A Ripple of Pages and Secrets (Mythical Library Duet #1)

Chapter 1 The Book

CHAPTER ONE

THE BOOK

ADELINE

“Thief! Someone stop that girl!”

Crap. My heart hammering, I run harder, clutching the apples to my chest as I weave through the narrow streets of the capital.

People on their balconies lean over to see what the fuss is about.

My shoes pound on the uneven cobbles as I take a right, then a left, trying to get my bearings and at the same time lose my pursuers.

There are two of them, if I’m not mistaken, big men, judging from their heavy steps. My slight stature gives me the advantage in this race as I rush ahead.

No time to even pause and stuff the apples into my cloth bag as I cross the bridge and run through the butcher district, the stench of spoiled meat and guts turning my stomach.

The houses I pass are ramshackle and crumbling, filthy toddlers playing on the doorsteps, mangy cats and scrawny dogs hunting for scraps in the trash.

Nothing here would make you think that I’m in Siris, the famed fae capital of the Seventh World.

These are the poor people’s quarters. The rich live higher up, on the slopes of hills, away from the stink of the river and the poor masses of lowlife fae and humans scrounging for a living on its banks.

The heavy steps behind me grow louder. My pursuers are relentless today. Usually, I lose them once I cross the river, but today they’ve decided to hound me.

My heart is booming inside my chest, and the stitch in my side burns as I burrow deeper into the underbelly of the city, racing through the cobbled streets and turning into the Warrens, where street urchins cower, looking at me with wide eyes as I dart by.

Damn these men and their insistence on following me. It was only three apples. You’d think I stole gold and gems; that I robbed them blind.

With a very unladylike curse, I vault over a broken fence surrounding a vegetable patch and race to climb out the other side, crossing a small yard and finding myself in another narrow street, empty and quiet.

A stooped human grandmother is knitting in a doorway.

She frowns at me as I pelt by, heading for the Burrows and home.

Warrens and Burrows. Names have power, and these turn us into small, frightened animals, hiding and scrounging in the dirt to survive.

All right, I think, slowing down. I’ve lost my pursuers. Can’t hear them behind me anymore. Finally, a relief. A respite.

You should never let your guard down, though, so I stop just long enough to put the apples into my cloth bag and draw a breath. My side burns something fierce.

I’m used to running. That’s the life of a thief, after all. But today has been brutal, after a night of nightmares and waking up to find that Brogan—my adoptive father—hasn’t gotten any better. Seeing the despair on my adoptive mother’s face hit me hard.

She doesn’t like me stealing, but they can’t afford food otherwise. After the accident, Brogan hasn’t been able to bring in any coin, and he needs fresh food to regain his strength if he’s ever to return to work.

I only wish I knew where my good-for-nothing brother has gone off to this time.

Soon enough, I’m running again. Dragons dance in the sky, high over the hills, draks and darakins. In the far distance, the sacred pillar supporting the sky gleams as it slowly rotates. Fluffy clouds travel across the shimmering sky. This hollow world is beautiful.

But while high up there it’s calm and majestic, down here, on the filthy cobbles, I’m risking my skin for food.

Up ahead is a little market square and I decide to risk crossing it as a shortcut. I haven’t eaten anything yet and the hollowness in my stomach is making me lightheaded. At least nobody seems to be following me anymore.

Bursting into the small square, I almost crash into a cart selling syrupy sweets. The aroma makes my empty stomach cramp. Swerving, swearing under my breath, I hurry between rickety market stalls, elbowing my way through the bustling crowd. Damn, I hadn’t realized it was market day today.

Well, all the better to conceal myself in, in case my delayed pursuers are still after me.

Determined to see the bright side, I keep moving, almost tripping over dogs begging for food and rats scurrying over the cobbles. The air is laced with the scent of wood smoke and sugar, pleasant, but the stench of urine and sewage wafts over from the side streets.

I’m almost at the other end of the square when I bump into someone. They stumble away, mumbling a curse, and I realize it’s a woman, dressed in the fashion of the fae in a long, flowing blue dress, her hood covering her face.

Before I can catch a glimpse of her face, she vanishes in the crowd, and that’s when I notice she has dropped a satchel.

“Wait!” I call out. “Lady, your bag! Hey!”

But she’s already gone.

Sleeping Gods. People can be so careless with their wealth. And this one looks expensive, a leather satchel with worked details on the flap.

I poke it with the tip of my shoe. On its own, it could bring in a silverling or two, which would be more than welcome. That much could buy food for days, even a new pair of shoes.

And then I wonder what it might contain.

But no time to open it now, so after a brief moment’s deliberation, I grab it and swing the strap over my shoulder, then I hurry into one of the stinky streets branching off the square.

The Burrows, my neighborhood, is a stone’s throw away. Running through the muddy paths that pass for streets in the shantytown, past hovels with holes in their reed roofs and hopping over rivulets of filth, I turn another corner and there’s our door.

It whines loudly when I shove it open and step inside. Breathing out a sigh of relief at having made it, I spin around to close it, leaning against it.

I’m home.

“Aline!” a woman calls out from the dark depths of our little house. “Is that you?”

“Yes, I’m here!”

“Where have you been?”

With a sigh, I unsling the leather satchel and the cloth bag from my aching shoulders and trudge through the long room that constitutes the entirety of our home.

The fire is burning at the other end and smoke laces the air as it makes its way through the hole in the roof, mingling with the aroma of the herbs hung to dry on hooks on the walls.

“I brought some apples,” I say, lowering the bag on the table, casting a furtive glance at the narrow bed where Brogan lies and the figure of Naida bent over him, fussing with his covers. “It would do him good to eat something fresh.”

Naida. I’ve never called her mother but that’s what she is to me. The only mother I’ve ever known.

“I’ve told you many times not to steal.” She sounds weary. The face she lifts to look at me is young, but with the fae, that doesn’t mean much. Her hair, pulled back at the nape, is starting to turn gray, her fae ears cutting through it like blades. “We make do.”

“Do we?” I reply more sharply than I’d intended. Struggling to control my emotions, I empty my cloth bag on the table, catching the apples before they roll off. Then I turn toward my pallet… and freeze.

“Greetings, little sister.” The tall, slender figure of my brother, Eiras, detaches itself from the shadows.

He grins at me, revealing those sharp teeth of fae kind.

His pointed ears poke through his pale blond hair.

His nose is crooked where he broke it as a young boy falling down some steps. “You weren’t here when I arrived.”

“Was I supposed to sit around and let us starve while you were off wandering?”

His grin falls and his mouth tightens. “Aline...”

“Nice of you to finally show up,” I grumble under my breath, glaring. Reaching my pallet, I drop the satchel on the thin mattress and sit down cross-legged. “You’ve been gone for ages.”

“Missed me, huh?”

I harrumph to avoid giving him a reply. I need a moment to tamp down my initial blast of anger.

It’s not that I don’t know what he does out there.

He works the odd job, moving from farmstead to farmstead, bringing back food, clothes, and sometimes coin.

I shouldn’t resent his absences, but it’s hard not to when we’re so hard up and he isn’t around to help.

After racing for my life through the city for three apples, I admit I resent his easygoing attitude.

“I brought enough this time,” he says more softly. “We’ll be set for a while.”

“And after that?”

“Come on now.” Casting a frown my way, he sits at the table, grabbing one of the apples. “At least pretend you’re happy to see me, little sister.”

Aware of Naida’s reproving look, I rub the smooth leather of the satchel strap and take my brother in.

He looks tired. He probably walked for days to reach the capital.

He’s older than me, a fae obviously, light where I’m dark, tall where I’m short.

He has fae magic, the non-threatening, life-growing kind, faint and gentle, more of an aid than a weapon.

It’s a gift he received from Brogan, who is his natural father.

As for me, I wasn’t born to this family.

That much is obvious. This is a fae family, and I’m a human foundling.

Naida has told me the story quite a few times, how she heard me squalling inside the library and decided to keep me the moment she laid eyes on me.

When I was younger, I often asked to hear it.

So I was taken in and raised alongside Eiras.

And things were fine for a long time. We have been well off, for the Burrows’ standards, always with food on the table and new shoes when the old ones got too worn.

Brogan took good care of us, and I grew up learning the tales Naida, the best storyteller in the land, if you believe the rumors, taught me.

All the great legends and myths, all the folktales and tall tales.

All the stories recorded in the books and a few that aren’t.