Page 74 of The Nightmare Bride
“Which is...something you enjoy,” I said, more statement than question.
He started toward me. I swore I caught Amryssa smiling from the corner of my eye.
“It absolutely is.” Kyven came close. His voice dropped, his vowels filling out even further. “And the pricklier the challenge, the more liable I am to throw myself at it. I’m especially fond of the ones that seem impossible at first blush.”
A heatwave rolled up my spine. Were we still talking about books? Something told me not.
A sound like a suppressed snicker broke into my awareness. I glanced around to find gray eyes and black ones taking our measure. For all that the colors differed, both pairs shone with repressed mirth.
My gaze narrowed. Great. Lunk and Amryssa were clearly in cahoots, now.
“Right.” I turned back to Kyven, my tone brusque. “Why don’t you start at the other end, then, and I’ll stay here. We’re looking for...ledgers, maybe. Diaries. Anything that might chronicle the years around the start of the nightmares. Or that might mention the dagger.”
He nodded and moved off. I watched him go, earning myself another round of giggles from the peanut gallery.
I briefly wrestled with the compulsion to flip Lunk and Amryssa the bird, then stalked to the nearest bookcase without lowering myself to their incredibly childish level. Moral high road, and all that. Because wasn’t I just a paragon of fucking virtue.
Hours dragged by. I flipped through books and books and more books, but progress was slow. At one point, Vick wandered in to survey the library. His attention moved from me to Kyven, a sneer twisting his lips.
I frowned. What wasthatabout? Every time I saw him, he seemed increasingly resentful, and now I wished he would just get on with his plans to rob us elsewhere.
Or whatever the hell he was doing.
By mid-afternoon, my back ached. The books had no apparent order—fiction was jumbled with treatises on inter-territory commerce and textbooks on astronomy. I even found a volume about something called paleography, which turned out to be the study of ancient handwriting.
I tossed that one aside, frustrated. How did Olivian get anything done in here?
Then again, he mostly didn’t. He spent his time holed up in his study, arguing with the Lady Marche’s ghost.
With an aggrieved sigh, I thought better of my desecration of literature and bent to retrieve the paleography book. It had tumbled beneath an armchair, and when I reached for it, I spotted a bundle of withered weeds beside the splayed pages.
Wait. Not weeds.
My breathing picked up. No, those were the peonies Kyven had given me on our wedding night. I’d ditched them beneath the chair, then forgotten them completely.
I snuck a furtive glance, but he stood atop the sliding ladder by the window, thumbing through a massive tome. Meanwhile, Lunk and Amryssa huddled around a boardgame they’d unearthed.
Nobody was paying me any attention, so I snatched the flowers. The stems had shriveled, but the blossoms retained some volume, their champagne petals preserved in a perpetual state of bloom.
My mouth edged downward at the corners. How fitting that Kyven had chosen a flower that barely lasted. What was it he’d called me the other night?
My eight-week wife.
Eight weeks. Just a blip. Ephemeral and meaningless. Like these peonies.
“I think I’ve found something.”
I whirled, one hand flying to my chest when I found the subject of my ruminations standing right behind me. I shoved the flowers under my skirts, then winced at the snap of breaking petals. “What is it?”
He gave me a puzzled look. Shit. I’d spoken much too loudly for the rain-drenched gloom of the library. I composed my face, trying not to look too deranged.
“It’s only a sentence.” Kyven hefted the weighty tome. “And I’m lucky to have seen it at all. I only happened upon the right page. Otherwise, this book holds nothing but the lethally boring ramblings of some old steward who apparently considered the daily state of the larder to be worthy of immortalizing in ink.”
I blinked, digesting that. The peonies crackled again, and I forced a concealing cough. “Okay. Tell me what it says.”
“It’s dated from thirty years ago.” He read aloud in an immaculate Oceansgate accent. “Aside from waging war on the larder’s rats, I worry for the Lady Marche. She copes with her childlessness by writing feverishly in that little brown diary of hers, as if enough scribbled pleas to Zephyrine might buy her a babe.”
Childlessness. My mind swiveled and swooped around the word. I hadn’t realized Amryssa’s mother had had difficulties with her conception. Then I raked over the rest, and a spark simmered in my chest. “A ‘little brown diary?’”
