Page 60 of The War of Wings
My steps turned heavier, my jaw tightening. How the fuck could I forget?
???
“Well, I may have made an enemy of the King and Queen,” Petra called as she pushed through the doors of the library. She paused, taking in the library’s atrium. The space teemed with greenery, a direct contrast to the arid land that surrounded Araqina. A column of midmorning daylight streamed through the domed glass ceiling, illuminating the sandstone walls that climbed with flowering vines. And jutting from either side of the atrium were two wings, each filled to the brim with row upon row of bookshelves. “Holy shit,” Petra remarked. In an alcove, a librarian jolted at Petra’s language, her book falling to the rugwith an unceremoniousthud. “Apologies,” she muttered, giving an awkward half-smile as she made her way to me.
My perfectly vulgar queen.
“And how could you possibly make an enemy of the King and Queen?” I asked, leaning down to brush my lips against hers.
“Let’s just say they probably won’t approve of my choice of dress for the ball. But I bet you will.” I raised a brow, heat flaring between us before she turned back to gawk at the atrium again, her eyes trailing to the stacks of books. “This is fucking unbelievable,” she whispered, but then her face fell. “How the hell are we supposed to find anything in here?”
I gestured to each of the library’s wings. “That wing is fiction, this one is nonfiction. I tried to find a few that looked promising.”
Turned out, a dress fitting took a lot longer than I thought it would, so I had plenty of time to pick through the shelves. A small stack of my finds was set on the table:A Brief History of Araqina: The First City Created by the Saints; The War of Kings;andProphecies of the Realm.
Her face fell further then, her lips twisting as she peered at the books. “I’m not even sure what we should be looking for. Something that will help us defeat Malosym? Who would write that? Who would even know what to write?”
Miles pushed through the doors then, his forehead still glistening with sweat as he prowled toward us. He didn’t spare a glance to any part of the atrium.
“Hey, Miles,” Petra called with a careful smile. I hated seeing her tiptoe around him like this.
“Hello, your Majesty.” The words weren’t cheerful by any means, but it felt like the first flash of him — therealhim — I’d seen since Eserene. Something about the way he said it gave me hope. We hadn’t lost him just yet.
I glanced back over at the pile of books I’d arranged on the table. Could there possibly be something in one of them thatcould help Miles? Had a book been written that could give some clue as to how to pull evil from a person?
“Okay,” Petra said with a deep sigh, pulling me from my own head. “Let’s see what we can find.”
???
We found nothing. Four days spent in the library and all we had to show for it were sore necks and a few scribbled lines on parchment. Most of what I’d written down I already knew. Some were bits of information I didn’t think were actually important in the grand scheme of things, but looking at a nearly empty piece of parchment was spiking my anxiety, so I did what I could to fill it.
According to the prophecy uncovered by the ancient Bloodsingers of Kruria, only the Saint of Pain can definitively identify the Daughter of Katia upon her arrival in the Human Realm.
While some believe Katia was the first being to lay eyes on the New World, many scholars believe it was actually Rhedros.
The great scholars of old believe that while the Saints are powerful on their own, their relics are the conduits by which their power is utilized.
The few snippets we found about Malosym were not helpful. Nothing about his weaknesses or vulnerabilities, only his existence. Nothing about how he managed to slip from the Old World to the New World, just that he was the reason the Old World had to be burned, because his evil was too strong.
Moonlight streamed through the panes of the atrium’s ceiling, turning the greens to silvers and browns to blues. A coolbreeze blew through the windows that were open to a large terrace, the nighttime chill a respite from the heat of Araqina. The librarians had long since left, but the three of us remained.
Petra had dozed off, her cheek resting gently against her arms where they were folded on the table. Miles was feverishly flipping through another massive book.
“Anything?” I murmured to him, watching Petra to make sure she didn’t stir.
“No,” Miles answered quickly, his finger moving over lines of text.
I lowered my voice even more. “Have you been looking for anything about…” I trailed off, afraid to speak the words.
Miles paused, his teeth grinding back and forth before his dark eyes landed on me. “Yes.”
I dipped my chin as Miles continued flipping through the book in front of him. I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? The clock was ticking, we all knew that. But we didn’t know when time would run out.
The stack of discarded books on the table taunted me, each of their pages thoroughly pored over only to find nothing.Nothing.We’d found nothing. Frustration pulled at my chest. Exhaustion muddied my brain.
With a grumble deep in my throat, I looked back down at my book. I’d been scouring the pages ofRelics of the Saintssince yesterday, going line by line through Noros’ chapters. Something herehadto be of use, but nothing was obvious enough. Noros’ sword, Aegrabane, was his only relic. With Aegrabane, he had the power to cause or ease pain. My eyes blurred as I read the same lines over and over again.
Until I came upon a chapter titledRelics in the Human Realm: Theories and Suppositions.Petra began to stir just as my posture stiffened.
