Chapter 13 #2
“What makes you say that?”
“Because read from right to left, it says Fortü R’Abyse.”
His brows arched, and fuck if I didn’t like impressing him. I scowled at myself.
“You think it means the Abysmal Fortress?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“If we can’t translate the text, how are we supposed to read it?”
For the first time, I opened the book, landing on a random page in the middle. The text was transcribed by hand in a neat, artful scrawl that only loosely resembled familiar words.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s worth a try, right? No other book in that little library seemed to be about the castle. Wait, this place probably has another, bigger library.” Relief started to whoosh in.
“Not that I’ve found.”
“What? No, it must. A castle like this should have a vast library. The one at the palace in Zaraga is beautiful.”
“Ask your good buddy Mauldrene. She doesn’t do a thing to help me, but maybe she’ll help you.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah, maybe.”
When I closed the book, he ran a fingertip gently along its cover. “Is that … fuck, it’s not leather. Is this … dragon hide?”
“Looks like scales to me, yeah. Small scales, too, which probably means—”
“The hide was taken from a dragonling.”
He whistled softly. “That’s … something.”
“Mhm. I hope whoever made the book didn’t kill the dragonling.”
“If they did, I’m sure they paid for their crime. Hurting a dragon, well, everyone should know better than to do that.”
Reverently, he caressed the cover—then a tail ejected from the end of the spine with a swloop that startled me and almost made me drop the book.
I held it away from my chest while the tail unrolled to a length as long as my arm.
Its scales were a deep, vibrant crimson, shiny in the lumoonlight, like blood—the original color of the book’s cover, I imagined.
It ended in a wicked barb like the point of an arrow.
Baz and I gaped at it, then at each other.
“Wow,” I said.
Eyes wide, he nodded. “We really need to figure out how to read this book.”
“We do.” Ever so gently, I petted the tail. It flicked to one side, then whipped to the other, and settled—like a cat’s tail. No, like a dragon’s.
We stared for an entire minute before Baz said, “So how’d the book get us here? I didn’t even see you crack it open.”
“The book didn’t do this.”
“Then what did?”
“When I pulled the book from the shelf, there was a little button hidden behind it. I pressed it.”
“You pressed a secret button in a castle that constantly wants to murder and eat people, not knowing what was going to happen?”
“It was shiny, like a crystal.”
“It was shiny.”
I nodded.
“And when it opened up a giant, black hole in the floor, you jumped through without knowing where it would take you?”
“Pretty much. Seemed like a better option.”
“A better option than … being attached to me?”
I raised my arm with the rope and pointed at my collar. “I’m your prisoner, as you’re so fond of reminding me. Prisoners are meant to try to escape. It’s practically all that prisoners do.” When they weren’t being fucked into blissful oblivion by their captors’ monster-big dicks, anyhow.
“Let me confirm I’m understanding this right. You were willing to jump into a hole that looked bottomless, inside the most dangerous structure in all of existence, with no idea what was going to happen to you—to get away from me?”
“You locked me in a dungeon without blood, my power, a blanket, or even a single lumoon to dispel the darkness, for days on end.”
He glanced at the lumoons that were inexplicably linked to my person and movements, and that I hadn’t created, but said nothing. I didn’t know why I had them now either.
“I had to take my chances,” I said. “I didn’t think you would follow me through the hole, or portal, or whatever it is.”
He wagged the arm connected to the rope. “Of course I was going to.”
“You put it on me. Figured you would get it off, spare yourself my awful company.”
“Nope. The Rillis rope binds us together, no matter what.”
No comment about how I wasn’t awful company, how he’d certainly enjoyed the scorch out of some of the time he’d shared with me.
“So then how’s the rope supposed to ever come off if you can’t get it off?”
“None of your business.”
“Right. Not for your ‘prisoner’ to know.”
“Finally, you get it.”
“Jackass.”
He chuckled. “So how do we move forward if you don’t believe me when I tell you I didn’t kill Mateo?”
“Move forward with what, exactly?”
His eyes surged with intensity, nearly glowing. “Getting out of here, for starters. Getting back to the people I’m duty bound to protect.”
“Ah. Well, I need to get back to Marina, too.”
“The deal was: you find Junot safe and alive, and only then do you earn your freedom and Marina’s.”
“Deals can always be renegotiated.”
“Not the deals I make.”
“We’ll see.”
“No, you’ll see. I keep my promises.”
“So do I. And I swore a vendetta to avenge my brother.”
“You can have your righteous vengeance, but only after you start looking in the right place. Who told you I killed him?”
I bit the inside of my lip. “We’d better start figuring out how to get out of here.”
I clutched the mystifying book close, mindful of the tail, which came to rest along my hip. I looked up—and up and up. The cavern appeared to have no end, and certainly no ceiling we’d ever be able to reach, not without wings. Several tributaries twisted away from the main cave.
“I guess we start with the tunnels?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mauldrene is a magical castle. She’s extraordinary. We need extraordinary means.”
“I’m running low on ‘extraordinary’ at the moment.” I tapped my collar. “But if you release me of this horrid thing, maybe I can do something.”
He snorted. “Yeah, like drink me dry of my blood.”
Well, there was always that. “Then you use your magic.”
“I’m not a sorcerer. I don’t have magic.”
“And I’m not a sorceress. But we both have fae powers. What are yours, by the way?”
“The castle likes you.”
“Says you.”
“I’ve seen proof.”
“Then ‘proof’ your way out of here, and take me with you.”
He slammed his hands akimbo to his hips and studied the cavern. When he absently began caressing the hilts of his sword and dagger, I stepped back the maximum distance the rope allowed.
“I have no better idea right now than to explore the tunnels,” he said.
“So we do what I suggested in the first place, then?”
“Don’t remind me. I’m busy wishing I never met you.”
“I beat you to it. Everything bad that ever happened to me is ’cause of you.”
He glowered at me for several beats, but whatever he saw in my face, however he identified the lie, his features softened. “Everything that’s bothering me now is because of you too.” The way he said it though, it didn’t sound like a bad thing.
My thoughts and emotions were as indecipherable as the writing in my pilfered book. I faced away from him and marched toward the closest tunnel, knowing he’d have no choice but to follow.