FOUR
His hood is down, but his face is angled away, revealing only a hard jawline and the muscular bands of his strong, lightly bronzed neck. Thick, silver-blond hair, the top half tied with a leather cord and the rest brushing against his shoulders, brings out the olive undertones in his skin.
I never actually saw his face in the astrolatory, but I know it’s him.
It’s something in the way he holds himself. Something in the set of his broad shoulders. The way he stands with such casual confidence and still exudes a lethal, almost primal threat.
My body moves before my mind catches up, some base instinct screaming at me to hide, run, escape.
He’s blocking the door, so my feet carry me in the opposite direction, and I bump into the curtained-off stairs on my right.
I duck behind the draped fabric and find a narrow staircase, made narrower still by more haphazard stacks of books.
I test the first step, flinching when it creaks slightly under my weight.
For a second that feels roughly like eternity, I stay rooted to the spot, waiting for the curtain to be thrown open, for the bishop to seize me by my hair and drag me out into the gloomy square.
He tracked me here.
It’s the only explanation. The footsteps in the alley. The constant sense of being followed. The fact that this entire area reeks of forbidden magic and yet, he’s in here. With me.
But he doesn’t whip back the drapes. I hold my breath until I hear the low murmuring of voices. I can’t make out what they’re saying past the blood roaring in my ears, but there’s a tug at my center—that invisible thread being pulled again—and I know he’s the one speaking.
Maybe he did follow me but didn’t see where I went. Maybe he’s asking the shopkeeper if she saw me.
My eyes travel up the staircase. Sanctuary waits there. Or the closest thing I’ll find with him between the door and me. The shopkeeper will never suggest I’m there. She’ll never send a bishop to a room that’s full of illicit texts.
I tiptoe along the steps, sneaking like I did as a child when I wanted to avoid either chores or lessons. I slip behind the curtain at the top and pause, some of my panic ebbing enough that I finally catch fragments of the conversation below.
The bishop’s deep voice floats toward me. Most of his words are still lost, but a few drift up the stairs. “… the usual arrangement.”
“Of course, my lord.” Her higher pitch carries more clearly, but there’s something different in her voice now. There’s no amused boredom, but rather something careful and practiced. “The second floor is yours, as always. I’ll ensure you’re not disturbed.”
My heart shoots into my throat. The second floor. The floor I’m currently standing on, surrounded by whatever fucking specialized texts she hinted at earlier.
The floor shakes when his heavy boots hit the first step.
The sound slaps me like a bucket of ice water.
I pivot, frantically searching for somewhere to hide.
A maze of tightly crammed shelves fills the left side of the room, and there’s a worn table tucked in the opposite corner.
The space is even less organized than the shop below—books are piled on the floor, crammed onto shelves at odd angles, stacked in precarious towers.
Some have fallen, spreading across the floor like an avalanche.
And the books themselves … I catch glimpses of their spines as I pick my way toward a gap in the towering bookcases. The symbols stamped on their covers make my skin crawl—geometric patterns that seem to shift under my gaze, words in languages I don’t recognize.
I nearly trip on an open book, and I glimpse an illustration as I steady myself: a human grotesquely contorted, arms and legs at odd angles, back bowing into a hump. These aren’t scandalous books.
They’re dangerous ones.
The footsteps grow closer, and I weave quickly through the bookcases, wedging my body in the narrow gap between the farthest one and the wall.
My hip bumps the shelf, and a book topples down.
I slide into a crouch and catch it with my skirt before it hits the floor.
Clutching it to my chest, I pull my skirt with me behind the bookcase and peer through a small gap just as the bishop steps inside.
He stops and glances around, and for one brief, horrifying second, I’m certain he can hear my heart pounding.
I glance at the book still in my hands and bite back a gasp at the illustration on the jacket: a raven engulfed in flames.
Beneath the illustration, an ash-black diagram sprawls across the cover—elegant, deliberate, and unfinished, its lines intersecting but not ending so much as disappearing into the dark.
The fallen constellation?
The one now blacked out in the sixth alcove in the Royal Astrolatory as a warning against hubris.
The order our five families joined General Titus to fight when they began abusing their magic. We almost lost to their power. Forced to regroup in the south, we begged the Stars to help us defeat them.
And the Stars answered.
Despite the sixth bloodline’s access to the deepest magic in Antares, there was no sign. No warning. No time for them to run when the Stars sided with our families against them, and the volcano that had quietly loomed on the northern edge of their province shook the earth.
No member of the sixth house survived, as if the Stars had reached down a hand and wiped them from existence.
When the smoke and ash cleared, the entire population was gone.
Only ruined land remained. Their constellation fell from the sky, leaving behind the Night’s Scar, a swath of endless black without a single surviving star in its void.
A book about it shouldn’t be hidden in a shop. It should have been destroyed generations ago. Anyone caught with texts about the fallen constellation faces—
Death. They face death.
My tongue turns to sandpaper, sticking to the roof of my mouth. If I’m caught here, with this book in my hands, no amount of noble blood will save me. Suddenly, what I did last night feels like nothing, and tonight’s ritual is the least of my worries. I’ll be lucky if I make it to sunset.
I press deeper into my hiding spot, not daring to breathe. My leg muscles scream in protest as they strain to maintain the awkward position. Sweat beads across my forehead. I can’t risk moving. If he finds me …
I can only see his lower body as he strides forward and grabs a book from a stack under the single, grimy window in the room. Then he picks up another one, turns, and sits down at the ancient table, shoving the piled volumes out of the way and opening the first book.
He’s not here for me. He’s here to … read?
Either the sadistic prick knows I’m here and he’s toying with me, or he’s looking at a book full of forbidden knowledge.
I could reveal myself. Step out now and claim ignorance. Admit that I’m lost and ask for his help. But the book in my hands damns me. Even holding it is probably a crime. And I didn’t make the best impression on him last night.
It’s getting harder to stay upright, crouched on my heels like this. At any moment, I’m going to topple like those haphazard books that have fallen all over the floor.
Maybe he would be merciful. That’s a laughable thought. No matter what the vesper said last night.
No one attains his rank through mercy.
My legs start to give out, and I brace myself harder against the wall.
It doesn’t matter why he’s here. It matters who he is.
If he’s reading something he’s not supposed to, he’ll kill me for discovering his secret.
If he’s doing something for the crown, he’ll kill me for holding this book.
For me, all roads end in him breaking my neck on the spot or hauling me in front of an inquest, which will most likely end in a public execution.
Either way, my family will be ruined. If they aren’t executed alongside me. Steadfast Broderic. Proud Isidore. Reckless Andry. Loyal Kieren. They’ll all die because of me.
The bishop rises again and walks straight toward the bookcase I’m behind. I try to close my eyes like he won’t be able to see me if I can’t see him, but they refuse to obey.
He reaches for a book directly above my hiding spot, so close that his sleeve brushes against the wood mere inches from me. The shelves block the top half of his face, leaving only his full, sculpted lips and cleft chin visible.
He lifts his hand to his mouth and yanks his glove off with his teeth, letting it dangle between them. Even in the dim light, I can see that he wears the gloves for more than warmth.
A silvery scar runs the length of his hand.
The markings are too precise, too intentional to be from a wound.
The lines look more like a brand, or maybe—my stomach does a small flip—like they were carved purposefully into his flesh.
It’s nochtimetric, but it’s not the mark of his birthright.
Not the symbol of the horned wolf of his order.
It’s not any pattern I recognize. Maybe it’s a strength spell, the kind meant only for Order Marius?
The other orders don’t carve magic into their skin, but it might be different for the military.
A drop of sweat runs into my eye. It burns. I bite down on my lip to keep quiet. Each second feels like an hour.
The bishop runs his scarred hand along the shelf, fingers ghosting over spine after spine until they finally stop. The dark leather binding seems to drink the light as he draws it free so decisively that I only glimpse two foiled letters as he flips it over.
S and C.
The book falls open in his hands, and he flips through several pages. He traces a passage with his index finger, his lips moving silently as he reads before closing it with a thump that echoes in my heart.
And then he slides it under his red cloak.