Chapter Thirty-Six Anton
Chapter Thirty-Six
Anton
He picks the codex back up, grateful Vasalie hadn’t seen it.
This is the one secret he’s kept from her.
Though, if he’s being honest, he’s surprised she hasn’t guessed it yet. Had she thought he wouldn’t be curious about her, this slip of a girl who had found her way into Moranya’s Lair without dying? Who made it into the Abyssal, no less?
She had done the impossible. And worse, she’d owned his heart from their very first meeting.
But it wasn’t their first meeting, was it?
He sits next to the single flame floating in the air, contained within a sphere of glass, and cracks open the codex once more. It had taken him time and dedication to read this far, considering he had no choice but to start from the very beginning.
It was a shock indeed to find out who her father was. He had learned that the very first night.
And had been stewing on it ever since.
With each page, each chapter, her story made shreds of his soul.
Her stepmother’s murder.
How she fled across the sea with nothing and no one to protect her.
How she found her way to that theater.
Anton was hooked on it—hooked on her. Every spare moment, he returned to her codex, brushing past the guilt at invading her life this way.
Her worst experiences, her innermost thoughts, were laid bare before him, raw and unfiltered.
He’d never let her read his; he would be far too ashamed. But Vasalie—
She had nothing to be ashamed of.
Even if he had acted otherwise two days ago.
Right before he found her sneaking about in Moranya’s Citadel, he’d been in a petty rage.
He’d just read the way his brother approached her on that stage.
Illian led her into his court, wrapped her up the way a spider strings silk around its prey, and Anton—
He’d been furious. Both at Illian for daring to exist in her presence, and at her for not telling him how deeply she was involved with him.
Never mind that she was desperate. Never mind that Anton didn’t have the right to judge her choices, that she had a right to chase a position that she had earned.
Though perhaps what made him the angriest was that he didn’t have a right to be angry at all.
But he felt drawn to her in a way that scared the daylights out of him. Those feelings only grew as he shoved them away. And then…then she had confessed her love, Fates-damnit, and it nearly brought him to his knees.
But how could he trust her after what she withheld?
So yes, he had all but declined her proposal—because he needed the truth. Needed to know just how far her relationship with Illian had progressed. He had to know what happened, and what led to all…this.
So the moment they returned from Ansa, he had snatched her codex. Read until he almost couldn’t stomach it, especially when his brother nearly took her to his bed.
Instead he threw her in prison.
Anton summoned Illian faster than he could blink, then interrogated him within an inch of his afterlife. He’d almost cast him into the Sands when he didn’t get answers, then thought better of it.
There was no logical reason for Illian to withhold the truth about Vasalie, about what he had done and why, even under interrogation. Even when threatened with the Sands.
Something wasn’t right. So Anton came back to the only place he might find answers once more.
What he found was like a punch to the gut.
He had met her before. Vasalie.
There, inked on finite pages, was his first encounter with her. And then the next.
Now he flips the codex open to where he had last left off. The scene she had interrupted before he put her back to bed.
There are perhaps a few hundred pages left, but his determination is boundless.
Especially now that he knows something is very, very wrong.
Chunks of his memories are missing. The entire Gathering was different, for Fates’ sake, from the very beginning, and he feels the truth of it—the truth of her story—the way he might feel the temperature drop of an oncoming storm, the certainty that it would bring the rain.
He feels it down to the marrow.
A million thoughts and questions clog his head. How has it come to this? What has spoiled his mind? But one thing is for certain.
He will damned well uncover why.
He trails his finger along the page. Ah, there it is.
A conversation he doesn’t even remember having—in his bed for that matter—on the Isle of Anell. All from her perspective, as if she’d narrated it herself.
“You could use a dose of humility, Sire.”
“Why would I dose myself with that? Sounds terrible.”
I can’t help the laugh that spills out next. But then he takes my chin with his fingers. “Your laugh. I could drink an ocean’s worth.”
“Moranya!”
Anton’s steps echo against the citadel’s glossy floors. He trudges up the stairs until he finds her, curled into a chair, the shattered mirror cradled on her lap.
Her eyes flutter open at the sound of his approach. “Anton?”
He comes to a halt, his rage—once simmering—now heating to a boil. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“My codex.”
Her hands, fidgeting with the mirror’s hilt, still. “Why?”
“It isn’t in the Abyssal,” he says, marching toward the shelves. He grazes the first shelf, cracking each codex open, then swipes it clean, tomes toppling to the floor in a series of thuds. He moves to the next one.
She’s risen now, the mirror clutched to her chest. “Anton—”
The next shelf, he clears, too, before moving on to a third, then a fourth, pausing there when he opens a codex to find a familiar name. Emilia Alendina Stova. That he tucks under his arm, then continues his desperate search—
“It isn’t there,” she says.
He pauses. Swings around, expectant.
“Did you destroy it, then? What did you do with it, Moranya, after we cut our deal?”
At that, her gaze swings back to his. “Are you telling me you remember? But that isn’t—”
“Possible? Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? That I wouldn’t eventually come across the truth in one of the codices? All it took was reading Vasalie’s…”
He trails off. Because to his utter and complete shock, Moranya’s face brightens into something akin to…relief.
“You read her story,” she says, her eyes bright.
“Of course I did.”
“Because you love her.” She looks positively pleased. “And all the more, now that you know the truth about her.”
“And you took her away, just as you did everyone I cared for, all so that I would lose any and all connection to my life. All so that I might do your bidding…”
She has the gall to wave him off. “Even if you read her codex,” she muses, “your memories shouldn’t be fully restored. Such a thing is only possible if you hold your own tome.”
She’s right. It isn’t that he remembers, exactly. More that he feels the truth of it, stark and clear as the sun on his skin. The truth of everything he read.
“I ask again,” he says. “Where is it?” Fates, none of this is making sense. But she’s already walking away, up the stairs and back into her room, and all he can manage is to stand there, dumbfounded. Then she returns, not a minute later, a codex in hand.
Immediately, he starts toward her, but she holds up a hand. “I will give it to you,” she says. “But first, you will allow me to explain.”