THIRTY-THREE
Our relationship isn’t a secret. But after the garden, we just … don’t tell anyone. As if we can steal a little more time before whatever crisis comes next. Since Twelvetide, any moment of peace feels borrowed anyway.
Keeping things quiet might work better if everyone at Miradores didn’t seem to know already.
Taliesin gives up his lectures and doubles down on sly comments. Lenora takes to leaving breakfast trays outside our respective bedroom doors like she’s not sure where to deliver them. Even Vessica smiles when I enter a room.
Bishop spends half his nights chasing those whispers across Vennaro. The other half, he spends here.
In my bed.
His arms tighten around me in the dim light. “The equinox is coming,” he murmurs into my hair, and I go still. “I wasn’t sure if …”
It’s been months since Kieren’s body was laid to rest in a plot in the private Marius cemetery, but it still feels impossible to think of his soul being gone, too. To imagine the world rebalancing its days without him here.
Some people never let go, never let the world rebalance. I’ve seen it happen. “My father waited four equinoxes before he released my mother’s spirit,” I whisper.
“If you aren’t ready, it can wait until the next one,” he says, stroking my back. “There is no timeline on grieving.”
But that’s not what Kieren would want. Not the boy who read pirate stories. Nor the man who died before he could go on his own. His soul deserves to be free. To go on its adventure.
I take a deep breath. We’ve never discussed this, so I’m not sure he’ll agree to my decision.
But it’s for me to make. “I want to go to Damalis. To perform his Evensong there.” The words rush out of me, tired of swirling in my brain and finally ready to be spoken.
“We don’t actually know where he was born.
Our father never told us. Kieren didn’t remember, but it feels … right.”
His hand pauses on my back.
“Damalis,” he repeats softly.
“I know that you want me to stay in Vennaro,” I whisper. “I know it’s safer here, but I need to do this.” I brace for the argument I already know is coming. The one that’s stopped me from even bringing it up.
Instead, he pulls me closer.
“If that feels right to you,” he says, “then we’ll go.”
Relief loosens the knot in my chest. “You’d come with me?”
“Of course.” He brushes a kiss across my temple.
“Thank you.”
But he scoffs. “Don’t thank me.” He shifts his weight, rolling me onto my back. “You’ve carried this long enough. Let me carry some of it with you.”
The offer feels like shelter, and something even more dangerous.
His lips find my jaw as he settles between my legs, and then he works his way to my mouth.
The kiss is gentle.
Until it isn’t.
Warmth spreads through me, chasing the cold edge of grief away, as our bodies begin to move and we find life again together.
Afterward, I curl against him, listening as his breath slows to a steady, comforting rhythm.
But I can’t sleep.
Wriggling free of his arms, I dress quietly in the dark, grab the book from Kieren’s box of belongings, and go to the one place I know someone else is still up.
The library is lit by a single lamp when I slip inside, the fire little more than pulsing embers, allowing the dark to swallow most of the shelves.
But it’s not empty. It never is. There’s something comforting about that.
Hadrian sits at one of the long tables, the sleeves of his robe pushed back, a sheaf of papers spread before him in careful disarray. His pen moves steadily, as if the hour means nothing.
“Do you ever sleep?” I ask, yawning despite my own insomnia.
He keeps working. “Sleep is for people who’ve made peace with their questions.”
I haven’t made peace with mine. The biggest one is still under my collarbone, waiting to formally introduce itself. I shove the thought away and focus on why I came down here at this hour. I’m seeking a different kind of peace.
“He read this until it fell apart.” I set Kieren’s book on the library table. “I thought maybe there was a place for it here.”
There’s not much of him left, only a few things to give away before the equinox brings his final rest. The ones I’m struggling to part with.
Hadrian nods and picks it up gingerly, scanning the title. “We need more fiction in here.”
I drift closer, curiosity pulling me, despite the ache still lodged in my bones. “Still searching for the revello?”
His shoulders droop, but he nods. “I’ve been retranslating that passage, hoping I missed something.” He taps the sheet of paper to his left. “The ancient tongue is tricky. Words have multiple meanings.”
“Sounds lazy of them,” I say, trying not to yawn.
Hadrian almost smiles. “Indeed. I translated this word”—he points to his notes—“as liberate, but it could also mean to hold, seize, or possess.”
“That’s a lot of possibilities.” And probably why they’re having such a hard time tracking down said revello.
“Too many,” he says with a deep sigh.
I’m unlikely to be useful, but as I lean over his shoulder to get a better look at the research, my gaze catches on the page beneath his hand.
At the top, an eye has been drawn into the center of a star, likely some archaic reminder that the Stars are always watching us, but my breath stalls when I see what’s sketched under it.
An ash-black diagram sprawls across the parchment, its lines elegant but somehow deliberate. They intersect and diverge, vanishing like the artist forgot to finish. It takes me a moment to realize where I’ve seen it.
“That illustration,” I say, pointing at the diagram. “I’ve seen it before. What is it?”
Hadrian’s pen stills. Slowly, he looks up at me. “Where?”
A question for a question … That’s always a bad sign.
I hesitate, feeling something familiar but unwanted creeping over my skin. “A bookshop in Wintour.” I fail to add exactly what I was doing in that bookshop or who I was hiding from. “That illustration was on the cover.”
Hadrian is on his feet before I finish speaking.
“Was there anything else on the cover?” he asks, already gathering the papers. “Every detail you can remember.”
“The raven,” I say, heart beginning to race now. “Fire. And beneath it—this. Exactly this.”
The color drains from his face.
“We need to find Bishop,” he says, “now.” He heads straight out the door.
Whatever this is must be dire if he’s leaving the library.
I follow behind him, racing to keep up with his longer legs. “What is it?”
“The Ars Astra.” Each word lands more seriously than the last.
Ravenell’s dark work.
Hadrian glances at me, his face still stricken. “If I’m right, the book you’re describing … It might contain information about the revello.”
The thing they’ve been chasing after for all this time, and I had it in my hands. Maybe someday I’ll stop being surprised at these little taunts from fate.
He turns right when we reach the landing, heading toward the western wing. I guess there is one person who hasn’t noticed us sneaking around after all.
I pause, scrounging up my courage, before I call out, “He’s not there.”
“Where is he?” Hadrian whirls toward me, looking even more panicked. “We need to reach him. He needs to go after the book tonight.”
“He’s in my room,” I admit, heat flooding my cheeks. Which is a sure indicator of exactly why Bishop is there, in case Hadrian hasn’t figured it out.
But judging by his deeply unimpressed stare, he has now. “Go.” He sighs, calling after me, “And for the love of Stars, make sure he puts his clothes on before he comes out.”
I’m already halfway down the opposite corridor, spurred faster by my need to escape Hadrian’s fatherly disapproval. The man should reconsider being a vesper.
I burst into the room, the door banging into the wall so hard that Bishop jerks awake. He’s on his feet and halfway across the room, stark naked and sword in hand, before he realizes the intruder is just me.
I’m too breathless to laugh.
“Hadrian needs you,” I say, panting around the words.
He drops the sword on my bed and reaches for his clothes. “Why?”
I repeat everything that happened in the library as he dresses. When I’m done, I sit on the bed and begin pulling on my own boots.
“What are you doing?” he asks as he buckles his baldric over his shoulder.
“I’m going with you.”
He pauses, his red cloak still in his hands. “If you enter Wintour, the palace will know within the hour. And if the queen learns you’re there, she’ll summon you for an audience.”
I grimace. That’s the last thing we need.
“She could keep you there for days,” he adds.
But he doesn’t tell me I can’t go. “I could sneak in. If we’re quick—”
His mouth twitches slightly. “Even I have to answer to the queen, Arden.”
The whole point is to retrieve the book without drawing attention. Something that will be easier for him to do alone.
“Fine.” I sigh. “Go.”
He crosses to the bed and kneels in front of me, cupping my cheek. “I won’t be gone long, and then I’ll take you back to bed.”
That promise might normally be enough to distract me, but I’m growing to hate these little quests. If anyone at the palace ever realizes what he’s up to, or worse, why … Dread crawls down my spine.
“Just … be careful.” I burrow against his palm for a second.
His hand shifts, pulling me into a kiss that lingers long enough to make the decision feel worse.
“I always am,” he murmurs.
Then he’s gone.
I definitely don’t sleep after that. I attempt waiting in the library with Hadrian, but his pacing and anxious muttering only make my own nerves worse.
I eat half the food in the kitchen, and Bishop doesn’t return.
I try lying down again, but every time the wind rattles the windows, I bolt up, expecting him to walk through the door. When a storm begins, the lightning chases me back to the library and Hadrian’s company.
But as dawn approaches, even he’s drooping in and out of consciousness in a chair by the hearth. When the library doors finally open just after sunrise, I’m exhausted and more than a little worried.
Bishop strides into the library, and I leap to my feet, relief washing over me. But his expression tells me everything before he even speaks. “It’s gone.”
Hadrian stirs, pushing his glasses up on his nose as he blinks away sleep. “What?” he mumbles. “What do you mean, gone? Did they sell it?”
“Not the book,” Bishop says grimly, pulling off his gloves. “The entire shop.”
I blink at him, stomach sinking. That’s why he was gone all night. “How?”
He shakes his head. “Cleared out.” His mouth tightens. “The windows are boarded up, every shelf is empty. There’s no trace of any of it. The building looks like it’s been abandoned for weeks. No one I questioned knew where the owner has gone.”
“But you were there a month ago.” It can’t have simply disappeared.
“Longer. It was right after Twelvetide.” He collapses into the armchair across from mine and stares into the fire.
“I had it in my hands,” I say quietly. “And I just left it there.”
Hadrian pinches the bridge of his nose, forcing a smile. “You didn’t know what it was.”
“And I should have found it.” Bishop exhales, nostrils flaring as he glances at me.
I know what he isn’t saying. That he might have if I hadn’t been hiding from him with the book in my hands.
“There will be other traces of it.” Hadrian rises, staring toward the stacks with determination. We leave him there, Bishop following me up the stairs.
I sent him halfway across the kingdom for nothing.
When we reach my room, I pause in the doorway. “I should sleep.”
“And I promised to take you back to bed.” He moves closer.
Part of me wants to let him do just that. The rest wants to fall asleep standing up.
I fiddle with the hem of his cloak and force myself to be responsible. “Tomorrow?”
Stepping into my room, I shut the door before I can change my mind.
But Bishop knocks a moment later. I shouldn’t open the door. I should crawl into bed and let sleep drag me away from the hole of self-recrimination I seem determined to dig.
I open it anyway and find him standing there, holding a paper bag.
“You won’t be wanting these, then?” He shakes it, letting the buttery scent of crescent pastries waft toward me.
I snatch it from his hand, and this time I don’t close the door in his face.