Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AGNES
Graham snored softly beside me, one arm thrown behind his head, his face slack with deep sleep that came from complete exhaustion. I watched the rise and fall of his chest for a long moment, counting his breaths like seconds counting down on a clock, and reassured myself that he was safe. For now.
My fiancé. The word still felt strange in my mind, too bright and hopeful for the darkness that surrounded us.
But now, in the quiet hours of the night, the fear crept back in. The curse was still there and the Beithir was still waiting. I was no closer to finding an answer that would save Graham, save us, and save Loren Brae.
Gran’s ring warmed on my finger and, idly, I twisted it.
Now that I thought about it, the ring had been warm since I’d pulled Graham from the water, a constant low heat that I’d chalked up to being some woo-woo Gran sent from the other side.
Like she was looking out for me. But was it something else?
Was she trying to communicate with me somehow? At this point, anything was possible.
It was also highly possible I was grasping at straws and reading meaning into anything and everything since I was desperate for a clue of some sort.
Either way, I wasn’t going to sleep, not with my thoughts pinging around like the balls in a lottery machine.
The only answer for this was to take decisive, forward motion.
I slipped out from under his arm, moving slowly. He stirred but didn’t wake, making a soft sound and rolling onto his side, reaching for the warm spot I’d left behind. Holding my breath, I waited to see if he would notice I was gone, but soon his breathing deepened once again.
Dressing quickly in the dark, I pulled a jumper over my head and slid my feet into my shoes, before grabbing Gran’s pen from my purse and slipping from the room into the dimly lit hallway.
I’d always loved the moodiness of MacAlpine Castle, and I’d appreciated that they’d kept the wall sconces that lined the old stone hallways as torches even though they were wired now for modern day electricity.
Still, the ambience felt the same as I hustled toward the archives room.
The answer had to be there.
It was the only thing that made sense.
And as someone who had long turned to books for both solace and joy, there was no reason that these books wouldn’t hold the answers I now sought.
Frankly, they had to.
Gran’s ring pulsed with heat as I walked, growing warmer as I descended the stairs toward the basement.
I curled my hand into a tight fist, knowing now that I hadn’t been imagining it, and wondered what Gran was trying to tell me.
Or if it was even her. Maybe this was just some weird manifestation of my powers that I didn’t fully understand yet.
Either way, I was listening.
“I’m listening now,” I murmured, bringing the ring to my lips and giving it a kiss. “Show me what you need me to see.”
The heavy oak door groaned when I pushed it open, the sound echoing through the empty corridor like a complaint. I flipped on the lamp in the corner, but left the overhead lights off, needing the cozy vibes it brought.
“There she is.”
“Och.” I held my hand to my heart as Quilliam fluttered over and landed on the table, tilting his head at me. His eyes gleamed in the light. “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, closing the door behind me.
“Book wyrms don’t require sleep the same way humans do,” he said, his voice sliding into my mind with its usual smoky warmth. “We rest, but we remain aware. It’s a survival mechanism, as it’s hard to eat a creature that’s always watching.”
“Has anyone ever tried to eat you?” I paused, momentarily distracted. Just what kind of creature would eat a book wyrm?
“Several times. It didn’t go well for them.” His opal eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “But we’re not here to discuss one of my many brushes with death. You felt it too, didn’t you? The ring calling.”
I crossed to the table and sank into one of the old wooden chairs.
“How’d you know?” Holding my hand up, I studied Gran’s ring, the soft light glinting dully off the silver.
“I don’t know how to explain it really.” Quilliam tilted his head.
“I guess I’ve never much had to explain myself before.
The closest I could come is to say that because I’m bonded with you, I can feel when there’s a ripple in your force, so to speak.
Magick disrupting you. And that ring is trying to tell you something. Loudly.”
“Aye, but what?” I laughed softly, leaning back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s not like a magickal detector ring or something like that.”
“Isn’t it?”
At that, I snapped upward, regarding my wee book wyrm with curiosity.
“You know what would be super cool? Is if you just told me what I needed to know, Quilliam. My patience, well, it’s not great, okay? Like, I’m holding on by a damn thread here.” My voice caught as I held my fingers up to indicate the short amount of patience I was barely holding on to.
“You’re upset,” Quilliam murmured, coming closer to me.
“Aye, of course I’m upset!” I threw up my hands and Quilliam jumped back, taking flight.
“I almost lost Graham today. And I can’t help but think it will happen again.
No, I know it will happen again. And sure, we can drink and dance and make love and be all happy before the darkness of dawn but, bloody hell, Quilliam, I’m begging you.
If you know anything, anything at all, can you please bloody well just tell me? ”
“Goodness, lass. Why didn’t you just ask me then?” Quilliam sniffed, and then he flew toward a stack of ancient looking books.
“So help me …”
“Och, wheesht. I do, actually, have something new and potentially useful to offer.” Quilliam landed on a small leather-bound book. “That is, if you can calm your hysterics enough to take a look.”
“Now, Quilliam. Don’t make me punt you into the loch for a misogynistic comment about women and their hysterics. Because I’ll gladly do it,” I threatened, standing and walking over to pick up the book.
My ring flared so hot, I almost dropped the book.
“Damn it,” I hissed and rushed back to the table to lay the book down. Slipping the ring off, I set it by the corner of the book and studied the cover.
“I found this only just tonight. Hidden in a compartment behind one of the shelves. I’ve flown past that shelf a thousand times and never once noticed it. But then, tonight, it just seemed to call to me.”
“You think it called to you?”
“To us. Look.” He tapped the book with one wee claw. “It’s a diary, Agnes. And look at the cover.”
I leaned closer. The leather was old and cracked, but I could make out a symbol pressed into the surface. A chalice design. The exact design engraved on Gran’s ring.
“Did this belong to one of the Alewives?” It’s what I’d heard the unicorn call one branch of my family when it had shared its vision with me. I’d had more time to process now and had remembered the term for those who protected the chalice.
“It belonged to someone connected to them, I think. But here’s the problem.” Quilliam flipped the book open with his snout, revealing pages covered in an unfamiliar script. “I can’t read it. Which says something, because I speak many languages. But the text is encoded.”
I studied the strange letters. They looked almost like Gaelic but twisted somehow. Rearranged.
“A cipher?” My eyebrows lifted.
“Aye. The Wright family often used them to protect sensitive information. And I think it needs a key.” Quilliam’s opal eyes met mine. “Which just might be your ring.”
I looked down at Gran’s ring. It looked so simple and innocuous next to the book, when it could hold answers we so desperately needed. Gran couldn’t have known it had so much … purpose, or she would have been more insistent on trying to find the truth herself.
This is up to me. Agnes Wright, the Bookkeeper.
“You were always deigned for something incredible, wee Agnes.”
I’d largely forgotten Gran’s words to me before she died, being so consumed by grief for the impending losses of her and Graham. Was this what she saw as my role but didn’t tell me?
“How do I use it?”
“There’s a symbol on the first page. See?” He pointed. “Try aligning the ring with it. If I’m right, the text should become readable.”
My hands trembled as I positioned my hand over the page, lining up the engraved chalice on the ring with the one on the paper.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the ring flared with heat, and the letters on the page began to shift.
I gasped, watching the strange script rearrange itself into words I could understand. Not all of the diary—some sections remained stubbornly encoded—but enough to read some passages.
“It’s working,” Quilliam breathed.
“Excuse me? You sound surprised when moments before you seemed pretty confident.”
“I mean, I was hopeful this would work, but you know, YOLO.”
I slanted a glance at my wee book wyrm.
“YOLO? Do you even know what that means? Or how that isn’t even remotely applicable right now?”
“I would focus more on these moving passages than my usage of modern-day vernacular.” Quilliam sniffed and lifted his nose in the air.
Rolling my eyes, I trailed my finger along the jumbled words until I reached the first decoded passage.
I write this in haste, for I do not know how much time remains. The guardian has been corrupted. I have watched it happen over these past months … the strange moods, the whispered conversations with something none of us can see, the way it looks at the artifacts with hunger instead of protection.
I glanced up at Quilliam.
“The guardian,” I said. “The Beithir?”
“Historically speaking the Beithir was the main guardian of The Three Queens, as well as the loch. What else does it say?”