Page 78 of The Musician and the Monster

With the door securely closed, she dipped into a low curtsy. “Your highness.”

Malik’s face held a deep frown when she raised her head at the end of the gesture. “Don’t,” he snapped. “You can’t treat me that way. Not here. And don’t you dare call me Alistair either.”

“Why not?” Her brows reached skyward.

“It’s how I’m regarded in the capital. In front of my father. But it’s not what I prefer. And yes, the people here know who I am, but that’s not the point. Secrets only work when people keep them. We had a deal, remember?” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Besides, what if your lovely sister chose today to come for a visit?”

Then she’d likely have one more reason to despise him. Not that it should bother him what a commoner thought. “I agreed to keep your secret about the blood,” Ceridwen said. “But you gave me your name on your own.”

“I don’t—” He opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. How about a peace offering? Something for keeping both secrets?” He raised a thin book in one hand. No, not a book. She knew the size of those pages, the narrow thickness of the binding. Malik held a bound composition. An old one by the weathered and yellowed look of the thing.

Curiosity beckoned like the Goddess herself.

“The first composition I heard you play wasThe Blessings of the Goddess, but you didn’t know the third movement.”

“No one does,” she insisted. “It’s lost.”

His lips twitched. “Perhaps to most people, but there are a few copies left. And one…” He laid the bound composition on the reading table before him.

The impossible sight sent the world tilting beneath her. “Oh Goddess, it can’t be.”Right here, under my nose.

Tears threatened to fall, but she blinked them back and reached for it, tracing a finger along the letters of the title on the cover page. “It was here?”

He gestured to the back wall, to the stacks and sections of books so old they’d nearly come apart when she’d touched them. Such a treasure waited there, and she’d missed it completely.

“Why show this to me?” She could hardly believe it existed, much less that it lay in front of her.

He shrugged. “I thought it might be helpful, especially if you’re going to play for Drystan while he works dark magic.”

Breath caught in her throat. Her mouth gaped before she could stop herself. “He doesn’t…” She shook her head, letting her brows pinch in faked confusion.

“I saw you leave the tower.” He leaned on the table, closing the distance between them. “And I heard the monster in the night. It wasn’t hard to put the two together.”

Well, that was unfortunate. And something she couldn’t refute. Even so, she wouldn’t admit it. “That doesn’t mean—”

He cut her off. “It does. You think I don’t know? There’s no need to lie for him. What I’m still working out, though, is why you would aid him with dark magic? You don’t seem like the type. In fact, you’re about as far from it as they come. So why? What is he doing up there?”

“You’ve never been up there yourself?” she asked, if only to give herself time to think.

“No, I—” He pursed his lips.

“You’re here to watch him, yet you only guess at what he does?”

“Watch him?” He cocked his head to the side. “Yes, of course he told you that.” He sighed. “But he’s been more careful than I expected. Guarded…with everyone but you.”

She could no longer hold his gaze, the one that dug into her soul as if he could pry loose the secrets he so desperately craved. She looked away, down to the table where the various tomes lay open before him. And her heart nearly stopped.

The page his fingers drummed upon contained a large illustration of a simple dagger, and below it, words she could easily read even upside down. The Gray Blade.

Color leeched from her vision as she stared at the impossible sight. Unmoving. Unblinking.

Of all the things that he could read about, he’d chosen that one. It was no mistake. He’d left the book open for her to see. He suspected, if he didn’t already know.

Motion and color rushed back as she pulled in a deep breath.

Malik tipped her chin up until she was forced to look him in the eye. “You might just be the key that saves us all.”

Chills raced down her spine. When had he gotten so close?

---