Chapter 24 #2
A drawer to the left flew open with force. She rustled through parchment before releasing a relieved sigh.
“There they are,” Valda mumbled to herself. I flinched when the drawer slammed.
I didn’t see what she grabbed, and I didn’t care. Only when the lock on the main door clicked did I blow out a shaky breath of relief and open my eyes.
I left the same way I entered: quickly, silently, and mercifully unseen. I locked the door behind me, leaving as few signs that I’d been there as possible. At least any footprints in the room could be passed off as Valda’s.
When I returned to bed, I barely slept. The next day, I couldn’t focus on anything besides the key tucked inside my pillowcase.
I suffered a few blows during sparring due to distraction.
When the twins asked if I was all right, I lied and said I was.
I didn’t know if anything important was in that secret room, but the thought of saving Gavin from his father had me so anxious I could barely stand still.
I didn’t dare ask myself what it meant for him if he was free. What it meant for me. For us . I barely let myself think about us in present or future terms.
I was afraid to hope .
I went to the library after dinner. I told Mina and Mavic I needed time to myself. That wasn’t a lie.
I wedged a chair beneath the door handle to impede anyone from entering or at least to give me notice if they tried.
My feet carried me swiftly through the room to the shelf, where I began to frantically remove books.
Once clear, I reached through the shelves and slid the key into the lock while a nervous sweat spread across the back of my neck. What if I’d grabbed the wrong key?
“Yes!” I exhaled in relief when the key slid in and clicked while turning. The door, stuck in place by time and lack of use, required my full weight to open.
In books I’d read, hidden rooms were often grand. This one wasn’t. I wasn’t sure it could be called a room at all. More like a small closet, narrow enough that I could stretch out my arms and simultaneously touch both cobweb-covered walls, and only eight to ten feet deep.
My damp neck chilled with the feeling of being watched.
I nearly gave myself whiplash while checking the doorway, but no one was there.
I turned back to the single shelf of books on the other end of this tiny space.
They were covered in a layer of dust so thick I had to pull my shirt over my mouth and nose to keep from sneezing.
“ Shera? ” I said down our pathway.
“Yes?”
“I’m inside the hidden room. It’s underwhelming. There’s a single shelf of books. Ten of them, maybe, covered in dust. It looks like they haven’t been touched for decades. Maybe longer.”
I felt her disappointment through the bond we shared, but she didn’t respond. I left the secret door open just a crack and sat on the floor while sifting through the books by lantern light.
I spent at least two hours on the floor of that tiny room, paging through each book, coughing quietly through dust and mold.
Most of them detailed history before the Rexus family’s reign over four hundred years ago.
Some were even older. There was one copy of The Book of the Selvaren that I set aside, because I could recite that book in my sleep, and there was nothing inside about dark, ungodly magic in the form of blood oaths.
There was, however, someone’s note in an old index of Nyrida’s libraries.
Find the Duke of Peradine’s enchanted tome and discover what’s across the Brinnean Sea.
The rest was just a jumbled mess of maps and locations without order or reason.
“ This could be something ,” I said, explaining what I found to Shera. “ I recall Gemma once mentioning that no one had dared cross the Brinnean Sea in centuries. But there’s nothing about blood oaths. ”
“ It might help you against Molochai, though ,” Shera offered. “ I think you should look into it. ”
“ Yes ,” I agreed. Perhaps I’d raise the suggestion to Elias that he might want to send someone to Peradine to look for this tome. “ As for the rest, I don’t know why they’re hidden back here ,” I told Shera. “ They’re just history books. ”
“Maybe there’s a part of history your uncle wants to erase.”
I frowned at the thought, though it was likely true.
“ I’ll take some back with me to read more deeply, but so far, there’s nothing promising ,” I answered. “ Other than the mention of that tome, I don’t think there’s magic in any one of these. ”
Words on pages bled together as my eyes strained in the dimly lit space.
I couldn’t help but feel like I was failing him.
He had waited four hundred years, and I couldn’t find a way to break him free of the deal he made just to see me again.
I thought I’d stumbled across secret, helpful information about dark magic, but I should have tempered my expectations.
I stared at the stack of books to my right until the dull silence grew louder.
I expected a quick response from Shera, but I hadn’t gotten one.
“Shera, where did you ? —”
“I think you should keep looking.”
Her voice was louder than usual. Surprisingly sure . That demand was easy for her to give from her cozy den.
“ Okay .” I rubbed my eyes, too tired to argue.
A part of me agreed. “ Yes. You’re right.
One more look at The Book of the Selvaren won’t hurt me.
” I slid the heavy tome toward me and opened it to the very front.
The book nearly slipped from my lap at the name scribbled in the bottom left corner of the first page.
In my handwriting.
Aryella Jay Whitlock
“What?” I breathed, carefully flipping through the pages. If this was once mine, what was it doing here ?
On the bottom of Nyxar’s last page, before the final blank pages, was the most elegant script I had ever seen.
So perfect that it almost didn’t look real.
Something inexplicably warm tugged in my chest, toward the script and toward the book.
I read the words multiple times before processing what I was reading.
That which commands life can break an oath written in blood.
“What the hell?” I smoothed my fingers over the page. Throat tight, I looked around the tiny room, feeling like whoever had written these words would jump out at any moment. Like this was a trap.
Why else would the answer I needed be written in a book with my name in it?
There were few people who could have accessed this book in the past. I already knew Simeon’s handwriting, Gavin’s, and my own. The only people left were my real parents. Or rather, my mother, since Molochai killed my father when I was a baby.
The prophecy was a lie, but Christabel had been clairvoyant. Could she have known what Gavin would do? Was this her helping me from over four hundred years ago? Could she really have known that I would be here in this fortress, at this exact time?
Was I staring at my real mother’s handwriting?
I could curse Simeon a million times for taking away my memories. It wouldn’t be enough.
“That which commands life,” I whispered, refocusing. “Commands life.” Where had I heard that before?
My eyes dropped to my hands. Once small and weak, now capable of things that months ago, I never would have imagined. Bluish-green veins ran beneath pale skin. My blood. Damond. Bedridden in Brinnea after rising from the dead.
He saw it with his own eyes. Your blood pooled around you, the ground tasted it, knew it was you, and then you breathed as if your blood commanded life itself.
I sucked in a tattered breath. My blood? Could it really be that simple? It was a stretch. But if true, the power to help him was in my grasp. I had to try.
“ Shera? ” I leapt to my feet. “ Are you still there? ”
“ The rabbits around here are simply decadent ,” she answered. Despite being mind-to-mind, she managed to sound like her mouth was full. “ Did you find something? ”
“Meet me. The ravine.”
“If you insist.”
A plan was forming in my mind. Now all I needed was a vial. And some sort of collar…
I cut the straps on my knapsack with my blade then headed for the infirmary.
I knocked before my nerves could stop me. The physician inside didn’t make me wait long. The door swung open to reveal a young man standing there in a set of tan sleepwear.