Chapter Fifty-One
The halls of Grange Castle are eerily silent as we pass through. Even the sound of our footsteps fail to sound from the marble floors, or to echo from the stone walls. At this time of day, in the hours before supper, the halls should be bustling with staff and guards.
But we do not come across a single soul on our venturing to the gallery – my first suggestion of where the dagger might be.
If only out of the hopes that it is not, in fact, in the exact place I would expect it to be.
Behind the immovable door of my father’s study.
But there is another theory I am itching to test out.
It’s like the castle itself can sense something is afoot, like it can see past Eliaz’s concealment and knows our presence can only be a precursor to trouble. The gallery is across from the great hall, usually a respite for tired guests to retreat to during the liveliest balls.
The doors don’t even so much as creak, even though they’re most likely older than most immortals, they open smoothly on their golden hinges.
There are no candles lit within the quiet void of a room, and it takes a few seconds of squinting before I think to ball to up the energy of the Relic in my hands, an orb of yellow light hovering and fizzling over my palms.
Cole scoffs, already in the centre of the room. ‘Gotten bored of the fire, have we?’
I take a deep breath, shoving down the building rage within me, for fears that the light I have conjured might explode into fire the more I look at him. ‘Theres only one thing I’m truly bored of at the moment.’
Eliaz laughs from my side, his skin aglow with the lambent light suspended above my hands. ‘I must admit Cole, I’m also getting a little tired of this asshole act you’ve had going. Perhaps it’s time to give it a rest and focus on the task at hand.’
Cole shakes his head, turning from us, from the light, giving up on his pestering. A little too willing to refrain from further pestering than usual. I can only hope it is because he himself, has grown weary of his provocation of others.
I raise a brow at Eliaz, who simply shrugs his shoulders.
‘Where do you think this bastard dagger might be?’ Cole asks, staring out into the dimness before us. ‘It seems a little odd you think it’d be here and not, say, in the armoury?’
‘As if the King of Reyhen would’ve let his precious blade get lost in that hole of weapons,’ I answer. ‘He’d be more likely to place it on display, with all the artifacts of the Isle.’
I walk over to Cole, bringing the light with me, the gallery wall set alight. Three large cabinets span the length of the room, dark, carved wood sheeted over with tinted panes of glass. Plates, diadems, chalices, the history of Valtayre shown there in every remnant. No dagger, however.
Eliaz appears to my right. ‘It isn’t here,’ he says aloud. ‘But you knew that,’ he whispers into my mind.
When I look to him, his attention is not on me, but rather, fixed on something in the middle cabinet right in front of us.
There on the bottom shelf, tucked between a silver hairbrush and a bronze candelabra, is the very object that sketch in the red book reminded me of.
The memory I couldn’t place.
Not a vase.
An urn. Painted in a deep blue, with gold vines snaking around its body, tiny white flowers with their faces craning up at us.
I have never seen the Virtuae Relic before.
It was deemed unsafe knowledge as far as my father was concerned. Either in protection of me, or to ensure that no one could coax the real answer out of me should they wish to find the Relic.
But if I had to take an educated guess, that urn would be my answer. The only words I managed to read in that red book told me so, as they hung over the depiction of the antique that sits before me.
The Virtuae Relic. It has to be.
‘We can’t take it now. It would be too much of a risk.’
I nod slowly, so as to not alert Cole of our secret conversation.
‘Well, this was an obvious waste of time.’ Cole turns on his heels. ‘I’m off to look somewhere more logical, the treasury perhaps.’
‘Wait,’ I say a little too fast after him. I can risk him being seen wandering these halls. Especially seeing as I know in my gut where that dagger lies. I sigh. ‘My father would’ve kept it in his study.’
Cole stops in his tracks as he crosses over the threshold, the light flooding into the gallery from the hall, his silhouette dark and flickering. ‘Then to the study we go,’ he says, without turning to look at us.
Instinctively, I reach for Eliaz’s hand. His fingers curl around mine like the gentle caress of smoke.
‘Any idea of how we’re getting into that damned room?’
The room with the door welded shut. A locked door without a key, or keyhole.
That fractured, agonising memory of my father’s death crashes into my mind. The life bleeding out of him and onto the floor, the detached sobs that fell from me as I dropped to his side, into the red warmth of my father. The swelling of the legs of his desk, in the pool of it.
They couldn’t get that stain out. They scrubbed and scrubbed, even resorted to trying to scratch it out of the floor when soap and water did nothing to lift it. But nothing the housemaids did made any difference.
My father had left one final mark. One last stain on the history of his kingdom.
The realisation is a slow pump of blood into my mind, a trickle of connected thoughts and information. The door was not welded shut by my father. It is being held closed in his absence.
I give one last glance at that gloating, glorified ornament of an urn, seeing it now for what it is.
An insult to man. A curse.
The enemy.
‘I’ll get us into that room,’ I say, smiling despite the situation. ‘First the door. Then the Relic.’
Eliaz squeezes my hand, his lips also curved upwards, the last thing I see before I close my free hand on the ball of light, plunging us into darkness.
‘Show me what you’re capable of destroying, Princess.’