Archives
CHAPTER THIRTY
“And then what happened?”
Vera breathed, leaning forward on the settee. All five of us were breaking our fast in the feeder parlor, attention fixed on Ida.
“He took me to his chamber and we . . .” Ida trailed off and pressed the porcelain to her smirking lips.
I took my time sipping my tea as the girls spoke. Cassiel and I had arrived as dawnlight rose. He had been terribly distracted, and he tossed an order at Lady Drusilla to take care of me before disappearing.
Lady Drusilla had promptly escorted me here. Yet, I didn’t miss the way her eyes tracked him, and there was something there that read as possessive.
When I arrived at the feeder wing, the girls had been deep in slumber, so I took the opportunity to bathe and dress in a fresh feeder gown.
Yet all I could fixate upon were the lies and discoveries. There was a common thread here—and the council was involved. Where did Cassiel come into play? Did he have a hand in this? The council could not act without his say so. Right?
Branwen readjusted herself, jostling the cushion we both sat upon.
The door slammed open. Cassiel stood at the threshold, and his gaze fell on me. He was still dressed in his battle gear, leather strapped to him.
“Let’s go,” he ordered. I placed the cup on the table, trying not to pay too much mind to the women watching me with stunned expressions.
“Yes, my lord,” I said, sounding much too happy.
Vera’s mouth dropped open. Ida glared at me, her mouth curled down at the corners.
She had no need to be jealous. Nocturn, the eve of my end, loomed closer.
I cleared my throat and collected myself as I calmly strode across the parlor, shutting the door behind me.
A single officer hovered outside, stiff and at attention.
“Where are we going?” I asked, struggling to keep pace with his wide gait.
“You shall see,” he responded ominously, following the rounded path of the hall. Past the council members’ parlor, past the entrance to Al’s.
To a section I had yet to see deep in the council wing. The deeper we went, the more guards there were. Interesting that these men were more protected than the women. From my understanding, the feeders had not one Guard assigned to their area before I arrived.
Being surrounded by all this for every moon rotation. For every annum. I could see how a powerful creature like Cassiel would become unempathetic.
“Did you grow up here?”
“No, in a small village in Western Sycarious.”
Mountain ranges, frequent rain . . . that enveloped the whole of my knowledge of the West.
“Were you able to choose the realm you wanted to protect?”
I couldn’t look away from the sharp cut of his brow. Everything about him was a jagged edge.
“It was not difficult considering we remained in the territories where we were born.” He peered at me from the corner of his eye. “Before the Hundred Annum War, the Barren was not as intimidating as it is this eve. All the magicks and bloodshed from the war made it what it is.”
We reached a ballroom about half the size of the Grand Hall at the main entrance. An oval table dominated the room, surrounded with beautiful, elaborate seats with cobalt cushions.
It looked fit for Elites.
The ballroom split off into three directions, and Cassiel took the closest path which lacked windows. Gas lamps hanging from iron hooks lit the expanse up and ended at a stone staircase leading up. It was large and wide, fit for someone of Cassiel’s size.
I pressed my palm against the cold wall as I ascended. The fall was steep.
“You have lived for a very long time,” I muttered. So much experience in his ancient, muscled form. An incredibly skilled form.
Horror slowed my pace.
“Did you have children? Or more accurately, how many children do you have? I cannot fathom someone who has lived as long as you must have had more than a few—” He then stood before me, a few steps below so his face hovered near mine.
“My seed will only take root in my bondmate.” He grinned, showing all his teeth.
The suggestive twinkle in his gaze should not have caused my stomach to tremble the way it did.
“How many women have you loved?” I blurted out of pure desperation. Watching them die time and time again . . . It put a new layer to the festering thought about his loneliness.
He drew back as if I had spouted Larien.
“Love,” he scoffed. “Love is a weakness.”
“You are wrong,” I challenged.
Humanity was more than weakness. There was something beautiful in the way we loved. In the lengths one could go in the name of it.
“Now if you asked me how many women I have fucked.” He pressed his finger under my jaw, and his thumb rubbed against the side of my cheek. Golden light from the gas lamp fell across half his face. “Too many to count.”
His sweet breath caressed my nose, intoxicating and drugging. I curled my fingernails into my palm.
“I suppose it is a good thing your seed cannot take root,” I breathed, voice warbling.
One side of his mouth kicked up. He straightened as he chuckled and continued up the steps.
“Come, little mortal, enough with your jealousies.”
I scoffed, but in my reeling over his accusation, he was already close to the top.
Uncouth rake, that was not jealousy. Storming up the steps stole whatever I was about to say because I was too busy huffing from the climb.
He stood before a wide entrance, snarling at an officer.
I stepped forward and slammed into an invisible barrier. Yelping, I clasped my nose. My sounds of pain turned him around. His nostrils flared and eyes widened.
“You have a barrier up?” Cassiel’s voice held a threat.
The man, golden-skinned and slender, swallowed visibly. By the gold embroidering his velvet uniform, he was highly ranked.
“I am just following orders, Your Highness.”
“Exactly. Whose orders give you the ability to deny me access to the Archives?!” he bellowed.
“N-no—”
“Then do as I order and drop the barrier—Now.”
The color leeched out of his skin.
Nothing visibly changed, but my ears popped. I winced and experimentally put my hand forward. This time, I was able to move to Cassiel’s side.
“Why did you not get walloped?” I mumbled, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
“Magicks do not work on me.” Cassiel opened the door, and a waft of old parchment and mustiness greeted me. My soft slippers padding over the ivory tile echoed.
I passed the stiff Sergeant. In all honesty, he was blessed by the Saints if he continued living after denying Cassiel something.
Rows upon rows of shelves lined the cavernous chamber.
“The Archives,” I breathed.
I rounded to face the long stretch of bookcases. No book pulled me toward it. Not like the Creation Scripture or the grimoire. I continued scanning as I neared. Shelves stretched high above, towering over even Cassiel.
“Where did you go?” I asked, rushed, whipping around.
He had disappeared entirely. My shorter legs be damned. I started down the first shelf, taking his absence to scan the spines of various lengths and thicknesses.
I reached for one of the books at my eye-level. Dust came away in a plume as I pulled it out.
Sputtering the particles from my face, I opened the unmarked book to the front.
A journal of the Hundred Annum War. Flipping through, I found it to be of a housemaid serving a high-ranking blueblood official.
A few more flips of the brittle parchment left me with the general idea of her daily life, more so worried about her death.
I placed it back in its place, my fingers leaving indentations along the dust while a fine layer clung to my fingertips.
I crouched, sending more dust all around, and reached for the novel on the lowest section.
There was no text in this one.
Other than the cold, dry environment, these books were not being properly dusted.
Why would such a place be unkempt if they were so important?
“Vessel!” Cassiel shouted from a distance.
I shoved the book back into place and stood, brushing my dirtied hands on the bottom of my gown. Unlike before, there was no anger in his voice when he called me ‘Vessel’. In fact, there was the slightest softness . . . as if he had said an endearment.
I rounded the first row of shelves, taking a moment to admire the rest of the massive shelves stretching to the end of the spacious chamber. Cassiel sat behind a desk, the Creation Scripture set on the surface beside fresh parchment.
He leaned back as he fiddled with the base of the feather quill, his movements causing the soft tufts to flutter.
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“I have set out what you will work on.” He spread his hand out before him in a flourish. When he was not scowling, the sharp planes of his face held an ethereal male beauty.
I approached with a slow glide, studying his face. “You are quite handsome.” His eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. “Especially when you smile.”
He exhaled in a gust.
I had shocked him. Once I reached the edge of the desk, I pressed my palms into the corner. How could someone I felt so connected to be willing to destroy whatever made me into me? My soul, my personality.
As if to emphasize the point, my chest squeezed.
A painful ache I wished to stomp down.
Then there were all the lies I had told him. Making him believe I would not attempt to escape—that I had accepted my fate when I truly did not. With his current distaste for redbloods, when he discovered my lies, he would loathe me.
He stood slowly, pushing the seat back while his hands pressed into the desk, scrunching the edge of one of the parchments.
His prowl around the desk put a knot in my throat.
So slow, it had to be intentional, until he was so close I had no choice but to lean back until the edge of the desk pressed into my spine.
Without saying a word, his thumb pressed into my chin, his forefinger curling under.
He angled my face higher. I lifted my hand to set it on his, my fingers colliding with the cold ring almost the same temperature as him.
I caressed the edge of the ring.
“My mother gave it to me,” he said.
Did he mourn her like Volcan?
His eyes continued their sluggish churning. When he stared at me, it caused this painful ache—that bloom—to pulse. It urged me to nestle against him, to press my nose to his skin to breathe him in.
Door hinges creaked.
“My lord.” A deep, hurried voice was muffled by the distance.
It ripped us out of the bubble that had taken hold.
Cassiel straightened. Tapping my nose, he said, “Wait here.”
He strode away, and I waited until he disappeared to inch to the edge of the outermost shelf and peeked to see who had entered.
Lord Vaner.
“I apologize, my lord, I was preparing for the Solstice Ball.”
I held my breath to hear the rest of what he was dribbling on about.
“Or else I would have been here sooner. Sergeant Crow should have known better than to challenge your presence here. I will have him properly punished for such an infraction.”
Lord Vaner bowed so low that he almost touched his knees with his nose. A man at his age bending that way was quite a feat. “I do believe we should keep knowledge of these new crawling Hollows in the Kingdom to ourselves until we have investigated the matter further.”
Of course he did. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop my scoff.
“I have made my stance clear. We send a larger battalion to Lifton Village.”
The tone Cassiel used indicated they had clearly discussed this at length. Likely had since Cassiel was still dressed in his battle leather. Cassiel held his finger up, and Lord Vaner closed his mouth.
“Await me in the Grand Hall, and we will continue the discussion.”
“Yes, my lord, of course.” Lord Vaner inclined his head and left, his long black robes sweeping around him as he departed.
I yanked back from my snooping position to return before the desk. Cassiel’s steps approached moments later.
“Remain here translating. I will have an officer posted at the exit.”
I just nodded. Seeing as he was already gone, I should not have bothered. Hinges creaked, enclosing me in the large Archives.
I let out a slow breath.
In his absence, I would scan through the Larien text to see if I could see any word that meant ‘magicks’. At least a starting point for his wilting gifts.
Settling in for the painful reading, my surroundings faded as I hyper-focused.
The injections, the council and their behaviors, Al’s ‘experiments’, Cassiel’s loss of power. How many other things were connected?
What you search for is there . . .
Lord Vaner had mentioned a Solstice Ball. Soon I would return to the prophet to claim what I must.