Chapter Forty-Seven
Saphyra
S ound traveled strangely through the empty spaces of the castle. Our footsteps echoed like ghosts from the past. The fine hair prickled on the back of my neck as I walked down halls I knew a lifetime ago. Everything familiar but indelibly altered by the passage of time.
“Where did everything go? The furniture, the paintings, the tapestries?” My voice sounded loud in the eerie quiet.
Lex, a step behind me, hesitated and didn’t answer.
I waited, but the silence grew tense. With my hands on my hips, I stopped, turning toward him.
He came to a halt, his face a granite mask. “When your parents died, and you were gone, the shield failed. There was no protection. Almost everything of value that was spared from the fire was sold to fund the construction of the underground city. Sacrifices had to be made. My father did the best he could.”
He acted like he thought I’d be mad that they hadn’t protected the kingdom’s material wealth, but that wasn’t it at all.
“You were just a boy, Lex. There was nothing you could have done. And even if you could’ve stopped it, I’d rather lives be saved than a few pieces of wood and canvas.” I reached out and took his hand, tugging him beside me. “This is the fault of Altaira and the Imperatrix, not you.”
With his hand in mine, and Grey on my other side, we continued to explore.
The halls were bare and walls blackened, but otherwise, much as I remembered. Rooms were either empty or filled with remnants of burned furniture and ruined debris. And everything was coated in ten years’ worth of dust.
I threaded my way through the devastation of the bottom level, on the hunt for anything of use. There were salons and morning rooms, lounges, offices, and reading areas, but there was nothing left in them, and no memories sparked other than a few scattered pleasant moments spent as a child.
The stairs to the second floor were shadowed and ominous, but I pushed through my hesitation and marched up the curving stone steps. They led to the private spaces and living quarters of the royal family. This was where our cherished personal time was spent and the memories that could haunt me.
Through the charred remains of a set of double doors at the top of the stairs was a grand balcony overlooking the ballroom. When I was young, I’d hidden behind the fancy banister to spy on my parents’ parties. There was nothing left but ash and dust. The wooden overlook was burned to blackened charcoal.
Lining the southern hall, where once beautifully appointed guest rooms had been, were doorless stone boxes. Their barren walls were stained with soot.
Opposite that was the royal wing.
My fingers slipped from Lex’s grip and off of Grey’s arm, and I stepped in front of them. This wide corridor was unlike the rest. It was thick with memories. As if on their own, my feet flew across the stone floor.
“Saphyra, wait! It’s dangerous,” Lex called out behind me.
At the end of the hall, only charred splinters remained of the doors that shuttered the tower library. The burned debris clawed at my pants, scratching my skin through the material, but I rushed through it, disregarding the warning.
Curved walls, once laden with tomes, were desolate and black. Thirty foot tall shelves had hugged the edges of the circular room, but only their charred skeletons remained.
“How dare they? This was hundreds of years of original records. Thousands maybe.” Of all the things I’d seen, this was the worst. Hand written accounts of all the Queens before me had been kept here. It was all gone. Everything. Gone. “Why? Why do this?”
Big hands cupped my shoulders, and the warmth of Lex’s body supported my back. Grey’s concern hummed through the bond, and he came to my side.
“They took the books before they set it on fire. Only the furniture and bookshelves burned. I always assumed there was something in here they were looking for, so they took it all,” Lex said in an apologetic tone.
My heart crumpled. I loved this place.
Rainbow light danced across the floor, shining through leaded panes of broken glass, casting fragmented colored squares onto the soot covered floor.
That pattern.
I walked to the far end, placing a foot into the closest burst of light. Then I stepped into the next.
My mother sat at her desk, her journal set aside and forgotten. A gold datapad was propped in front of her, next to an old, dusty tome. She looked from one to the other, then back, her brows drawn together in concentration.
She noticed me playing hopscotch on the boxes of light and shadow the suns made on the floor and smiled. “Enjoy yourself now. It won’t be long before this is your task. Every line and every image must be preserved for all the generations to follow.”
“Yes, mama,” I whispered in reply.
Grey turned his attention from the ruined room to me. “Did you say something, little one?”
My eyes dropped to my rainbow illuminated boots. “I didn’t mean to. Just a passing memory.”
“You’re remembering.” Grey’s excitement bloomed through our connection.
Despite Grey’s smile, Lex’s brows furrowed with concern. “If it’s too much, we can slow down.”
I swallowed my trepidation. “There’s no time to slow down.” The memory throbbed painfully behind my eyes. If I could, I’d probably curl up and cry, but I couldn’t. “Do you remember my mother having a gold datapad?”
“Not that I recall, but it was a long time ago. If it was here, it’s most likely gone or destroyed.” Lex said.
But what if it wasn’t here? What if it was somewhere else? The memory of the tomb stirred to life.
I fished my mother’s journal from my back pocket. “You said you recognized this archway design. Can you show me?”
He looked at the leather embossed book with the pretty pattern surrounded by flowers. “Of course. It’s not far.”
Lex led the way back down the curved double stairs, through the dim halls, and out of the castle into the greenbelt behind the palace. The beautiful planters and manicured lawns were overrun with haphazard plants, and the cobbled paths were obscured by nature reclaiming the land. But under all that, I could picture where every gurgling fountain and blooming rose used to be.
An oak forest lined the edge of the flat field, hemmed in by the outer curtain wall on one side and a cliff overlooking the river on the other. Lex marched through the rampant weeds sprinkled with wildflowers like cheerful constellations dotting a desolate sky.
The fleeting memory of tall grass and blossoms washed over me and even without Lex, it came to me. I knew where we were going. Under the shadows of the oak trees, headstones glimmered like ethereal wraiths. I remembered thinking they were ghosts in the fog when I was small, and even now I could almost still see it.
The stone carved arch was just outside the edge of the trees, but was completely obscured by tangled vines. All that stood in its place was a mound of weeds and foliage. A blanket of bursting gold and greens in every hue, punctuated by stark white star flowers, covered the entire structure. It was under there. I knew it.
Lex searched along the edge, looking for the arch, but I walked right to it.
“It’s here.” I pushed a handful of vines away, uncovering the curved relief of decorative stonework.
Grey and Lex helped me pull back the thick carpet of greenery that had engulfed the raised arch-pattern carved over a flat stone wall. It was more overgrown than I would have expected, and by the time we were done, I was panting and covered in sweat.
My mates were both watching me as I studied the beautifully designed niche in the wall.
“How does it open?” I asked.
The bees buzzed, and the wind rustled the leaves, but no one had an answer.
“Does it open?” Grey was searching the edges for seams in the stone.
Lex looked curious. “I don’t remember ever seeing it open. It’s an old monument built for the first queen of Verden. I think it’s sealed.”
“No. That can’t be. I remember being inside of it. There were seven stone sarcophagi.” I wanted to tell them that I’d seen the datapad in there too, but my mother told me it was only for Queens. Had she told my father about it? They’d been star blessed. Maybe she had, but it was too late to ask her now.
If it was there, I’d tell them. It was too important to keep a secret.
I pulled her journal out of my pocket and flipped it open. There had to be a trick to the door. Would it have been too convenient if she’d left instructions?
A slip of paper fluttered out, landing at my feet in the weeds.
“What’s this?” Grey picked up the note before I’d even noticed it’d fallen.
When he unfolded it, it was a series of alphanumerics, but I didn’t know what they were for. “The Duke of Spectre gave that to me at the ball. He said to give it to Ghost. I guess I forgot about it with everything going on.”
“It looks like a communication address and an encryption key,” Lex said, studying it over Grey’s shoulder.
Lex had told me the duke may not be trustworthy, and I’d already written off his offer for help. So, I left my mates to sort out what to do with the code he’d given me and turned my attention back to the journal.
In the margins were doodles of star flowers and bees. Her careful, looping text talked about crop rotations and weather patterns. I flipped the page. Average number of days without rain during each season. Flip. Flip. The last approximate date for frost in the capital. Flip. Astronomical tables. Flip. Flip. Flip. The best date to geld colts. Flip. Recipes for seasonal crops. There was nothing here.
Unhelpful in the moment but cherished, if only because it was in her hand. Probably the only thing left in the universe with her handwriting on it. I breathed out a sigh. It couldn’t have been that easy. I hugged the book to my chest before sliding it back into my pocket.
What had she told me when we were here last? Her smiling brown eyes flickered before me. “The crown will weigh heavily on your brow, but your blood will guide you.”
I ran my hands over the archway carved into the solid rock face. There were no hinges and no visible seams.
My blood would guide me? My blood wasn’t doing anything.
Frustration swelled, and my hands turned frantic, picking and clawing at any imperfection. “I know this opens. Open!”
My fingernail caught under the petal of a carved flower at the edge of the archway, and I wrenched my hand away, ripping my nail to the quick. “Ouch!” Blood oozed from my torn flesh.
My mates both watched me with concern.
“Are you alright?” Grey took a step toward me.
“What happened?” Lex’s words tangled with Grey’s.
I mumbled out that I was fine, and I stuck my bleeding finger in my mouth to soothe the sting. No sooner had I taken a step back from the wall than a soft grinding sound reached my ears.
The slab of stone that looked to have been the back wall of the decorative relief slid downward. Leaving behind a doorway into the shadows.