Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ABBY
I can see that Quinn is focused on the book at the back of the room, but I can’t pull my eyes away from the rows upon rows of books lining the walls. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many books in one place. Not in Rosewood, and certainly not in Lunae. As he moves deeper into the room, I pull one at random from the shelf and flip it open to a random page.
Swooping letters in elegant handwriting greet my eye as I scan the page and I immediately realize that it’s a journal. But not just any journal. A single sentence stands out to me and my heart jumps with excitement. “I had to weave.” Either I said the words low enough that Quinn didn’t hear me or he’s far too engrossed with the much thicker book in his hands.
This isn’t just an archive. This room is filled with the personal journals of the all of Marein’s weavers. The queens themselves. This is how they’ve kept track of how each of their choices changed history.
I flip to another page and read a detailed account of a vision predicting an illness that would spread through the city and wipe out half the people. The following pages consist of alternative futures and the change needed to alter the path of history. I gasp when I find the choice this weaver made to change the outcome. Instead of announcing that a young boy was going it inadvertently poison their food supply by adding the meat of a clam he found washed up on the beach, she told the boy’s father that he was ready for his first journey out to sea. He returned from his first successful hunt and the illness never came.
There’s something beautiful in that. To have the knowledge that a child would make a mistake and instead of holding them responsible for something what hadn’t yet come to pass, the weaver avoided catastrophe while imparting on him the required knowledge to prevent such a thing from happening at all.
And more than that, the weavers keep these secrets to themselves. Every possible future written in these books, every choice they made to choose the best path—including the sacrifices needed to get there—is a burden only they carry. My heart goes out to Kaylee for the role the people of Marein want her to fill. The choices she’ll have to make won’t always be as easy as imparting wisdom on a child. Some choices are paid in blood.
“Abby, look at this.” Quinn’s voice breaks through my thoughts, and the hint of fear lacing his tone has my pulse quickening. The book he’s reading must be exactly like this, but it was left on a stand while the others are shelved.
“Is that your grandmother’s journal?” I ask when I reach him.
He nods, too distracted by rapidly flipping pages to offer anything else. I can see that the entries end abruptly, and it must be because there was no weaver to take over when she died. And then it occurs to me. We don’t even know how she died. Or why she didn’t see the war with Marein coming.
Unless she did and she chose to allow it.
“What does it say?”
He flips to the page he must have been looking for and hands the open book to me. The handwriting is different, and it takes a moment for my eyes to decipher the scrawl. Quinn’s finger directs me to a passage about halfway down the page.
I read it aloud. “We are out of options. There is no choice that will avoid the evil that will come. Even if Sierra did as she was told and birthed Tideus’ Chosen, it would not have prevented this. I told her to run. To take Evander and flee because she needs to survive in order to produce the next weaver. There is only one way to close the rift and I will not survive it.” My eyes shoot up to Quinn’s. “The rift?”
“Keep reading,” he urges.
“Lunae will come. Their army is powerful and even with Sierra saving who she can, enough lives will be lost to tear a hole in the veil wide enough to free the shadows. He will grow like a festering wound on this land and his army of wraiths will destroy it—unless I stop them.” I gasp. “Shadows. You think she meant—”
“Void. That’s why he’s aging so rapidly. Imelda may have had a child, but I think whatever came out of the veil is alive within him.”
I shake my head. “But your grandmother stopped it. That’s what the book says.”
He taps a line with his finger repeatedly. “There is no choice that will avoid the evil that will come. That’s what the book says. She wasn’t trying to stop the shadows, she was closing the rift to keep the wraiths in. Or most of them, anyway. She sent my mother away so that Kaylee would exist. Kaylee is the only one who can tell us how to stop Void.”
My mind whirls with the revelation. “And Imelda would have known that. That’s why she went to the Spider. It wasn’t just to ensure she would have a Chosen child. She needed to protect that child. Her mother was a weaver. She would have known that a single choice can alter the path. She’s been playing this game from the very beginning.”
“And we’ve been playing right into her hands.”
A loud splash sounds from the main passage of the cave and Quinn has his sword drawn before I can even turn my head in that direction. “What was that?” The heartbeat in my ears is louder than my words, but I know Quinn heard them.
“Stay here,” he whispers back, but I’m already at his side with a dagger drawn.
We move for the door, Quinn only a step ahead of me. The blade in my hand trembles ever so slightly, but his is as still as could be. Even with all the guidance in the world, I don’t think I could ever be as sure of myself with a weapon as him.
A flash of something appears in my mind. A vision of myself and Quinn at the far end of the cave. The flash of steel in sunlight as Quinn raises his sword.
“Don’t!” I cry just before he rushes into the open. I see Quinn hesitate, both with my eyes and Fern’s.
The small brown wolf bounds through the water and onto the rocky floor if the cave. “Fern!” Quinn gasps, hastily sheathing the weapon. “What are you doing here?”
He can’t hear her response while he’s in this form, so she turns her gaze to me. ‘We followed you.’
“We?” I crane my neck through the mouth of the archives and see a boy, his blue tail raised up out of the water behind him. The water is shallow, so his belly is pressed against the cave floor as he waits for Fern. I hadn’t realized it when she and this same boy rushed to us inside the tunnels, but he’s the same child I gave my fish to that first morning in Marein. Quinn follows my stare. “They followed us here.”
He lets out a heavy sign. “You know better than that. It’s dangerous out here.”
“It is not,” the boy says. He pulls himself out of the water and his tail morphs into legs. His matching blue robes fall around him. He slips past Fern and into the room. “I cannot believe you found it.”
“You knew this was here?” Quinn asks.
The boy nods as he reaches for a book. My heart sinks a bit as he takes it off the shelf, only to replace it. “Only weavers are supposed to be able to find it, but many believe it does not exist. Do these books really tell our history?”
“They do,” I say, stepping forward before he can grab another book off the shelf. “And they aren’t for your eyes.”
He gives me a look. “They are more for my eyes than yours.”
He may have a point, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to risk him damaging one of these journals. Quinn seems to have the same idea because he joins us and kneels to the ground so that he’s level with the boy. “You said many believe this place doesn’t exist, but you knew, didn’t you?”
The boy only nods, but there’s distrust in his eyes.
“You don’t have to be afraid of us,” Quinn tells him. “We’re trying to help you. That’s why we’re here. But maybe you can help us. What do you know about the rift?”
‘Quinn!’
He ignores my objection and keeps his attention on the boy. No one but the weavers are supposed to know anything about this, never mind a child.
The boy shifts nervously and looks over his shoulder to Fern. She nods to him encouragingly.
“You can tell me,” Quinn says softly. “You’re quiet in the water. So quiet that I didn’t hear a sound until Fern followed you inside.” The wolf snorts in objection, but Quinn ignores her. “This isn’t the first time you’ve followed someone. My guess is you do it often. I won’t tell a soul, but I need to know what you know about the rift that opened the first time Lunae attacked.”
“Erwyn and Aurelia were talking about it.”
“Go on,” he says. He’s tense with urgency, but trying to be patient for the sake of the boy.
“It was the night you came. All the kids were supposed to be hiding, but I wanted to see what was happening. They were whispering in an empty hall. Erwyn said the rift would open again because history always repeats itself, but Aurelia disagreed. She said her mother sealed it. What rift were they talking about?”
I see the colour drain from Quinn’s face the same moment I feel it drain from mine. ‘ History repeats itself, ’ I say through the bond. ‘That’s what Ty—what Evan said.’
Quinn stands and moves to my side, desperate eyes searching mind. ‘Void is going to try to open the rift again. To free the army.’
I shake my head, refusing to believe it. He can try, but it won’t work. ‘There aren’t enough people. Thousands died in the slaughter. There are only hundreds left, even with the wolves and dragons. It’s not enough.’
Desperation turns to horror. ‘There aren’t enough people in Marein.’
Oh, Gods. ‘He’s going to slaughter his own people. With an army, he won’t need them.’
“They are weird,” the boy says to Fern. At the sound of his voice, I shove my building panic back down because we can’t lose it in front of them.
I pick up the journal that belonged to the last weaver and clutch it tight in my arms. Our first priority is getting these kids safely back to Marein, and then we can figure out what to do about the shadows.