The shadow bolted across the floor, hissing as it fled. Along the stone. Down the stairs. Disappearing from sight as Mia cried out, terror flooding over her in crushing waves. She aimed a feeble kick at Jessamine’s legs, the girl laughing as she stepped aside. Mia could hear Tric shouting. Her pulse rushing in her ears. Pain. Dread so black she thought she might die. And just as it became too much, just as that awful light threatened to burn her blind …
“What in the Mother’s name is going on here?”
Jessamine turned, the light eclipsed by her body. Through the nausea and burning tears, Mia could see Shahiid Solis standing in the training circle, massive arms folded, white eyes fixed on nothing at all. Tric and Diamo picked themselves up off the floor, Jessamine slipping the necklace back inside her tunic. With the suns out of sight, the pain wracking Mia’s body abated almost immediately. But with Mister Kindly gone, the fear remained, creeping like a greasy tide through her innards. She swayed to her feet, pulse pounding, looking about the darkness. She could see no sign of her friend.
“I asked a question, Acolytes,” Solis growled.
Ignoring the Shahiid of Songs, Mia skirted around the wall, away from Jessamine. Blind eyes turned toward her footsteps, but she made the archway, dashing down the stairwell on trembling legs. She heard Solis roar, demanding explanation. Tric called after her, but she ignored him, stumbling down into the dark.
“Mister Kindly?”
No answer. No sense of her friend. Only the fear, that long-forgotten, crushing weight of fear. Her hands were shaking. Her lip trembling. He’d left her, she realized.
He left me …
“Mister Kindly!”
“Mia, stop!” Tric called, pounding down the stairs behind her.
The girl ignored him, charging off through the twisted hallways and into the stained-glass gloom, calling the shadowcat’s name.
“Stop!” Tric grabbed her arm.
“Let go of me!”
“This place is a bloody maze. He could be anywhere.”
“That’s why I have to find him!” She turned and yelled to the dark. “Mister Kindly!”
“He just had a fright is all. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
“You don’t know that! Those suns, that bitch, they
hurt
him!”
“So what’s your plan? Wander around in the dark looking for something that’s
made of darkness
? Think for one minute!”
Mia blinked hard. Tried to catch her breath. Struggling with the fear. The weight. The chill. So much, Goddess, she’d not felt this in an age. Not since he’d first found her coiled inside that barrel, gifting her the knife that save her life. But what Tric had said outside the Mountain was right: in leaning on the shadowcat for so long, she’d forgotten how to deal with this herself. Her legs were shaking. Her belly full of oily ice. She closed her eyes, willing herself calm. The fear pushed back, laughing. Too big. Too much.
He’d left her. For the first time in as long as she could remember.
I’m alone …
“O, Goddess,” she whispered. “O, Goddess, help me…”
She hung there in the dark. Unable to stumble on. Too frightened to stand still. The image of those accursed suns swimming behind her eyelids every time she blinked. She could still feel it. That impossible hatred. The three eyes of the Everseeing, burning her blind. What had she done to deserve it? What was wrong with her? And what was she going to do if he didn’t come back?
And then she felt it. Strong arms enveloping her. Holding her tight. Tric pressed her to his chest, wrapping her up. Smoothing her hair. Holding her close.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’ll be all right.”
She concentrated on the warmth of his bare skin. The beat of his heart. Eyes closed. Just breathing. Warm and safe and not so alone. She beat it back. The fear. Slowly. Every inch a mile. But she pushed it away, down into the bottom of her feet, stamping it hard as she could. Trying to figure out what all of this meant. Why those suns burned her. What she’d done to invoke the hatred of a god. What had so badly frightened a creature who fed on fear itself.
“Too many questions,” she whispered. “Not enough answers.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Mia sniffed, swallowed thickly. Placed both hands against Tric’s chest and, mustering all the strength she could, pushed herself away. She looked up into his eyes, heart still thumping in her chest. Lips just a few inches from his.
“… Mia?”
The girl breathed deep. Looking down to her shadow on the stone and finding it only as dark as the boy’s beside her. Not dark enough for two anymore. And there, in the black, finally seizing on the answer to her puzzle.
“I think it’s time to recruit the most dangerous man in these halls,” she said.
Tric looked back up to the Hall of Songs, the Shahiid they’d just fled from. “I thought we just ran away from the most dangerous man in these halls.”
Mia tried to smile.
Settled for shaking her head.
“You’ve obviously not spent enough time with librarians, Don Tric.”
1. One of the most feared swordsmen of his age, Antony Caravaggio was a duelist in the court of King Francisco III. An infamous rake with a fondness for young donas of quality, Caravaggio fought no less than forty-three duels over the course of his life, and reportedly sired fourteen bastards. Caravaggio fought with twin blades—one in each hand—pioneering the art of dual-wielding that eventually bore his name.
Ironically, his fondness for twins also proved his downfall: He was killed in a duel by Don Lentilus Varus after spending a night of drunken passion with Varus’s twin daughters, Lucilla and Lucia. Reportedly still intoxicated and too exhausted to heft his rapier, he was skewered by his opponent quite easily—an inglorious end for such an artisan of the blade.
His last words were reportedly “Worth it…”
2. Though Marielle did a splendid job weaving the boy’s face, whenever she studied him, Mia realized she still found Diamo only a touch shy of repulsive. There was something about the Itreyan boy’s stare, something cold and cruel that Mia found altogether ugly.
If it’s truth that the eyes are the window to the soul, Diamo’s opened into a lightless, straw-lined cell.
CHAPTER 21
W
ORDS
The pair stopped off long enough to get Tric another shirt and check in Mia’s room for any sign of the shadowcat. She’d searched the black beneath the bed, the corners and closets, but finding nothing, they hurried off through the spiraling dark. The evemeal bells were ringing, but Mia and Tric headed away from the Sky Altar, deeper into the blackness, until they arrived at the athenaeum. The doors loomed above them, twelve feet high and a foot thick, opening silently with the touch of Mia’s smallest finger.
A familiar scent picked her up and carried her back to happier turns—curled up in her room above Mercurio’s store, surrounded by mountains of her dearest friends. The ones that took her away from the hurt and the garish sunslight and the thought of her mother and brother locked away in some lightless cell.
Books.
Mia looked down to her feet, her shadow preceding her into the library. It was still no darker than Tric’s. No different. The emptiness inside her reared up and bared its teeth, and for a moment she found herself too scared to take another step. But finally, balling her hands into fists, she walked into the athenaeum, inhaled the scent of ink and dust and leather and parchment. Tric stood beside her, overlooking the sea of shelves. Mia breathed in the words. Hundreds, thousands, millions of words.
“Chronicler Aelius?” she called.
No answer. Stillness reigned in this kingdom of ink and dust.
“Chronicler?” she called again. “Hello?”
She stole down the stairs, out onto the main floor and into the forest of shelves. That same sourceless luminance lit the room, but among the books, the light seemed dimmer, the shadows deeper. Wandering into the stacks, the pair found themselves surrounded on all sides. Black shelves reaching up to the ceiling, filled with ornate scrolls and dusty tomes, great thick albums and carven codexes. The voices of scribes and queens. Warriors and saints. Heretics and gods. All of them now immortal.
The pair wandered deeper into the stacks, calling for the chronicler, getting lost amid the shadows. The shelves were a labyrinth, twisting off in every direction. Tric cleared his throat and spoke, his voice echoing in the gloom.
“Should we really be poking about in here alone?”
Mia’s eyes roamed the stacks, heart thumping in her chest. “Scared, my brave centurion?”
“I’m aware the razor-tongued princess of smart-arsery act is just your natural self-defense techniques kicking in, but I should point out I
am
in here helping you.”
Mia glanced at him sideways. “Aye. Apologies.”
“What are we looking for?”
Mia breathed deep. Shook her head.
“When Jessamine held up those suns … it was like someone had set me on fire. Like the light was burning me to cinders. I don’t understand
any
of it, and I’m sick of it. This is the biggest library I’ve ever seen. If there’s a tome on darkin anywhere in the world, it’ll be in here. I need to know what I am, Tric.”
“Did your Shahiid not teach you anything about yourself?”
“I’m guessing Mercurio knows as little about darkin as anyone else here. The Ministry talk about me being touched by the Mother, but none of them seem to actually know what that
means
. And Lord Cassius was as forthcoming as a pile of bricks when I asked him about it in Godsgrave.”
“Lord Cassius is darkin?”
“Lord Cassius is a bastard.”
Mia sucked her lip, gave a grudging shrug.
“… Nice cheekbones, though.”
The girl walked on, calling for the chronicler and getting no reply. Perusing the spines as she passed, she saw that many of the athenaeum’s books were written in tongues she couldn’t speak. Alphabets she’d never seen. Frowning, she stopped before a shelf full of particularly dusty tomes, squinted hard at their titles. She gazed at one in particular, a huge codex bound in black leather, silver letters tracing its spine.
“But that’s impossible,” she breathed.
She pulled the book off the shelf, struggling with the weight. Shuffling over to a small mahogany reading plinth, she gently opened the pages.
“It can’t be…”
Tric peered over her shoulder. “Aye. It’s a book all right.”
“This is Ephaesus.
The Book of Wonders
.”
“Good read?”
“I wouldn’t know. Every copy in existence was incinerated in the Bright Light. This book … it shouldn’t exist.” Mia’s gaze roamed the stacks. “Look, there’s Bosconi’s
Heresies
. And Lantimo the Elder’s treatise
On Dark and Light
.”
“Mia, I’m starting to get the feeling we shouldn’t be in here…”
Tric’s fear echoed her own, but she pushed back against it, hard as she could. “The truth of what I am must be in here somewhere. I’m not leaving ’til we find it.”
“Maybe we should start at the letter S?”
“S?”
“S for stubborn. S for stupid. S for smartarse.”
“S for shut it.”
“See, that’s the spirit.”
The laughter felt good. Helped shake the chill from her belly. But Tric fell silent, grin dying on his lips, frowning into the darkness.
“… Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
Mia tilted her head. And as she hung there in the dark, the faintest vibration rumbled through the floor, up through her boots, and settled at the base of her spine.
“I felt
that
,” she whispered.
It was subtle at first, the tomes shivering in their places. But soon, the shelves took to vibrating, books murmuring, dust falling in gentle clouds. Mia searched the shadows as the tremors worsened, the floor beneath them shuddering. Her heart was hammering now. She didn’t know how deep into the maze they were, but suddenly, this didn’t seem the wisest place to be. Without Mister Kindly in her shadow, her fear came quick. Mouth drying. Pulse thumping.
“What in the Mother’s name
is
that?” Tric asked.
Mia could hear a leathery sound. As if a great bulk were being dragged across the stone. And then a bellowing roar echoed somewhere out in the athenaeum’s dark.
“Let’s get out of here, Mia.”
“… Aye,” she nodded. “Let’s.”
The dragging sound grew louder as the pair hurried back in what Mia hoped was the direction they’d come from. But the forest of shelves all looked the same, rising about them in faceless rows. The pair flinched as another roar sounded out in the dark, Tric snatching Mia’s hand and breaking into a sprint.
“What is it?”
“I don’t even want to know. Run!”
Books were almost falling from their shelves now. As Mia and Tric rounded a corner, she realized they’d worked their way into a dead end. With a curse, they backed away as another roar rang out—closer this time. Too close for comfort. Wanting no part of whatever was about to happen, Mia clutched fistfuls of shadows and tore them up, wrapping herself inside. And though she’d never done it before, surrounded by a darkness that had never known the touch of a sun, she seized Tric by the shoulders and dragged him in with her, enveloping them both.
Mia pulled Tric in tight, huddled against the shelves at their back. This close, she could feel the boy’s heart pounding against his ribs, realized he was just as frightened as she was. Near blind beneath the shroud, Tric sniffed the air, frowning.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I can’t smell it.”
“At all?”
Tric shook his head. “All I get is the books. And you.”
“Bath time?”
“… Is that an invitation?”
“O, fuck off—”
Another roar. Closer. Whatever it was, they couldn’t see well enough under her cloak to run—they’d likely plow face first into a shelf if they tried to bolt. So instead, Mia wrapped her arms around Tric and pulled him down, small as they could be. Fear swelling inside her, flooding the place Mister Kindly once filled. Pressed against the boy’s back and trying not to shiver.