Chapter 50
Rylee
I’m out the door of Kal’s home before I fully register what I’m doing.
One second, we were all having a quiet, comfortable brunch on the terrace, and the next, I’m racing toward the gates.
“You’re home!” I call out, my voice cracking the second I get the gates open. My bond is flaring, pulsing, begging.
“Darling,” Pierce says, catching me as I launch myself against him.
I wrap my arms around his neck, trembling with excitement. I draw away enough to meet his eyes, and we share a silent moment before his lips find mine.
The kiss is an awakening, a deep breath after being underwater for too long. Sparks erupt down my back as we connect, our bond glittering to life.
He finally sets me on my feet, scooping up the leather satchel he dropped earlier, and we head back to Kal’s home, where Kal and Axl linger in the entryway, giving us our time.
Once we cross the threshold, it’s their turn to hug Pierce and clap him on the back with relieved smiles.
“Come. I must show you all something.” Pierce glances between the three of us, then heads to Kal’s study.
Ash barely acknowledges Pierce from where he’s plopped in one of the chairs in the study, merely lifting his head before laying it back down. He looks more annoyed at us disturbing his nap than anything.
Pierce unbuckles the satchel, then pulls out iron canisters, placing them on Kal’s large desk.
“I got to know Gem and Eni a little better,” he says, unscrewing the canisters and carefully slipping out the scrolls nestled inside.
“They granted me access to the extensive libraries we only got a glimpse of while staying there,” he says, fingering a scroll, then unrolling it. “And I found myself . . . intrigued.”
“Uh-oh,” Axl says, looking over Pierce’s shoulder and down at the parchment. “When the Mind says he’s intrigued, it either means infinite boredom for us or equally as much trouble.”
“Which is it?” Kal asks, a crease forming in his brow as he looks at the parchment, too. “Histories of Lumathyst?” He glances at Axl.
“Boring, then,” Axl says.
“You would think,” Pierce counters, beckoning me over.
He’s got that look in his brown eyes, that twinkle of a mystery.
I understand his excitement, especially when there’s not much he doesn’t solve with his powers.
“But look at this,” he says, shifting so I can sit in the chair at Kal’s desk, the three of them standing behind me.
Pierce points to a section of the parchment.
I read the inked script carefully. Some of the words are faded with age. “What am I reading?” I ask when I’ve skimmed over the recounted agriculture advances, goddess decrees, and demi risings. “Nothing I haven’t heard about before.”
“Exactly,” he says, as if that is answer enough.
Axl rolls his eyes before nudging me. “He does this all the time,” he says. “You get used to it.”
I smile.
“Note the date, darling,” Pierce urges me.
I do. Another bolt of confusion hits me. “That year . . .” I scan the text over and over again. “Isn’t that the year we went to war with Erithmore?”
Pierce claps his hands, nodding. “It is.”
“But the historians aren’t mentioning it?”
“They’re not just ‘not mentioning it,’” he says. “There’s no mention of a war with Erithmore at all.”
Kal takes a step back, folding his arms over his chest as he eyes Pierce. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Pierce says. “At first, I thought I had the date wrong. Or perhaps the historians filed it wrong. I pored through every record Silvac has. There’s no mention of a war with Erithmore at any time in Lumathyst’s history.”
My blood runs cold.
“Could Silvac’s records have been destroyed?” Axl asks. “That happens all the time. Written claims are lost to time or natural disasters. We had an entire rare section lost to a coastal storm a decade ago.”
“I wondered that, too,” Pierce says. “But there are records upon records of the happenings of Lumathyst during and around that time frame. Nothing ever mentions a war with another realm.”
“But our records do,” Kal counters.
“Yes, they do,” Pierce says. “And where do we get our historical texts from?”
“Shit,” Axl says.
“The kings’ scribes and Occuli have always kept the historical texts up to date,” Kal answers.
“What about the demis?” I ask. “That was around the same time. And the goddesses went to sleep to protect us from that uprising. There has to be an account of that.” I tap the parchment before me. “The historian here mentions Goddess Tareena’s blessing of the harvest that year, for fuck’s sake.”
“Precisely my thought,” Pierce says, unscrewing another canister and unraveling another scroll. He places it gently atop the other one. “Which is why I went digging for this,” he explains, taking a step back for the three of us to read it.
“The Goddesses of Lumathyst.” I read the bold script aloud.
“Chose four mortal mates . . .” I go on, recounting the tale of them choosing their mates, embodying them with powers, having children, and creating the Choosing.
“Wait,” I gasp, turning to look up at Pierce.
“There’s a huge section missing here.” I point to where the script simply disappears. Stops mid-sentence, and the page ends.
Pierce fingers the ends of the scroll. “You see this?” he asks.
“It’s rigid,” I say, heart thumping against my chest. “Torn?”
Pierce nods.
I sink back into the chair.
“Wait,” Axl grumbles. “You’re saying the best historians across the realms, the Occuli, who protect their libraries with ancient magic, don’t have a record of the war with Erithmore or the goddesses acting as wards in order to protect us from that war?”
Pierce’s shoulders drop as if all the tension has flown right from his body. “Yes,” he finally answers.
I push out of the chair, turning to face him. “What does that imply?”
“That someone wanted to bury the history,” he answers. “You see why I couldn’t leave until I searched everything?”
I nod, fully understanding. “Did you ask Gem and Eni?”
“I did. They were unaware of our histories. Their parents didn’t pass down the information to them, and they never thought it pressing to look into ours beyond our peace treaties.”
“Is that normal? For other realms to not know each other’s history? Especially when it comes to wars?”
“Sometimes,” he explains. “But it would make sense, if someone wanted to bury our history.”
“Who would benefit from wiping that away?”
“That’s the question,” he says.
“Another fucking question,” Axl grumbles. “Add it to the massive pile of shit we don’t understand already. It’s growing daily. I’m over it.”
“Welcome home,” I say with a half-hearted laugh.
Pierce draws me against him, holding me close. “I’m glad to be home. We’ll get to the bottom of this. It’s a low priority, in the grand scheme of things.”
“Unnerving,” I say.
“Quite.”
That buried instinct inside me feels like a plucked string of an instrument, a sound reverberating inside me, beckoning me to explore it further.
The door to Kal’s study closes, the sound alerting me to Kal and Axl’s quiet exit.
Pierce looks down at me longingly, tipping my chin up with gentle fingers. “I missed you,” he says.
“So much,” I agree, heart thumping against my ribs.
He dips down, brushing his lips over mine in a teasing kiss as his hands roam to my hips. He walks me backward, picking me up and putting me on the edge of the desk so we’re closer to eye level. My hands splay against his chest as he kisses me more deeply.
I breathe him in, flames igniting beneath my skin. “We have so much to catch up on,” I say between his kisses.
“Later?” he asks, drawing away to scan my face.
“Later.”
His lips are on mine in another breath, and I forget everything I’m supposed to be worrying about.