Chapter 23
Cal
How long did I have? I supposed the better question was, how long did a dress fitting take? All I knew was I needed to get to the library before Petra was finished with the seamstress.
Even from where I stood on the second story overlooking the training yard, I could see the sweat dripping down Miles’ bare back.
A vein popped in his neck, another in each of his temples as he circled the stuffed dummy.
Every few steps, he lunged, slicing through the burlap and sending tiny bits of straw floating to the ground.
“Form’s sloppy,” I yelled, and Miles’ attention swung to me.
“Yeah,” he answered, emotionless. A forearm slicked the sweat from his brow as I descended the stairs. He turned his sword over and over in his grip where it hung at his side as he stared at the ground, catching his breath.
I reached behind my neck, pulling my tunic over my head, because I was sure to sweat through it in this heat.
I winced as the fabric ran over the burns Petra had left on my shoulders.
They looked like they were going to scar up nicely.
In one fluid motion, I pulled my sword from its sheath and took up my fighting stance. “Up for a few rounds?”
“Shouldn’t you be in the library by now?” he asked, still just as emotionless.
“Shouldn’t you?” I retorted. He remained silent. “We have a few minutes.” I hoped.
Miles’ attention snagged on my sword, his eyes narrowing as if he had no idea what I was asking him to do.
But he quickly readied himself, bouncing on his toes as we began a dance we both knew well.
The foundation to this dance had been laid back in Eserene, when we were both kids, learning swordfighting techniques from Castemont’s guard, Tyrak.
I took a lazy swing that he easily blocked. “How are you feeling?”
“My ass still hurts from that damn driva,” he huffed before lunging at me. I pivoted and matched his blow. “But I’m fine.”
“Okay.” We began to circle each other. “And how are you feeling?” I repeated. My tone was the same. I placed no emphasis on any part of the question. But he knew what I meant.
He was silent for a moment as he wound up for another strike, one which I easily met. “I’m still in control.”
I didn’t want to ask the next question. “Any more…urges?”
“Here and there,” he answered, offering nothing further.
“Does he feel any closer?”
“No.”
Thank the fucking Saints.
“But he feels stronger.”
It felt like someone had dropped a hot coal into my throat. “ Fuck ,” I strained.
He paused, dropping his sword to his side. “I think he has more drivas. A lot more than we do.”
The fact that Malosym had one driva had terrified me. It had rocked me to my bones with fear, gripped me since the moment I saw the monster’s midnight black eyes. We’d used the fact that Malosym had a driva to bolster our argument and garner aid from Nesan. But the thought that he had more?
Fuck.
And still, the question was never far from my mind. Had Miles led Malosym directly to us?
“She should’ve let me drown,” he said, that emotionless tone back once again. Each word cut like a hot knife through my skin. My brother.
I had no idea how to respond to him. So I sheathed my sword. “We need to get to the library. Petra will be expecting to meet us there.”
“I need a few more minutes,” he murmured, raising his sword again, but this time in pursuit of the dummy.
Rather than argue, I backed out of the training ring and carefully pulled my shirt over my head. I could stall for a few minutes, until Miles got his head on right.
“Remember what you promised me,” he called over his shoulder without turning my way.
My steps turned heavier, my jaw tightening. How the fuck could I forget?
◆ ◆ ◆
“Well, I may have made an enemy of the King and Queen,” Petra called as she pushed through the doors of the library.
She paused, taking in the library’s atrium.
The space teemed with greenery, a direct contrast to the arid land that surrounded Araqina.
A column of midmorning daylight streamed through the domed glass ceiling, illuminating the sandstone walls that climbed with flowering vines.
And jutting from either side of the atrium were two wings, each filled to the brim with row upon row of bookshelves.
“Holy shit,” Petra remarked. In an alcove, a librarian jolted at Petra’s language, her book falling to the rug with an unceremonious thud .
“Apologies,” she muttered, giving an awkward half-smile as she made her way to me.
My perfectly vulgar queen.
“And how could you possibly make an enemy of the King and Queen?” I asked, leaning down to brush my lips against hers.
“Let’s just say they probably won’t approve of my choice of dress for the ball.
But I bet you will.” I raised a brow, heat flaring between us before she turned back to gawk at the atrium again, her eyes trailing to the stacks of books.
“This is fucking unbelievable,” she whispered, but then her face fell.
“How the hell are we supposed to find anything in here?”
I gestured to each of the library’s wings. “That wing is fiction, this one is nonfiction. I tried to find a few that looked promising.”
Turned out, a dress fitting took a lot longer than I thought it would, so I had plenty of time to pick through the shelves. A small stack of my finds was set on the table: A Brief History of Araqina: The First City Created by the Saints; The War of Kings; and Prophecies of the Realm.
Her face fell further then, her lips twisting as she peered at the books. “I’m not even sure what we should be looking for. Something that will help us defeat Malosym? Who would write that? Who would even know what to write?”
Miles pushed through the doors then, his forehead still glistening with sweat as he prowled toward us. He didn’t spare a glance to any part of the atrium.
“Hey, Miles,” Petra called with a careful smile. I hated seeing her tiptoe around him like this.
“Hello, your Majesty.” The words weren’t cheerful by any means, but it felt like the first flash of him — the real him — I’d seen since Eserene. Something about the way he said it gave me hope. We hadn’t lost him just yet.
I glanced back over at the pile of books I’d arranged on the table. Could there possibly be something in one of them that could help Miles? Had a book been written that could give some clue as to how to pull evil from a person?
“Okay,” Petra said with a deep sigh, pulling me from my own head. “Let’s see what we can find.”
◆ ◆ ◆
We found nothing. Four days spent in the library and all we had to show for it were sore necks and a few scribbled lines on parchment.
Most of what I’d written down I already knew.
Some were bits of information I didn’t think were actually important in the grand scheme of things, but looking at a nearly empty piece of parchment was spiking my anxiety, so I did what I could to fill it.
According to the prophecy uncovered by the ancient Bloodsingers of Kruria, only the Saint of Pain can definitively identify the Daughter of Katia upon her arrival in the Human Realm.
While some believe Katia was the first being to lay eyes on the New World, many scholars believe it was actually Rhedros.
The great scholars of old believe that while the Saints are powerful on their own, their relics are the conduits by which their power is utilized.
The few snippets we found about Malosym were not helpful. Nothing about his weaknesses or vulnerabilities, only his existence. Nothing about how he managed to slip from the Old World to the New World, just that he was the reason the Old World had to be burned, because his evil was too strong.
Moonlight streamed through the panes of the atrium’s ceiling, turning the greens to silvers and browns to blues.
A cool breeze blew through the windows that were open to a large terrace, the nighttime chill a respite from the heat of Araqina.
The librarians had long since left, but the three of us remained.
Petra had dozed off, her cheek resting gently against her arms where they were folded on the table. Miles was feverishly flipping through another massive book.
“Anything?” I murmured to him, watching Petra to make sure she didn’t stir.
“No,” Miles answered quickly, his finger moving over lines of text.
I lowered my voice even more. “Have you been looking for anything about…” I trailed off, afraid to speak the words.
Miles paused, his teeth grinding back and forth before his dark eyes landed on me. “Yes.”
I dipped my chin as Miles continued flipping through the book in front of him. I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? The clock was ticking, we all knew that. But we didn’t know when time would run out.
The stack of discarded books on the table taunted me, each of their pages thoroughly pored over only to find nothing. Nothing. We’d found nothing. Frustration pulled at my chest. Exhaustion muddied my brain.
With a grumble deep in my throat, I looked back down at my book.
I’d been scouring the pages of Relics of the Saints since yesterday, going line by line through Noros’ chapters.
Something here had to be of use, but nothing was obvious enough.
Noros’ sword, Aegrabane, was his only relic.
With Aegrabane, he had the power to cause or ease pain.
My eyes blurred as I read the same lines over and over again.
Until I came upon a chapter titled Relics in the Human Realm: Theories and Suppositions. Petra began to stir just as my posture stiffened.
“What’d you find?” she asked, her voice still weary with sleep as she straightened, a cautious hope entering her heavy eyes. Even Miles stopped, his face still down but his gaze on me .
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“No promises,” Petra answered. “Read it.”
My stomach felt like it was in my throat as I began to read. “There are no relics definitively proven to belong to, or have belonged to, any Saint in the Human Realm. There are, however, a handful of relics that some scholars claim to be those of Saints, each with varying levels of evidence.”
“Saints’ relics?” Petra asked, eyes narrowed, the last of sleep fading from her eyes.
I nodded. “Yeah. Katia and Rhedros have their crowns. Idros has a staff that he uses to command storms. Onera has a scepter. A few of them have swords, like Liara, Faldyr, and–”
“Noros,” Miles cut in. “The Saint of Pain carries a sword.”
I nodded, my eyes flicking back down to the page in front of me as I continued reading.
“It should also be noted, that due to the widely accepted prophecy of the Daughter of Katia and the subsequent curse of Noros as prophesied, many scholars believe Noros’ fabled blade, Aegrabane, may be somewhere in the Human Realm.
It would, however, contain none of its true power.
That can only be wielded in the Saints’ Realm.
” I looked back between Petra and Miles. “That feels important, right?”
Petra's lips were parted, her eyes distant as her brain whirred behind them. “That’s it. Holy shit, that’s it!
Maybe we can’t find Noros, but we could try to find his blade.
Maybe it has inscriptions or carvings or something that can help us.
Maybe it can summon Noros.” She ran her hand over her mouth, and I watched the bright hope dim in her eyes before her head began to shake.
“No,” she quickly said as she worked the problem through.
“How the hell could we possibly find his blade when we can’t even find him? Where would we even begin?”
I straightened, my palms flattening on the table as it hit me. “Noros’ temple,” I blurted. “It’s here in Araqina.”
Petra’s entire face brightened with hope again. The look was like a dagger in my chest knowing that optimism was probably for nothing. “Really? ”
Miles let his book fall shut and pushed back from the table. “Let’s go.”
Petra reared back. “Now? It’s past midnight.”
Less than a second later and Miles was prowling toward the door, each step heavy. “Malosym isn’t going to wait. Neither should we.”
Panic bottomed out in my gut. Petra’s wide eyes shot to me for only a split second before she stood and followed Miles to the door.
Through the library, down the winding halls and staircases of Araqina’s castle, and out the arched doors. We didn’t even stop to call a carriage. We were on our way.
To find Aegrabane.