Cillian’s wrinkled shirt stretches tight across his back as he digs through a cabinet.
“Snooping?” I ask in a sleep-filled voice. I clear my throat as I sit up a little.
He gives me a mischievous smirk over his shoulder. “If I was going to snoop, I’d do it when you weren’t in the same room.” He resumes his search.
The moment feels so normal, so natural. For a moment I pretend that we could have a life like this. That there’s no worry about whether his family is lying to me. No divine requirement to become Caspien’s queen, a duty that makes every fiber of me want to run.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“I thought I’d make you some tea. You feel warmer to the touch, but it could help make sure that chill doesn’t return.”
The melancholy retreats, and a smile breaks out across my face as I watch him try to tend to me, digging through the glass jars I brought from my flat.
“And what do you have to make that tea?” I eye the medicinal herbs he has set out. I giggle as he names off a few things that are for completely different ailments.
“Okay, okay.” He gives me a feigned look of affront. “What should I be using?”
After I list off what my body needs, he steeps the tea and settles into the bed next to me. “How are you feeling?” he asks, as I blow on the steaming liquid.
“Much better.” I eye him over the mug as I take a sip. One corner of his lips tips up into a sexy smirk. My eyes jump back to his. I shake my head a little to clear the thoughts. “Will you tell me about the ancient archives?”
“Why don’t I just show you instead.”
Cillian pulls backa single large mahogany door. The hinges groan, like the entry hasn’t been used in a long time. Peering around him, I stare down a dark staircase barely illuminated by fae fire.
As we wind down the dark stone stairs, the deeper we go, the mustier the smell. The stairs are slick with algae, and my legs are still weak and unsteady from the night before. I run my hand along the edge of the wall to help my balance, determined not to fall and make a fool of myself.
Without a word, Cillian places a hand on my lower back to steady me as we descend deeper under the castle.
The stone steps end and open into a narrow corridor lined with a handful of doors. He leads me to the second door on the left. The moment his free hand makes contact with the door knob, a vibration radiates through the corridor.
Cillian grabs one of the fae fire torches from the wall and leads us into a dark room. As he places the torch in a metal pit in the center of the space, the room comes to life, fae fire winking in glass-paned bookcases. I can barely make out the ancient scrolls and leather-bound books inside through the layers of dust obscuring the glass.
I make a lap around the small room, taking in the date markers on a few of the panel doors. Running my fingers across the two drafting tables on the right, I leave dust tracks behind.
“Doesn’t look like this room is visited often,” I muse. “No Cyndr?”
“No.” Cillian is taking in the bookcases as intently as I am. “I was shown these archives as a child during a history lesson. I’ve never actually been down here to research anything myself. And obviously they aren’t maintained by the staff.”
I walk back around to the shelf that appears to have the oldest of the parchments and peer in through the grime. “May I?” I ask.
He gives me a quick nod, and I grip the golden handle and pull. The musty smell of old parchment and leather assaults me when I peer inside. I sigh when I don’t see any sense of organization to the piles of aged literature in front of me. Again, I’m wishing for the helpful little dryrd.
Gingerly lifting a stack of scrolls, hoping the whole lot won’t tumble from the shelves, I move to the tables to unroll one. Cillian takes up the table next to me, opening a leather-bound book that is clearly from a more recent time.
As he flips through the book, I study the first page of my scroll—a map of Castara. I scan the diagram of our lands, taking in the Kingdom of Varethiel longer than the rest. When I shuffle to the next page, there is a map of Pollara.
“I’ve never seen the other worlds.” I run my hand over the depiction. “Have you ever been?” I ask Cillian without looking up.
“Not often. A few times with my family for royal events.” He comes over and looks over my shoulder at the table. “Pollara is beautiful. Their crystal and salt mines are like nothing else I’ve ever seen.” He points to an area on the map. “The stars at night look as if they’re so close you could reach up and touch them.” He pauses and then peels the page back to a third map.
Alhena—the Vampire world. Even the image appears to be drawn darker than the others.
“Royal visits to Alhena are even rarer.” I don’t have to be able to see his face to sense the change in him. The tension is rolling off of him. “It is not somewhere I’d like to visit again.”
“Why?” I instinctively whisper, like the vampires will be able to hear me through the parchment.
“It’s a vicious, brutal world. Humans are still the vampire world’s main source of food.”
