Chapter 38
A n hour later, Alora flipped open a book in the upper levels of Kadamar’s esteemed library. Though library may have been too simple a word for the grandeur. More like a palace created solely for the reverence toward books.
Appearing carved from an enchanted forest, Alora tried not to gawk at the gold-stained oak stacks and railings. At the golden ladders glimmering from faelight orbs mindlessly floating like blazebugs.
Twenty levels extended below her. Above, a mural of what she interpreted as what the Stars Eternal looked like was painted. White clouds and sunlight and more gold. Marble pillars and ornate whitestone buildings of splendor. It morphed into a star-gilded night sky that was just as exquisite.
Greedily inhaling the aged vanillian wood, Alora lifted the skirt of her court-expected attire—a form-fitting navy dress with swooping chains of diamonds on her low-cut back—and strode to another stack to search.
There had to be every book in history collected there.
Something silver ducked to her right, slipping behind the stack at the outer edge of her level. Alora tore her gaze from Eldacar four stories down and across the grand library, who was dragging his palm along books as he strolled. To her left, wooden tables with stacks of parchments waited for the scribes who were conveniently convinced by Garrik that the library was closing midday.
Alora turned the corner and ambled through the middle of the stacks of Kadamar’s archives when she saw him.
Garrik flipped through a leather-bound tome as he leaned against a golden pillar that made his gray hair shimmer like a sunrise. Heated silver met sapphire for a moment. He tracked her movement, the fabric of her skirt swaying every step, the gleam of the gemstones in her crown of braids against the sunlit windows. How she tucked a loose curl behind her ear.
Then his eyes were on her lips, and she knew what he would find there. The tint of red she’d applied after dressing.
“You know… You’d learn a lot more if your eyes were on that book instead of me.”
The hollow thud stole her attention when he closed it. She fixated on the corded muscles of his forearm when he shelved the book. “Near impossible,” Garrik said, smirking as he pushed from the stack and stepped forward. “Why look at anything else when you are here?”
Alora didn’t fight the urge. She threw everything into the mighty eye roll before she gestured to the book he’d shelved. “Anything?”
His face fell, jaw tight. “Nothing yet.” Garrik studied the bookshelves. “Though I must admit, I was somewhat distracted. My mother loved this library. Being that she created pocket worlds, she loved reading stories of others. I suspect it is where she drew inspiration in designing them.”
“How did this library get stories from other realms or know that they exist?”
“Apart from Aiden’s ship?” True. Aiden and Jade were evidence enough that there were other realms out there. Though it was a foolish question, Garrik still indulged her tenderly. “Text keepers were enslaved by Magnelis to record stories. Those who were cursed with magic to collect and write tales that entered their minds as if the stars had given them knowledge of other realms. It is how Ladomyr knows so much about Jade’s customs and orchestrated the Cullings and Hunt.”
She had a terrible feeling that she didn’t want to know anything about the Hunt or the Cullings by the way Garrik’s mouth tightened. But like a fool, she couldn’t still her growing curiosity and asked, “What are they?”
Garrik swallowed and stared.
Stars burn her . It couldn’t be good then.
“Fugitives are gathered in his grand hall and sold for the highest wager. Females with crimes as simple as stealing bread—to much higher offenses—are bartered as champions for the Hunt. The males suffer fates less cruel. In the back of the castle, Ladomyr transforms them into caged beasts that hunt the participants while the privileged sit in their seats and revel in the bloodshed. It is … barbaric.” He deepened a breath. “The males remain beasts for the next Hunt, while the final female breathing wins her master riches. If they live, the participant is awarded freedom, but it is rare anyone lives by the end.”
Hate. She hated this place.
Hated Ladomyr and every starsdamned royal that enjoyed this type of sport.
Alora grit her teeth. Embers ignited in her hands when something cold enclosed her palm. She hadn’t noticed her nails were leaving crescents in her skin so viciously that beads of blood pebbled around them.
Carefully, Garrik opened her palm. She willed that inferno fit to burst back as he wiped the blood with his thumb, cooling the boiling blood inside her veins.
She swiped a tear from her eye. Not from sadness or frustration. This was unadulterated hostility. Anger. Revulsion. So violently stirring and simmering inside her that she found breathing difficult. Painful.
It made her sick—this realm, corrupted by those who were supposed to be servants of their crown.
Every damn one of them deserved to burn.
She would see them burn.
Though Alora tried not to, she could only focus on what Garrik had said. She scanned the pages of an up-to-date inventory of the princess’s gemstone collection for the fifth time.
Could it be possible Erissa enjoyed such events wearing—Alora underlined the ink with her finger—a sixteen emerald- stoned stag’s head necklace and matching golden antler earrings?
Whispers drew her attention. Alora shelved the book and weaved through the stacks to find Eldacar waiting by a table, a stack of books crowding it, and Garrik leaning against a bookshelf.
Curly red hair shifted as Eldacar avoided eye contact. He dropped his head low, fiddled with the leather bag by his side, and admitted, “There is nothing here about Blood’s location, sire.”
Garrik’s sigh was devastating, but he was gentle when he said, “Thank you for searching, Eldacar. Despite the outcome, your help is appreciated. Well done.”
Eldacar bowed his head as anxiousness rolled off his shoulders.
But Alora scanned the endless levels and shelves, cracking her neck in the effort. By the position of the sun, they’d been there for maybe forty minutes. “There must be billions of books here.”
“Trillions,” Eldacar corrected and shifted uncomfortably.
“One can’t possibly search this many books in such a short time.”
Garrik dropped his chin to his chest, leaning still with his ankles and arms crossed, smirking.
Eldacar smiled too.
“What?” She looked at Garrik, who then turned his gaze to Eldacar and raised a brow.
“It is your choice, my friend,” Garrik said in a delicate way of encouragement.
Eldacar shifted and tapped his fingers on the book in his other hand. For a moment, it looked like he wanted to seek refuge within the stacks. But one sheepish glance at her and the nod from her High Prince had him adjusting his glasses before he murmured, “I can … read…” And he hesitated. Seeking Garrik’s encouraging nod, as if the act of loosening his tongue would bring him a harsh punishment before he continued. “Impossibly faster than most faeries.”
Alora must’ve looked confused because Garrik pushed from the stack and pulled a chair out, gesturing to Eldacar to take it. He did so while Garrik pulled one out for her, too.
If they were sitting down, then whatever Eldacar said next had to be something momentous. Her heart raced watching him scan the shelves, the windows. She extended her hand and gently clasped Eldacar’s fidgety palm.
His returning smile settled that slight panic in her chest. Eldacar removed his glasses and wiped them with a cloth from his bag. “I suppose the simplest way to describe it is, in a sense, Garrik … located me.”
Alora’s eyes widened. “You’re a Mystic ?” She’d never once … not once seen a death mark on his upper arm.
As if he knew her thoughts, Eldacar grinned slightly and placed his hand over his left upper arm. “I don’t have one because I wasn’t created in Elysian.” A glimmer twinkled behind those glasses as his brown eyes glowed.
She must’ve looked like a fool gaping, but there was no hope of forming a sound. All this time, she’d never known.
A chair scraping wood beside her had her blinking. Garrik sat down with a smirk and said, “Inkbreaker.”
“Indeed, sire.” There was nothing but pride on his face then. Every freckle on Eldacar’s cheeks moved as the sweetest smile manifested, and he settled his glasses back on his nose. “The glass case in my library, those burned pages, that is my home. I broke through the ink to Elysian after exploring so many stories, always carrying my home with me so I could return. But I fell into Galdheir’s library and was captured by Ravens who had seen me climb from a book.”
Speechless. She was utterly speechless.
“Garrik convinced Magnelis to let me become a text keeper after. He took a lashing for me before the High King thought it would be of his pleasure to use me to train him after he stole the powers of others. My magic is one of the few he allowed, minimally, of course. I used to be able to do so much more. But now.” His focus fell on the table. “Now I can only touch a book and all of its contents fill my mind within a matter of seconds.” And said so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him, “I can no longer break through.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t imagine how Eldacar felt. Of once having such impossibly incredible powers and now… Only able to know the contents of a book once touched? He had to be quite powerful beforehand if this was all he could do.
“Garrik was able to rescue me from that horrible place. If I made it a day without being burned by a flying candle or having a bone wrapped, it was a miracle from the stars. And if I couldn’t find the answers in texts Magnelis required, he’d punish me.” Eldacar’s throat bobbled as he rubbed the back of his neck.
Bile burned her throat at the realization; Eldacar had shuffled away in fear the day she had asked him about his curiosity toward Soulstryker when it had been nothing more than a damaged blade. When he hadn’t known where he’d seen something similar…
Alora’s eyebrows lowered in anguish. Magnelis . Magnelis had taken this beautiful, kind soul and abused him to this shell of anxious ruin.
With a curse on her breath, she damned the High King and turned to Eldacar, whose lips quivered.
“Garrik brought me new books to calm my mind while I healed. He still does, often when he comes home from finding our new Dragons. I wasn’t as strong as he was… I started to lose my wits when Garrik found a way. He was being sent east and would be leaving for months.” Eldacar dropped his hands in his palms.
Garrik continued for him, “I told Magnelis I needed Eldacar to prepare for Marked Ones that I was able to locate. Because Magnelis had acquired two more text readers, he was permitted leave.”
Alora fought back tears as her eyes drifted, scanning the shelves. A deep pit formed in her gut. “This was after you woke up?” she asked Garrik.
His eyes lowered to the table, dull and distant. “Before the dungeons.”
Eldacar’s throat worked. He wiped the tears streaming down his face on his sleeve.
“Can you return home now?”
A look as devastating as the way Telldaira had burned to the ground crossed Eldacar’s face. And Alora knew. He didn’t need to say it. But she knew …
“Magnelis destroyed my book. I have never found another edition. I will never return home.”
There was still time before the text keepers returned.
Smokeshadows had whorled around Garrik and Eldacar sometime ago and dawned them to camp with a healthy stack of books in Eldacar’s hands. Apparently, Garrik would convince the text keepers and alter the records as to them never existing in Kadamar’s library. After all, her High Prince would never endanger someone over a lost book.
She was safe there. Feeling Garrik’s shield, making her wholly invisible. Alora pulled a fairytale from the bookshelf and flipped to the first page when a chill breezed along her skin.
Alora suppressed her shudder but not the feline grin.
Garrik’s deep voice brushed her ear. “Come with me.”
The shudder fully manifested then. She threw a glance over her shoulder, almost meeting his lips. “Must you be so close?” Though she couldn’t entirely say she hated it. It almost blindsided her. Something … a feeling … much more than she expected as the mighty bastard pressed near and whispered again.
“I could be much closer, clever girl.” Garrik dusted his hands along her sides. Her waist.
All the parts of her that ever desired to pull away from him, that never felt like she would ever enjoy this type of attention … of touch. After months, in his arms and on his lips and touching his incredible skin… They were all gone. And she could nearly feel the armor melting off and exposing her entirely.
She warred off the traitorous groan building, his body tensing as she relaxed into him slightly, and stared into his darkened eyes. Hoping he would push closer, silently half-begging him to pull her into the stacks and run his hands over her bare skin. Her gaze flickered to his lips … so close when his thumb stroked her hip bone. So, so close.
Another breath. Another heartbeat more and perhaps she would’ve brushed hers along his, but Garrik’s voice rumbled deep and warm like he was part volcano and said, “I promise. You will enjoy this.”
She could think of a few things she’d enjoy at that moment. But it certainly wasn’t him releasing his tender hold on her hips or his lips retreating as he stepped away.
It wasn’t long after that he offered his hand and those incredible wings of night unfurled. Garrik flexed his back as shadows spread wide across the bookshelves, and he stepped near the opening in the railing.
Alora slipped her hand in his with a grin, remembering the last time they’d flown together and didn’t question herself this time. His icy arms lifted under her knees and around her low-cut back as she toweled hers around his neck and asked, “Where are we going?”
Their takeoff was much smoother this time. Though she admitted, she’d hoped for the sharp jolt if only to have an excuse to hold him tighter.
Garrik must have had the same thought. Those incredible muscles swelled as he tightened his hold and murmured, “I need a drink.”
She smacked his chest. “ Not funny .”
A beautiful, real laugh echoed from his chest. “I think it would be far more exciting if I surprised you.” Garrik brushed his nose against her cheek, and she couldn’t help the pleasant hum in her throat or the way she paused for a few moments to drink that touch in.
Without argument, Alora resettled in his arms as he flew them in a comfortable decline across the library to a section labeled Elysian History . His footsteps were near perfect, smooth against the golden oak floor before he settled her on her feet.
Deep within the bookshelves and nestled inside a small room, he guided her. Along the walls waited the most detailed map of Elysian she’d ever seen. Cities, streets, trade routes, villages, towns, rivers, mountains… It was all there. So immaculately detailed that the simplest glance made her neck tighten at the thought she would lose her head for treason.
Faelight orbs floated in the air, illuminating every stroke of ink, every tree and building and name.
Garrik cupped her lower back. She shivered at the contact, but her eyes couldn’t stop searching. Until…
Telldaira.
There it was. Maybe a two-week’s ride north from Castle Galdheir.
Every kingdom was unfathomable. So many cities. So much of this realm she didn’t know, had never seen. Alora wondered what those cities looked like. Were they covered in dreary brownstone and crumbling buildings like Telldaira’s Outcastle Alley? Soaked in mud like Maraz or cobblestoned streets like Alynthia?
Cold breath fanned against her ear, pulling her from her daydream. “What do you wish to see? I will show you,” he insisted and led her forward until they were inches from the wall.
Alora ran her fingers along the wall of flames surrounding Kennazar, finding Garrik smiling down at her before she felt that gentle caress against her mind. And she half-wanted to tell him he didn’t need to ask anymore—that she would gladly allow him in every time.
Instead, she willed her starflames to part for his shadows, and the instant they danced inside, her vision changed to a picture-play.
Fiery forests and golden castles—the first thing he showed her.
As if they flew with dragons soaring in the skies around them, every inch of Kennazar was covered in the colors of autumn. Not muted. No. Every orange and red and yellow outshined Sun himself. Rivers of fire weaved through the kingdom to where she guessed was the main city. Gleaming in gold, that castle reflected against the mighty rivers and ocean surrounding it as the city itself basked in its incredible light. It looked to be where dragons were born. Where they called home.
Mindlessly drifting her hand, Alora traced to Evanoran.
Her world exploded in a sea of colors so bright that Garrik’s shadows had to shield her eyes. A crystalline glow met her, radiating off every surface smooth as glass. Light glares and prisms of color danced across a land of crystals. The sky was filled with colorful auroras, sparkling and waving until it reached a city so glassy that it looked like it could easily shatter.
He didn’t stop there.
Garrik showed her the airborne lands of Illmataria. How they were connected by bridges high in the sky. How the entire kingdom hovered in clouds and its subjects were all wing-born. Even animals she had only known to live on the ground donned wings.
Every kingdom—it was nothing she could’ve dreamed of.
Even Edrea and its lightning fields were breathtaking.
Garrik frowned when she pointed to the northernmost kingdom, admitting, “I cannot show you Dellisaerin. I have never been there.” Likely because of that ice wall separating the three kingdoms and Tarrent-Garren Keep. So, she pointed to Miratara—the star island—and he shook his head.
“Krysenka?” she asked.
Again, his response was the same. “No. In all the histories I have read, there is no written evidence of anyone ever entering. Darkness lives there. A different kind like … the dark side of the moon. There is a thick veil around it—much like Kennazar’s wall of flames or that of Dellisaerin that Magnelis cannot breach. Impenetrable, according to texts. Magnelis tried once. His ship only succeeded in bursting to splinters.”
Alora grinned at that. Garrik did too.
“Elysian is so beautiful,” she breathed. Seemingly unable to stop marveling at the images in her head. “It’s just as the stories told.”
“Stories?” he repeated carefully but didn’t move.
She shrugged. “The Evening Star and Moon.”
His face was unreadable.
Alora shook her head. “You’ve never heard of it?” Strange. Being royalty, shouldn’t he have been taught the Celestial stories and the birth of the land they stood on? The very land that resembled the moon and star?
Garrik offered her a lovely grin. “Tell it to me?”
At the sight of Garrik’s smile, she obliged him.“Two brothers, Darkness and Moon, fell in love with the same star. Vespera loved the light of Moon and treasured how Darkness caressed her each night.Both keeping her safe.” And added when Garrik’s head tilted slightly, “Her love for Moon grew stronger than Darkness.
“Night after night, they hid in secret until Darkness discovered that Vespera’s love grew short for him, and he began to snuff out their light.
“Moon and Vespera fell from the Stars Eternal and crashed into their realm to live in eternity together. Creating Elysian.”
He turned in place, surveying the entire expanse of Elysian around them. Scratching his calluses over the near-invisible shadow on his jaw, Garrik turned to her. “That is quite the story.” And stopped walking when he observed Krysenka before throwing a warm glance over his shoulder. “But I have come to know it much differently.” With the quick wave of his hand over the map, Smokeshadows swirled until they revealed a picture-play of life as if it occurred before their eyes.
“Indeed, the two brothers loved her,” he began. “But it was Darkness that Vespera could not live without. And when Moon discovered her treachery, when their brother, Sun, tried to stop a war, Moon released his power and sent them all crashing from the Stars Eternal to form Elysian.” Garrik’s hand brushed Krysenka with great and terrible loss in his eyes. “Moon’s jealousy was so rapturous that he condemned Vespera and Darkness to live eternally separated. To never lay eyes on one another again. And by Moon’s greatest pleasure…”
Garrik glanced at the wall in front of them, at the center kingdoms that appeared to almost form a crescent. “Moon lies in the middle. Forever laughing at the star’s face, his back turned on his brother.” Another wave of his hand and the picture-play disappeared. His fingers hadn’t left the mass of land separated from the rest, behind the moon. “Darkness remains bound here. Forever separated from that which loved him fiercely.”
When Alora remained silent, he turned to her and sighed. “At least that is the tale told by mothers at nightfall.”
Alora couldn’t stop looking at Miratara. “You truly think a star could fall in love with the darkness?”Something like hope fluttered in her voice, masked by curiosity.
Garrik’s back met the map. He folded his arms and arched a brow. “You do not? Is it so hard to believe one’s darkened soul held captive by the nightmares it creates can be boldly loved by that which brings life and light?”
There was nothing unbelievable about it. Alora flexed her hand and tried to steady the shake in her voice as she asked, “Do you think they’ll ever be together? The star and Darkness.”
His steps were more determined than she’d ever seen. Garrik’s finger tipped up her chin, and she couldn’t stop looking at the polished steel of his eyes when he said with nothing but certainty, “For his sake, I hope so.” There was no use steadying her heart. It had decided to run away. “For hers… I hope she crashes deeply in love with another. The darkness is too ruined. He will only destroy her light.”
Somehow, she knew he wasn’t speaking about the story anymore.