Page 60 of Queen of the Crimson Throne

“A maze with a terrifying backstory,” Kara added.

Nico rubbed his hands together. “Care to enlighten us with said terrifying backstory?”

“It’s only a tale of reckless childhood nonsense,” Lennox said plainly.

“You can’t go into the story without telling them the lore first,” I added. “That’s half of the allure.”

“You’re right. Tell them the story, master story keeper.”Master story keeper, that was a title I hadn’t heard in ages. Not since—not since the last summer Nol was here. He was the one who gave me the ridiculous nickname in the first place. I’ve loved stories for as long as I can remember—particularly anything to do with witch lore. I felt like that’s all I read growing up. There were days when my cousins visited where we’d all sit out in the grove of trees past the garden and read all kinds of books on witch lore, sharing the stories we loved as we read. Kara and Lennox usually got bored after a few hours and left to find something else to do, leaving Nol and I to read for hours on end.

Whenever we’d visit one another, the first thing I’d do was fill him in on all the witch lore I had learned while we were apart. He listened with intent, and one year he bestowed upon me the title of master story keeper.

“They say the catacombs are where Astria and Hecate performed the spell or ritual—or whatever the fuck it was—that allowed Astria to return to the sky and it left a lot of magic residing in the land there,” Lennox continued.

“What was the ritual or whatever it was?” Nico asked.

“Wouldn’t we all like to know?” Kara sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What she means is none of that is documented anywhere. There is only lore,” I explained. “Anyways, whatever was performed there fucked up the land—making it tumultuous. Lore claims the magic created monsters—abominations of magic.”

“And we’re going there?” Declan’s brows pinched as he leaned forward in his chair.

“Yup,” Lennox said dead-faced.

“But you’ve all been there before?” Luka looked between the three of us.

“If you can even call it that,” Lennox added. “We made it to the top of the catacombs, heard one sound, and ran for the hills.”

“You‘re kidding?” Luka laughed.

Lennox shoved him in the shoulder. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t run from an apparent monster when you were fourteen? We barely knew how to hold a weapon or harness our magic. Stories of the catacombs are what our parents told us to keep us from sneaking out at night. I wasn’t taking my chances.” Lennox crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.

“It was Kara who ran first, we had no choice but to follow after her,” I added.

“Hey!” Kara protested. “I had never even held a sword back then, I would have been easy prey!”

“We‘re losing track of the point here,” Declan said, attempting to steer us back on track.

“Anyways, we will need to enter the labyrinth tomorrow and find the center, Astria’s catacomb, where the spellbook should be residing.” My head pounded at the idea of entering that space.

“We should all head to bed. It will be an early morning with a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” Declan concluded.

We all mumbled in agreement before we wished one another goodnight.

When I returned to my room, sleep was the last thing on my mind. I had several hours to research everything I needed to know about the catacombs.

I quickly changed into something more comfortable before heading to the library—my favorite place in the palace. The library took up an entire wing of the palace. Every previous ruler was tasked with making sure the library remained stocked with all the newest text, and the Scribes were tasked with finding any ancient text to add to the collections. Some of them roamedthe continent their entire lives, hoping to find titles to add to the library.

If I wasn’t heir I would have loved to be a traveling Scribe. They never stayed in one place for too long, they got to explore all of Lethenia, in search of books. What a dream.

But that’s exactly what it was. A dream.

I used my key to unlock the towering double metal doors and entered the main room of the library. At this hour the floor was deserted, no one manned the massive circular desk in the center.

I bypassed the desk and ascended one of the twin metal staircases that curved around the desk, heading for the third floor.

When I arrived, I quickly scoured the shelves, having memorized where all of the books resided, hauling every book on the catacombs to my reading nook.

When my mother finally got annoyed half of the library would reside in my bedroom, she had a space created for me in the library where I could read comfortably.

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