Page 139 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
I didn’t care.
I ran faster than I knew was possible, the trees and shrubs whirling around me. Only when my knees wobbled and my lungs screamed did I stop.
I crumpled to the ground, twisting onto my back.
I was soaked to the bone, with a nasty cough at the back of my throat, and cuts on my arms and neck.
But I was staring at the clear sky slowly turning mauve in the sunset.
A startled laugh ripped from my chest. It went on and on, until my stomach hurt and my breaths came out short.
I’d survived–and I’d stolen the scrolls.
Chapter
Forty-Three
EVIE
Ididn’t fuss over the morality of stealing from my own future Clan as I lathered healing ointment on the shallow cuts on my hands, eyes glued to the scrolls still nestled in my satchel.
A rotten scent clung to them, no matter how much jasmine perfume Goose had splashed in the room, muttering a civilian protective incantation that was nothing but superstition and lacked any and all magic. He insisted on scouring the house for a proper hiding place, though already had one in mind, high up in the web of beams. Hard to access, impossible to spot.
I gasped as a wave of anger suddenly burned through me and wouldn’t stop pulsing. For the life of me, I didn’t know why.
I was exhausted after climbing for my life and using my power. The way the advisors controlled access to knowledge in the Blood Brotherhood Clan had infuriated me, but it had receded to a distant echo now.
If anything, I should have been feeling apprehension. The scrolls taunted me with their fragile edges. How many decades–centuries–had they been coiled tight? What if they disintegrated in my hands, their knowledge vanishing in a cloud of dust like the one that had tried to choke me?
I didn’t even know if these held information about the Quoriliths.
There was only one way to find out.
After the ointment sunk into my skin, I reached for the satchel.
Then stiffened.
I felt him before I heard him.
In a whirlwind, I stuffed the satchel underneath the bed, like I was covering up a crime scene. I turned to the window just as Zandyr’s shadow ascended.
One look, that’s all it took.
One narrowed glance that slashed my way with an edge of reproach that cut to my bones.
He knew.
Zandyr knew I’d been in the Archives building.
From the grim twist of his lips when I sucked in a harsh breath at the absoluteweightof that look, he knew that I knew he knew.
Neither of us seemed in a hurry to admit that.
So the game began.
Zandyr stepped into the room with royal grace, taking his sweet time to approach me. I was uncomfortably aware of the scrolls stinking underneath my bed.
“Hello, menace,” he said with one ofthosegrins. The ones he threw my way back at the wedding. Like he was sizing up an opponent.
