Page 115 of Promise of Darkness
He turns, and I catch a glimpse of blood welling on his sleeve.
“You’re hurt.” I grab his arm, turning it this way and that before he captures my hand.
“I’m fine, Vi. It’s just a scratch.”
“This is what you get for trying to lure me into dark alleys.”
He peers around the wall, scanning the street before turning back to me with a tired smile. “Well, if I thought you wouldn’t simply slam the door in my face when we returned, I’d have waited until we reached the palace.”
I ignore that.
“What in the Horned One’s name were they?”
The prince sheathes his knife, his face hard and his brow furrowed. I can tell what his answer will be before he even says it.
“I don’t know.”
27
Kyrian drew Thiago aside the second we returned, and the pair of them are holed up in Kyrian’s study. The Prince of Tides was furious to discover the defenses of his city had been breached, but apparently, my insight isn’t needed.
Rather than spend hours cursing him in my room, I head for the Prince of Tides’ library.
If the men are going to whisper secrets together, then I’m going to see if the prince is telling the truth.
Slipping through the double doors that leads to the library, I’m so focused on the mission that, when I finally light the lantern I brought, the library nearly stuns me.
It’s a circular room, and books line the shelves. We’re on the second floor, and as I head to the rail and glance over it, I realize there’s another circular row of shelves below me, and looking up through the hollow tower, more above me.
“Erlking’s cock,” I breathe.
Say what I like about Kyrian, but his library’s almost gorgeous enough to make a girl want to snuggle up to him. There have to be more books here than in every other library I’ve ever seen combined.
It’s going to take me half a century to find the books I want, unless he’s got them catalogued in a predictable manner.
I brush my fingertips over the leather spines of the books, making my way along the shelves and searching for books that might contain any mythology on the Old Ones.
The mark of the creature’s fingers still itches on my arm, the burn white against my skin. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and the handprint still tingles as if I’ve been marked somehow.
I need to know what it was.
And I need to know more about thisleanabh an dàn, if I’m to save him or her.
Kyrian’s library is ridiculously extensive for a piratical lout. There’s a number of bestiaries, historical manuals, and explorer’s journals on the second level, but nothing quite details what I’m looking for. Down or up?
I glance over the rail again. It’s dark on the lower level, with locked glass cases displaying rare—and probably dangerous—books. If I were a betting woman, I’d say that’s where he keeps his most important books.
Slipping down the stairs, I set the lantern on one of the shelves and examine the books. Whatever that creature was that attacked us, it’s got to be Unseelie.
The problem is that the Unseelie kingdom is comprised of everything the Seelie Alliance deems impure.
All the other races that were cast into the darkness were gathered under the rule of Sorcha, the first Unseelie queen. Hordes of creatures, vicious and vile, flocked to her banners. Dozens of creatures unknown crawled out of the northern forests for a chance to go to war against the Seelie, and many others were spawned when the Horned One cracked open the earth and unleashed them from the Underworld.
It could be anything, and yet the thought of its frozen touch tickles against my memory, as if I heard something once and just need to see mention of it again to prompt my recall.
Otherwise, I’m probably going to wake in the middle of a restless night with the answer on my lips.
Hours later, when the candle flickers low, fat globules of wax weeping down its side, I finally find an answer to my riddle. There’s a grimoire in a glass cabinet with a lock that’s easy to pick open. The cover is a leather so soft I don’t want to know what’s it’s made from, and the pages whisper when I slowly open it. Touching it gives me the creeps, but that old, familiar feeling is back.
