Chapter 13
Hamish and I ate breakfast together in silence, attended by servants who moved with quiet efficiency, though their hands betrayed them—cups trembling faintly against saucers, fingers unsteady as they poured. No one lingered longer than necessary. Not a single one of them spoke.
And there were so few of them.
Since arriving, I'd seen only Layne, a scattering of guards, and now these servants. That was all. For a castle of this size, it was unnervingly empty. Nearly as empty as Noctharis itself.
It carried the same quiet sadness as the city.
Missing crystal pendants left gaps in the great chandelier overhead.
Faded gilding clung to the mouldings, and the great hearth had been rebuilt in mismatched stone, its firebox cracked and blackened beyond use.
The grandeur was still there. But it felt diminished somehow, as though the castle had suffered a grievous wound long ago and, though mended, had never quite recovered.
“Where are all the people?” I asked, unable to keep the question to myself. The pretty blonde servant girl filling my water glass straightened abruptly and hurried from the chamber.
Across the table, Hamish’s honey-brown eyes lifted from his spoonful of porridge to settle on me.
I cleared my throat. “The city looks empty.”
Something tightened in his expression. “Hiding.”
“Hiding?” I repeated, certain I’d heard him wrong. “From what?”
“From Aedric.” He returned his attention to his bowl, scraping the last of the oats from the sides.
I blinked. Hiding from Aedric? “What for?”
He chewed and swallowed. “Was it not much the same in Thistra?”
He was right. When Aedric had arrived in Thistra, the streets had emptied.
No one had dared venture out. No one had dared so much as light a candle with the Lord of Flame in their Court.
I remembered standing at my bedroom window, staring out at the darkened canopy below — usually alive with music and lanternlight, swallowed whole by silence.
“Yes,” I murmured at last. “It was.”
He grunted and reached for his goblet. When he noticed I was finished with my meal, he rose to his feet. “Shall we return to your chambers?”
My heart sank. So much for another walk. The walls he'd lowered in Dheren were firmly back in place.
I pushed my bowl away and stood. “Yes.”
He drew himself up to his full height. “Come, then.”
Hamish didn’t take me back the way we’d come.
The corridors widened as we went, the ceilings soaring high overhead, arched and open to the light streaming in through the windows, the sound of the waves a pleasant hush in the background.
The stone beneath our feet was scuffed and worn, its surface faded by use, as though thousands had passed this way — yet there was no one.
We were alone, our footsteps the only ones echoing through the halls.
We turned a corner, and my gaze snagged on an enormous set of double doors at the far end of the corridor.
The wood was black as midnight, veined with silver that wandered through the grain in slow, silent currents.
As it moved, branches unfurled into constellations, the crest of a wave dissolved into the wing of a bird, a crescent moon bent into the curve of a flower's petal, each image bleeding so seamlessly into the next that I scarcely noticed the moment it became something else.
It was as though the doors were dreaming.
The bond snapped taut.
Sudden. Violent. As though something at the other end had wrenched it with all its strength.
The breath left my lungs in a sudden whoosh. My hand flew to my chest as my body lurched forward of its own accord, only for Hamish to catch my elbow before I could stumble.
“Elowen?”
The pull tightened, winding through me until it bordered on pain, until it felt as though something deep inside me was trying to drag me onward whether I willed it or not.
I shook my head, forcing myself to draw in a breath, then another, even as my pulse raced against the tightness in my chest.
“I must have eaten too quickly,” I said, thin and unconvincing, even to my own ears. “Give me a moment.”
The pull didn’t ease. If anything, it deepened, drawing me forward.
Toward the doors.
“What’s in there?” I asked shakily.
Hamish's gaze settled on them, a troubled look crossing his face. "The library."
I straightened slowly as something prickled faintly through the bond — awareness, unmistakable and immediate.
Aedric.
He knew I was here. He could feel me.
What was he doing inside the library?
“Can we go in?”
Hamish paused, and something in me bristled at the hesitation.
“Just because I can’t read doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a library, Hamish,” I snapped, yanking my arm from his grasp.
I stormed toward the doors without waiting for a reply.
“Elowen!” Hamish called after me, but I didn't stop. “Elowen, don't!”
I set my hand against the strange wood. It tingled beneath my palm, and the enormous doors swung inward at my touch without the faintest whisper of protest.
And beyond —
I gasped as I took in the remains of what this place had once been.
Charred wood rose in jagged, splintered lines where shelves had once stood, the grandeur of the library still faintly visible beneath the damage, though so much of it had been burned that it felt like staring into the bones of something long dead.
What remained had been reduced to skeletal frames and drifting ash that clung stubbornly to the ruins.
Books still sat on shelves in places, blackened and warped, their bindings fused together, pages reduced to brittle layers. In other places, there was nothing left at all but graying drifts gathered along the wood and scattered across the floor — what had once been knowledge, now dust.
The library rose in tiers, level upon level climbing upward into shadow, the remains of towering shelves stretching higher than I could comfortably follow.
Along one entire wall, windows rose from floor to ceiling, though the glass was dulled and smeared with soot, muting the light that filtered through.
It spread across the ruin in sad, uneven bands.
It had been magnificent once — more than grand, something closer to reverent, a wonder of architecture. How many books had once filled these shelves? Millions?
Piles of books sat stacked in one corner, as though someone had tried to salvage what they could before abandoning the effort.
A staircase stood ahead, its steps intact as they spiralled downward to the level below, but above, the upper half leading to the next landing had collapsed, repairs begun and then abandoned partway through.
Hamish exhaled heavily as he came to a stop beside me, surveying the wreckage with shadowed eyes. “This was once the greatest library in the world. Its collection was unmatched before the Firstborn Wars.”
Nausea churned low in my stomach as I took in the devastation. The air carried the faint, bitter trace of smoke, clinging to the back of my throat with every breath.
The smell was achingly familiar.
Smoke on the wind.
I didn’t have to question who’d done this. I already knew. The answer pulsed at the end of the bond.
And as though the thought of him had summoned it, something tore through me—a wave of sorrow so crushing it stole my breath, rising too fast, too deep, my chest tightening around a grief that wasn't mine.
My hand flew instinctively to my ribs, pressing hard as though I could steady a broken heart that wasn't my own.
I wasn't imagining it. There was no way. These emotions didn't belong to me.
Then it changed.
The sorrow twisted into something hotter, harsher, until anger consumed it entirely. It ripped through me with a force that made my fingers curl. I felt it all—raw and immediate, yet distant all the same, like standing too near a wildfire and feeling its heat without ever touching the flames.
The bond tightened.
Aedric was here.
And whatever he was feeling, I was feeling it too.
“Aedric?” I stepped forward, the name leaving me before I could stop it.
No answer came.
“He’s not here, Elowen.” Hamish’s voice reached me from behind, low and uncertain, but I was already moving, drawn deeper into the library.
I stepped around shattered frames and squeezed through the narrow gaps between what remained of the shelves, the bond pulling me toward the great spiral staircase.
I glanced over the blackened railing, the steps circling down and down, disappearing in darkness.
“Aedric?”
Nothing but silence.
“Elowen.” Hamish was at my side now, his hand closing around my elbow. “There’s nothing down there.”
“Aedric's down there.” I peered into the depths beyond the reach of the light. “I can feel him.”
Hamish didn’t answer. He released me and drew his shortsword in one smooth motion.
“What are you doing?” His gaze was fixed to the steps below. I followed it.
Footprints pressed cleanly into the soot, their edges still crisp. Recent.
“Let’s go,” he said roughly, leaving no room for argument.
This time, I didn’t resist. He kept the sword in hand as we retraced our steps, moving back through the aisles, the silence pressing in around us in a way that felt almost aware.
Relief rose too quickly when the doors came into view—
Hamish’s arm shot out, catching me hard across the chest. I stumbled back a step, startled.
Something moved in the doorway.
For one long, breathless moment, I thought it was a ghost. The figure drifted forward, quietly, dark robes trailing in soft, weightless folds that barely seemed to disturb the ash beneath it. Then I heard it.
Whispering.
Too soft to make out, the words spilled over one another in a fevered, unbroken stream.
Hamish cleared his throat, the sound cutting cleanly through the murmuring. The whispering stopped abruptly. The figure stilled.
Slowly, its head lifted.
Hamish’s grip eased slightly on my shoulder.
“Lady Levinica,” he said, unexpectedly gentle.
She squinted into the dimness, her gaze unfocused. “Dannis?” I stiffened as she drew close enough for me to see her properly.