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I was smoothing the dark green cotton and debating hair pins when Ellena found me.
“Oh, do you need help, my lady?” she asked. It was an i
I shook my head, but she already had the hairbrush in hand. She gripped my shoulder hard, moving me sideways and attacking my hair.
Will you stop? I signed, twisting to grab the brush. By the Light, if this was how she brushed the Sisters’ hair, no wonder they’d been eager to foist her off on me.
But Ellena grabbed it back, scowling at me. “You know if you don’t let me work, they’re going to send me away? That bloodwitch has made it obvious that if I don’t do something, they won’t keep a useless mouth to feed. I’d rather brush your hair than work in the kitchens again, so just let me get on with it.”
Why would you care? I thought you wanted to go back to Argent. You’ve made it clear you don’t care to wait on me, any more than I care to have you do it. I tipped my head as I signed, and Ellena cursed softly under her breath.
“By the Lady, are you asking why? You worked for the Sisters. You know it’s terrible. This place might be a Light-forsaken hell, but at least it’s softer than living under their whip. I’m not going to let you ruin that for me just because you think you can do better.”
I winced as she pulled the brush through my hair with particular roughness.
“You’re not better than me,” she whispered. “You’re the same as I am. The Sisters sent me to slave away for you, so that’s what you get. I’m not going to lose a comfortable situation because you’re suddenly so high and mighty.”
There was a sudden pinch on the nape of my neck—a flare of pain so intense I thought she’d jabbed one of the jeweled hair pins into my skin.
I clapped a hand to the spot, whirling around to stare at her, but she held nothing but the hairbrush. She leaned back, looking at me like I was the insane one.
“What now? Too rough for your precious princess skin?”
I took my hand away, looking at my fingers. There was no blood; my hair wasn’t even tangled enough to have a knot that would’ve been yanked out. The brush itself only held a few clinging hairs.
Had she pinched me?
I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, mastering my anger.
As much as I disliked her, I understood her. We were the same. We were both unwanted castoffs, our lives reduced to how hard we could work.
It was sheer chance I’d ended up with a title and a husband who ruled a quarter of Veladar. It could just as easily have been me, sent with Antonetta to serve as her maid, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed waiting hand and foot on a girl I’d scrubbed floors with, either.
So I would not go out of my way to ruin Ellena’s life. Not after what I’d seen.
If Bane thought she was hurting me deliberately… there was no telling what might happen.
I held up my hands in a peacemaking gesture, and backed away several steps to the journal. I flipped to a clean page, unwilling to share any of my conversations with Bane, one-sided though they were, and wrote in Veladari, using the common alphabet all servants were taught to read.
I’m not trying to ruin you. You’re right, we are the same, and I don’t want to be waited on. If you want to stay here in a good position, then just pretend you’re dressing me. I won’t tell you if you don’t. But I don’t want your help.
I tapped it forcefully and waited for Ellena to read it. She looked up at me, mouth twisted with suspicion, but finally relented and dropped the brush in my hands. “Fine.”
I exhaled in relief as she took the stairs back up to the garret, and finished my hair myself. That was almost too easy, but anything was better than having her breathe down my neck, mocking me with every word.
My skin still stung where she’d pinched me, and I settled for a loose, fluffy braid down my back to hide the redness. I folded over the page in the journal so Bane wouldn’t inadvertently see it, tucked it in my leather bag, and balanced my pen behind my ear.
He was waiting patiently in the hall when I emerged, and I managed to smile.
“I’m going to draw out the suspense, and have you eat first,” he said, offering me his arm.
You’re a cruel man, I told him, and leaned into him, looping my arm through his.
Despite my misgivings at being given even more things I’d done nothing but marry him to earn, I ate quickly, my curiosity now an inferno about what he wanted to show me.
He wasn’t hiding his own eagerness well. His foot bounced under the table, and he had to stop his fingers from drumming on the table. I raised a brow the third time I heard the tak tak of claws on wood, and Bane self-consciously curled his hand towards himself.
Don’t be shy, I teased him, eating the last bite of honeyed bread on my plate. Show me what it is!
He stood, nearly knocking over his chair, and produced a length of silk from the pocket of his shirt. “You’ve got to keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.”
I stared at the silk. Are you going to blindfold me?
He probably didn’t know the word, but it was self-explanatory: my fingers flattened and dragged over my eyes. Bane hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
Do what you must do, then. The suspense will kill me soon. I turned around, and felt the heat of him against my back as he lowered the soft fabric over my face. I closed my eyes under them obediently as he tied a big bow in the back, and reached out for his hands.
Claws met my fingers, and Bane led me out of the dining room.
I tried to map the keep as we walked: he went right first, towards the Tower of Winter. Was it something in his room?
And then he nudged me right again, then left. We must’ve been on the left side of the keep, between the Winter and Autumn towers, a place I hadn’t explored yet.
So I turned to my other senses; I smelled Bane’s scent first and foremost, wood and smoke, and beneath that, beeswax and wood polish. It was quiet, my footsteps the only sound; Bane’s feet were silent.
He paused, and I heard a door opening; even with the dark silk over my eyes, my eyelids turned red from the brilliance of a thousand candles.
“I listened to what you wrote,” he said, his voice suddenly gruff and apprehensive as he led me forward a few steps. “You know six languages, and you were going to be a Librarian.”
When my feet met plush carpet, my heart started thumping unevenly, a burst of excitement jolting my stomach.
There was a scent in the air here, unmistakable and beloved.
“We have no Librarian here, not since the last Scrollkeeper was killed. I ca
Please, for the love of the Light, let me take the blindfold off, I begged, and Bane took my hands again, halting my words.
“I’m not asking you to put aside your own studies and desires. But I thought, if you were hoping to learn more, I could do this one thing to help. To help both of us.”
Did he feel my pulse racing? His fingertips were pressed to the underside of my wrists, where he surely felt the galloping beat.
I heard him inhale, and squeezed his fingers as tightly as I could.
“All right. You can take it off now.”
My hands were trembling as I tore off the blindfold, blinking in the burst of brilliant amber light, frozen in wonder.
The scent of books permeated the air, the library a beautiful three stories of shelves stretching to the arched ceiling; I took in the multitude of spines in a blur, a hand over my mouth.
He thought it wasn’t enough? That the Cathedral of Silver could do better?
No. This was a treasure trove. This was the gold in a dragon’s hoard.
I tried to sign to him, but my thoughts were spi
“From what you told me of your studies, I had an old project of mine brought out for you.” Bane took one of my fluttering hands and led me forward, to a broad polished table with several books laid out, and a small pile of half-burned scrolls. “None of us speak or read this now. I gave up attempting any translation years ago; I don’t have the mind for languages, and Wyn is too involved in other studies to make the effort. But the treasury of this keep contained these remnants from the old empire. They’re damaged, and there’s not much left, but they’re yours now.”
My lungs stopped working entirely. I reached out to touch the cover of the topmost book, my hands shaking violently.
It was bound in red leather, much like my journal, but the gilt inlay of the title almost resembled runes, spiny and yet delicate, the High Tongue of the vampires.
In the Cathedral library, we’d had a single document, mostly destroyed by water; this was beyond treasure. In these few books was an entire lost world, a culture drowned in blood and fire and sent below, a forgotten history.
There were no words for it.
I drew in a breath, then another, fighting back tears. To think that if I hadn’t been the first to answer the Eldest’s call that fateful morning… I would not have Bane.
I would not have a trove of the most rare and extinct language in the world to unravel.
Never would I have found my heart’s desires.