw from it. Borrow strength. Lend stability. But it’s not free. It takes something back.”
“What?” I asked.
He met my gaze. “Whatever it can get.”
That sent a chill skating down my spine that had nothing to do with the mountain air.
“Sounds miserable,” I said.
He shrugged one shoulder. “We don’t get to choose our gods-gifts. Any more than you chose yours.”
I bristled. “Mine’s not a gift.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “It’s a weapon. And a warning. Most gods-gifts are both.”
We sat there for a moment in the thick quiet, the fire throwing slow shadows around us.
My fingers drifted toward the book again. “And this?” I asked. “More stories about fae gifts?”
“It’s a compendium,” he said. “Old accounts of the creation of Menryth. The way the ley lines were mapped and anchored.” His mouth twisted. “The sort of thing that’s useful if the realm becomes imbalanced.”
“Is it imbalanced now?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze slid past me, toward the far wall, as if he could see straight through to the world beyond. For a heartbeat, the air hummed again, that faint vibration in my bones.
“It’s… shifting,” he said at last. “That’s why I brought the books here. Closer to where the lines converge.”
“Here.” I glanced around the cabin. “Frithhold.”
“Frithhold sits on a knot in the network,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I’ll feel it from here sooner than I would anywhere else.”
“And the books—you want to protect them?” I asked.
“I want to preserve our history. So that we don’t repeat it.”
“Are there any books here about the Verdant?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Before I left Sunspire, we had reason to believe the Verdant healers might know of magic strong enough to break Heliconia’s curse on my kingdom.”
His expression softened to one that looked infuriatingly like pity. “The Verdant don’t break curses.”
“How do you know?” I asked, my voice rougher than I’d intended.
“Because my mate was one.”
“Well, can I talk to her—”
“She died eight years ago.”
Guilt and grief panged in my chest. True mates were rare these days in Menryth.
Celeste and Tyrion had loved each other more deeply than anyone I’d ever known, and even they hadn’t been true mates.
The fae believed it was likely from fae magic waning to nothing more than a weak trickle of what it had once been.
But there was nothing weak about Thorne.
His iron-clad stoicism as he said the words was proof enough.
“I’m sorry.”
His silence made it clear the subject was closed for questions.
“You said earlier,” I began, then stopped, choosing my words carefully. “You said Rydian will not return to this place.”
“Did I?” His voice was mild, but his jaw tightened.
“You said it like you knew something.” My fingers curled around the edge of the table. “Is he never coming back to Frithhold then?”
The question felt like yanking a splinter out of my own chest. I hated that he heard the thread of rawness in it.
Thorne studied me for a long moment. In that look, I caught something I hadn’t expected—understanding. Maybe even a flicker of sympathy. It made me want to lash out.
Instead, he glanced down at the book again.
“Rydian has his own path to walk,” he said finally. “Destiny tugs at him, same as it does the rest of us, even if his power runs darker than most. I can’t tell you where he is right now.”
“Can’t?” I pressed. “Or won’t?”
“Both,” he said simply.
I scowled.
The fire cracked, a coal collapsing in on itself.
I stared at the rune on the book, at the mark on my wrist, at the faint outline of my neck tattoo reflected in the polished metal of a nearby sword.
Life. Favor. Debt. Gods-touched power that felt more like a curse.
“You’re reassuring, you know that?” I said.
He huffed out a quiet laugh. “It’s a gift.”
“Another one you didn’t ask for?” I asked.
“That one I might have,” he said, and there it was again—that almost-smile, gone as quickly as it came.
He rose. The faint hum in the air diminished as he straightened, as if he were taking it with him. Maybe he was. If the ley lines were something he took into himself, maybe that was why it felt like he always sucked the air from the room.
“You should sleep,” he said. “Training starts early.”
“You’re very confident I agreed to that,” I muttered.
“You said you’d stay,” he reminded me. “And you don’t strike me as someone who likes wasting time. Or potential.”
He had me there, damn him.
He took a few steps toward the archway, then paused. “If you’re set on that book,” he said without looking back, “start with the illustrations. The text will give you a headache.”
“And if the book bites?” I asked.
“Then you’ll have learned something from it,” he said. “Which is more than most can say.”
He left me with that and the lingering hum of his power, the room feeling both emptier and more crowded in his absence.
I looked down at the book, at the rune for life glinting faintly in the firelight. At the mark on my wrist, warm and waiting.
Slowly, I opened the cover.
The first page was an illustration, inked in elegant detail.
Seven thrones, each carved from different elements—stone, ice, oak, ivy, and something that looked like solid flame—spread out in a circular design.
Lines threaded between them, a web of power, the same inky threads I’d seen under Thorne’s skin when he’d drawn power from the ley lines.
At the center of the circle, another shape waited. Not quite a throne. Not quite a void. The ink there seemed thinner somehow, as if the artist hadn’t been sure of the shape.
Unease prickled along my spine.
Life, the rune whispered. Favor. Promise.
Debt.
I traced the circle with one finger, feeling the faint thrum of magic in the page, and wondered which one of those I was meant to pay.