Chapter Seventeen #3
Roze breathes fiercely through his nose. “I don’t care.”
Fletcher steps into Roze’s space, lifting a threatening finger in his face.
“You’re not a prince here, Reaper. We’re brothers.
Equals. You took a vow to put the society first. And right now, the society needs her.
” Roze and Fletcher stare each other down for a long moment.
“It’s too late anyway,” Fletcher says. “She’s in, and now she can help us translate texts that have been lost for years. ”
“This is a good thing,” Ed pipes up.
Roze glares at him. “Oh, I still haven’t forgiven you, Sailor. We’re going to have words.”
“My life was in danger anyway,” I say under my breath to Roze alone. “Seven thorns for seven days to kill me, remember? How is this a risk?”
He studies me, something burning behind those icy eyes. “I—we—would’ve found a way … without you becoming a part of this. You would’ve been free when all this is done. Now … it’s a lifetime of living at the edge of a cliff, Sinclair.”
He says we would’ve found a way without me joining the Grimmstones.
I don’t see how. Our time is ticking down, and we’re no closer to finding a way to break the Queen’s power than we were at the start.
Our only clue is the little book, its runes that match those on the King’s arm, and the words Professor Borges said to me—with the King lie the answers, with the King lies salvation.
“What is it the Grimmstones are hiding that’s so important?” I ask.
Roze turns his attention to me, his expression finally softening. He extends a hand to me. “Let me show you.”
He takes my hand and we move toward the edge of the pit, carefully peering over it into the chasm.
My eyes widen. Swirling downward are shelves upon shelves of artifacts—scrolls, pottery, treasure, armor, and a thousand other glinting, beautiful, priceless things.
This trove would definitely be worth killing for.
“The lost knowledge of Hivernia,” Roze says.
“The Grimmstone Society is nearly as ancient as Vandenberghe itself—around a thousand years old. No one quite knows who founded us, but lore says it was Oras, the first meiga, when they were a student.” Roze shrugs.
“It hardly matters. The point is, there have always been truths that are … inconvenient in certain circles. The society protects these truths, keeping them in this library.”
He leads me down the stairs, and I say nothing as we descend the spiral steps that curve around the island in the center of the Crypt.
The rest of the Grimmstones are already scattered throughout the pit, talking or examining various artifacts.
There is so much to look at, but my attention snags on the very first shelf we pass.
On it is a collection of delicate combs made of what looks like a pale blue stone.
“What are these?”
“They come from the Vielflus, an ancient culture that roamed the continent before the Holy Virtusian Empire.” He leans close, whispering in my ear. “They’re made of dragon bone.”
I whirl toward him, our faces coming within an inch of each other as he smirks down at me. “Dragons?”
The seal on the book that Professor Borges gave me immediately springs to mind. But dragons are mythological. Nothing so large, so beastly could’ve ever existed, could it?
Roze chuckles, and the sound goes right to my toes. He whispers across my lips, “I told you we have secrets.”
I swallow, looking back at the display. I study the delicate floral carvings on the nearest comb as I ask, “How do you find these things?”
He nudges my elbow, leading me on, farther down the steps.
“Grimmstone alumni used to search for them before the Mists. It’s always been the job of current Vandenberghe students to guard this trove and study it.
We preserve this knowledge for a time when the Kingdom—and the world—is ready for the knowledge again, if ever. ”
I peer around the chasm. “The secrets contained here … they’re that consequential?”
His eyes darken. “They would start wars and end empires. They would change the way you think about everything, Sinclair.” A rush of fear and adventure washes through me.
“That’s why we have to protect them. That’s why they’re under threat.
These days, the biggest threat to the collection has been my mother.
She’s been determined to purge the Kingdom of any mention of magic. ”
He guides me across a bridge. As we cross, I look over the edge and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The trench is so deep and so dark below that I can’t see the bottom.
Roze strides across without a problem, hands in his pockets, and approaches a small hallway hewn into the stone.
Two rows of books, newer than the ancient items I’ve seen so far, line the walls.
“This is everything the Grimmstones managed to save on meiga magic before my mother had her little bonfire eighteen years ago,” Roze says.
I enter the hall, mouth open in awe of the sheer number of books on magic.
I don’t even read the title before I seize a book off the shelf, letting its pages fall open in my arms. On the left side is an illustration of a meiga wielding magic with her arms lifted overhead, cupping the sun.
On the other side is another meiga cradling a new moon in his arms. Complicated ancient Aragoise text surrounds them both.
Roze stands beside me, studying the shelf of books while I read.
“You have to know—” He clears his throat.
“I want you to know that the Grimmstones are doing everything we can to protect suspected meigas from my mother.” I look up from the book to find his eyes now earnest and set on my face.
“We can’t protect all of them. But when we can, we find them, and we hide them.
It’s been the main goal of the Grimmstones since I took over as leader.
” He smiles weakly. “We collect and protect secrets. Once, those secrets were treasures, now they’re people. ”
I gape at him. All this time, Roze has been protecting meigas, using his public reputation as an arrogant, magic-hating royal as a shield. It’s breathtakingly cunning, and I feel a slight twinge of guilt for having judged him so harshly in the past.
I exhale a rattling breath. “Doesn’t your mother force you to kill meigas? Have you been saving them and killing them?”
He cringes, like my words are a physical blow. “That’s why we try to find them before she does. Once she places a tattoo on my arm … there isn’t much choice.”
He looks so haunted as he says it. And I can see it all playing out in his mind—the way each murder feels like a personal failure, every touch of poisonous skin a reminder that if he’d been more cunning, he could’ve saved them. And they all die thinking he’s the villain.
I put my hand gently on his arm. “It isn’t your fault, Roze.”
He grins mirthlessly. “Reaper.”
“Hardly,” I say. I huff a laugh as something occurs to me. “It’s a bit like your name, isn’t it? Is a rose at fault for having thorns if someone is thrown into its brambles? Your mother is the one doing the killing, even if you’re her weapon.”
He looks away from me, shifting uncomfortably, like he can’t quite accept that answer. “Well, better to not be a rose, then.”
I turn back to my book, but I make sure to mutter loud enough for him to hear, “I like your thorns.”
They remind me of my own.