Page 60 of Brimstone
The pale ghost of his reflection kept pace beside him in the obsidian walls, the image of him so near perfect in the glassy black stonework that I almost had trouble telling them apart. My doppelgänger strode beside me, too, gait confident, head held high. When my hands moved to the silver-tipped daggers at my hips, her hands moved, too. When I turned to stare at her, she stared coolly back at me, her face a mask of indifference, but Irecognized the weariness in her. There were shadows beneath her blue eyes.
We’d hadnewsthis evening. The kind of troubling news that caused panic. Lorreth had procured a swift-winged hawk from somewhere and was using it to trade messages with the temporary camp on the other side of the mountain range. Every evening, they would update us with our losses and an estimation of total land lost to the rot . . . and so far, the numbers were not good.
Over thirteen hundred dead.
More infected.
Huge swaths of land blackened and dead.
Teams of warriors were riding out each morning, Danya among them. They were cornering and dismembering as many of the infected feeders as they could, but it wasn’t enough.
A tide of destruction was creeping across the land, and I was stuck here at the Black Palace, shackled by a crown I didn’t want and a court of high bloods who didn’t wantme. It was a sacrifice that had to be made, though. If I refused to lead the Blood Court, then another high blood would assume the role, and that would be far,farworse . . .
The sound of our heels striking the polished floor echoed loudly as we made our way deeper into the bowels of the palace. Lorreth was with Carrion in the training hall, attempting to whip him into shape, and without the warrior at my side to remind them of their manners, it seemed as though the members of the Blood Court had taken to staring. Groups of high bloods halted their hushed conversations, their eyes carving chunks out of me before resentfully dropping to their knees as we passed.
“Ignore them,” Taladaius said, as we rounded a corner and found ourselves alone. We stood at the foot of a long, steep flight of stairs that rose into darkness. “The Blood Court is an archaic place. Its members are like insects trapped in amber. Nothingchanges here. We are predictable in our cruelty. Predictable in our violence. It’s change that is feared most in a place like this. They aren’t worried about you, per se. More . . . what you represent.”
I hummed thoughtfully, glancing back in the direction of the well-dressed vipers who had been sizing me up so openly. “I know I’ve given you discretionary rule here, Tal. But I still have ultimate power over this entire court. Have you thought that maybe theyshouldbe worried about me?”
My maker—mynew friend—hovered in place, foot placed on the first step of the staircase, something dark and intrigued glittering in his pale gray eyes. “I have found myself wondering that question, actually,” he mused.
“And?” A lot hinged on this moment. There was so much unspoken between us. He had saved me and brought me here. He had placed the crown on my head and given me this power . . . and he had never once asked me what I intended to do with it. I was mated to an enemy of Sanasroth. I had already decommissioned their army, as it were. At any moment, it was within my purview to defang the entire court and bring the black spires of Ammontraíeth crashing down on all their heads.
Tal was more aware of this than anyone.
And yet he shrugged.
“I know you hope to save the high bloods who live here, Saeris. To instill in them some kind of belated moral compass. I know you hope to eradicate the horde and put them in the ground eventually, after you’ve given the court some time to get used to the idea. Apart from that . . . I try not to bother myself with the politics of regents, Your Highness.” His voice held no emotion, but the slight bow he offered me gave the impression that he was beingverysarcastic. “I’m but a lowly Lord of Midnight. It would be impertinent of me to second-guess the motives of our esteemed queen.”
I was puffing and clutching a stitch in my side by the time we reached the top of the stairs. Five hundred and seventy-three steps. That’s how far I’d gotten before I’d given up counting and focused on my breathing; apparently, even half-vampires didn’t possess a bottomless well of energy.
“Why the hell . . . do you guys always insist on . . . making your libraries so fucking . . . hard to get to?”
Tal wasn’t nearly as out of breath as me, but it was satisfying to see he wasn’t totally unaffected by the climb. “It’s a Fae tradition, actually. Malcolm rejected most of the old conventions when he realized what he had become, but this was one he held to. Our elders considered knowledge a sublime resource. They decided that the closer to the heavens a court’s gathered knowledge could be housed, the better. There was also some consideration for the idea that the harder you had to work for the knowledge you were seeking, the more you had earned the right to benefit from it. Hence . . .” He gestured to the fifteen-foot-tall lacquered doors in front of us. They were black with panels brushed in gold leaf; twin hissing snakes cast in gleaming gold made for door handles, fangs bared, tongues forking from their open mouths.
Tal wrapped a hand around the snake closest to him, using it to pull the door open. “This was once one of Malcolm’s favorite places in the palace. He began to hate it after a while, though. He stopped coming, which made it one ofmyfavorite places.”
“Close that damned door! Donotlet the cat out!” The croaky command came from far away. Female? I wasn’t sure. The voice was too rough to tell. Tal winced, ushering me into the library; he scanned the floor, presumably watching for a cat that may or may not be trying to escape.
Once we were inside and the door was closed, the vampire visibly relaxed.
The Ammontraíeth library was beautiful. It wasn’t as large as the one at the Winter Palace, and there was no glass dome overhead to display the night sky, but that didn’t matter. All libraries contained magic. Even libraries that didn’t specialize in such things. Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even. But magic hung thick in the air in this library. It was no one thing I could pinpoint. Not the way the evenlight bathed the spines of the books that sat in the stacks. Not the way the strange pale green fire that burned in the grate by the windows seemed to flicker backward, or down, or . . .inon itself. And certainly not the little birds that flitted and swooped through the air, buzzing the top of Tal’s head as he approached the long table that ran the length of the room.
“Oh. Oh, wow. Is that bird made of . . .” I squinted, trying to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
Tal snatched the tiny bird that was dive-bombing his head from out of the air. He held it out for me to see. “Paper,” he said. “Folded to represent one of Yvelia’s rare breeds. They’re called stargazers.”
The paper bird’s wings rustled as it tried to escape Tal’s grasp. It opened and closed its beak, pecking at the vampire’s hand, clearly annoyed at having been caught.
“It looks so real,” I whispered.
“It is real. It lives here, in the library, among the books. It lays its eggs. It rears its young. It will die here one day.” The bird seemed to object to that statement; it pecked the back of Tal’s hand even harder. The vampire tutted, smiling softly as he raised the little stargazer up and opened his hand, releasing it. It was gone in a flash of white, pinwheeling off into the stacks.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of them up there, nesting in the rafters. They’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Over a thousand years, probably. Someone foldedmating pairs a long time ago and gave them a spark of magic. They kept hold of that magic, and passed it on, and passed it on again.”
“But . . . how?” It didn’t seem possible. “They’re justpaper.”
Tal was solemn, letting his head hang as he pulled out a chair at the end of the long reading table and slowly sat down. He stacked his hands on his stomach, storm-gray gaze finding me at last. “Aren’t we just the same? Made from the same material as the sea and the dirt and the sky? Folded from the scraps of the gods and entrusted with a spark of magic that makesusreal?”
