Chapter 33 #3
The only one that came to me was reckless, liable to make my sister very angry with me if she learned about it, but one that could be the key to freeing myself from the agreement.
“If he was not lying about the architect of the Belkarthen tragedy being alive, Saphira will find out for me. I will need to be ready for that, but the only way I can do that is to remind myself what was written in that contract I formed with Elduin as a boy.” I rose to my full height.
“Elduin has our agreement locked behind a ward in his office. I intend to find it and study it.”
Rather than arguing against what was definitely a very reckless and rash move liable to get me caught and killed, Malachi tipped his head back and looked at the sky, and grunted, “We should wait for nightfall.”
I nodded. “We should.”
So we did.
When the sky was at its darkest, and Ereborne was quiet, we slipped from our perch. I took hold of Malachi’s arm and focused, the world around us turning ghostly as we slipped into the shadows.
I had been to Elduin’s office more than once, so I easily found my way there with Malachi, moving through the fabric of the building to the spacious room on the first floor.
I halted outside it and studied the walls of it, sifting through the magic I could sense, following each thread to their source.
None were a ward around the room, meaning we could enter it without triggering a sort of mental alarm that would wake Elduin or whoever had cast it.
I pulled Malachi through the shadows and into the opulently furnished room that was three times larger than my own office, with a bank of arched windows set into the white stone wall that overlooked the city.
Rich wooden bookcases lined the wall at my back, and to my left, but the wall to my right had a fireplace flanked by two sideboards and a painting hung above it. A view of Hallow Water.
“Look for any records of the attack on Belkarthen, or correspondence around that date.” I released Malachi and he stepped away from me, heading for the bookcases to my left. “I want to know who Elduin believes was behind the attack, since our contract is not complete.”
Which meant the Summer King had not been responsible for what had happened.
Because I was sure I had not written the entire Summer Court paying into our agreement.
I needed to find it to prove I had not been so fixated on making the world bleed when I had formed it. If I could find it, I would know if the one responsible still lived, and whether there was a real danger that Saphira might deliver my vengeance.
As Neve had foreseen.
Her vision had given me hope once, when I had craved my vengeance.
Now it only gave me fear. I felt sure her visions had never been wrong in the past, and for the first time I hoped she had meant something different from what I had originally believed when she had witnessed that Saphira was the key to my future happiness.
Not happiness through vengeance, but happiness through love.
I went to the large dark wooden desk that stood before the central arched window.
Skimming my fingers over it, I sank into the flow of magic in the room, following each thread until I found what I was looking for.
A powerful concentration of magic. I tracked it to the sideboard to the left of the fireplace, one that had metal inlaid into the wood. The ward.
Sinking to my haunches, I traced the lines of that ward, feeling the power that flowed through it, and focused, slowly unravelling it.
It refused me at every turn, until I studied it from a distance, feeling the flow of it, following it rather than trying to guess where the spell began.
Malachi moved around the room behind me, drifting closer at times, but I kept my focus on my work.
There.
A tiny pinprick of light among the weaving threads of colour in my mind.
I focused on that point, delving into it, careful not to destroy it. I wanted entry, not an end to it. I worked my way through it, down every winding thread of magic, to where they all coalesced. I pushed my will into that blazing pool of twining ribbons, hurling them apart for a heartbeat.
Long enough for my shadows to hold them open.
The door before me unlatched.
I pulled it open and moved swiftly, grabbing the scroll that bore my seal beside Elduin’s on the leather ring that held it closed, and paused.
A thicker scroll bound with interwoven gold and black braids, and sealed with wax that bore Elduin’s seal and that of another court caught my eye, and I hesitated before I snatched it too along with a stack of letters and closed the door, releasing my shadows and letting the ward fall back into place so Elduin would not know I had been here.
“What is that?” Malachi hissed close to me.
I stared at the thicker scroll that felt far heavier than it looked and answered him.
“The accord.”
Footsteps rang out in the corridor and the doorknob turned.
I grabbed Malachi.
Disappearing into the shadows.
Just as Elduin stepped into the room.