Page 86 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
“Unless they had some enchanted stone…But that would have needed to be endowed with magic constantly,” Allie said.
“The only piece of magic was the book.”
“Unless Mara and Falor somehow found a very specific site brimming with concealment magic that nobody has ever heardof…” Allie shrugged one slender shoulder, pursing her lips against the truth.
“There were no wards,” I said the words she hesitated to speak.
My voice was hollow.
Inside, I raged.
Sixteen years.
Sixteen long years of being lied to. Manipulated with fear by the very people who had the duty to protect and care for me.
I hadn’t questioned my parents as a five year-old child. How could I? They were gods to me, ones I loved and despised at the same time.
If there had never been a warding spell, then me stepping beyond the nonexistent barrier hadn’t broken the magic. Hadn’t sounded some alarm our enemies had detected.
I hadn’t been the one to bring death to our little cabin.
I wasn’t the reason my parents had died.
As soon as the realization sliced through the guilt, another thought speared me, straight to the core.
I jumped out of my seat, pain and sorrow pulsing in the back of my mind.
“If I didn’t deactivate the wards…how did they find us?”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
EVIE
Nothing.
My library was littered with open books, half my own, half snuck out by Goose from the Grand Archives in Phoenix Peak, which was under the advisors’ protectionandunbreachable for outsiders.
Thousands of pages.
Millions of words.
Andnothing.
No hint at how the assassins had found us.
I read until I saw dark spots. As the nights turned into days, and I fell asleep on top of precious ancient tomes bound in dragon hide, I was less certain aboutwhy.
I thought I was on to something when I found the Almanac of Malevolence, a truly sinister book about all the different ways you could kill someone and what each style represented. You wanted to send a message about a Clan member who stuffed their own vaults while the civilians went hungry? Youdisemboweled them. Someone broke your heart and you truly wanted revenge? Perfectly reasonable to cuttheirheart out, according to Clan law. Some Clans even had their preferred assassination methods; the Northern ones liked to smash skulls.
Horrible pages. Now I understood why my parents hadn’t allowed me more than a few books to read.
There was no mention about slitting someone’s neck, apart from it being a very effective and fast method, like Allie had said.
I closed the book with a thump and rested my head on top of it, hair cocooning my face.
I’d thought about researching warding spells, but since that had been a blatant lie meant to keep me stuck and docile, that road didn’t have any answers, only bitter memories.
