“Soboring,” she said, huffing and rolling her eyes.
Glad to have chased off a little of her anxiety, he leaned toward her. “I seem to remember that priest-in-training, Perry, saying something about how rubbish you were at paying attention in theology?”
She let out a wary laugh. “I may have sneaked off a time or two. I definitely missed the classes where we learned what a lot of these words mean.”
Damien sighed. “Hmm, very naughty.”
“Oh, yes, she’sabsolutelynefarious,” Xander scoffed, disgusted by probably a few things at that moment. “Next thing you know, they’ll be inducting her into the Grand Order. Look, kitten, are you saying you can’t read it and you’ll need to make your usefulness up some other way?”
Amma shook her head. “No, I can! It’s just going to take some time, translating and puzzle solving. Every word has multiple meanings because of all the anagrams from Key. Maybe if I had some help?” She turned to look behind her and focused in on the singular shelf of books. “May I?”
Xander waved her on. Damien watched as Amma walked away from them, captivated by the exposed skin of her back, the dress tied at her neck and open down to her waist, then he quickly pulled his gaze away.
The blood mage across the table smirked knowingly, mimicked gripping onto himself with a fist, and pumped his hand at the edge of the table. Damien growled in the back of his throat, pointed to himself, dragged his finger across his own throat, and jabbed it at Xander. Licking his lips, Xander only grinned wider and nodded, more intensely working the hand gesture.
When Amma turned, they both straightened and froze, but she was focused on a thick, old tome in her hands, so big she had to carry it like a tray. She placed it carefully on the table, but it was heavy, and when she opened it to its middle with a rougher thunk, dust erupted from the long-unopened pages. Damien and Xander both backed away, and Amma waved off the dust with quick apologies.
“I did pay a little attention in some classes, and I know these Empyrean songs by heart—well, mostly—so, I can use these to fill in the translation gaps.”
Xander looked pleased enough at that, sitting back and squinting at her. “I find it interesting you were well off enough to not just be taught, but to blow off lessons in your gods’ language.”
Amma avoided his gaze, shrugging as she flipped another page.
“You’re not just some little peasant girl looking for a leg up in the world who moronically tied your cart to a blood mage,” Xander observed correctly, “so whyareyou hanging around Bloodthorne?”
Amma squirmed, looking up to Damien, eyes glassy in the candlelight. He wasn’t going to tell Xander the truth, that she really had no choice but to hang around, not at that moment certainly, but as he opened his mouth to yet again tell Xander to fuck off, she took a deep breath and turned to Xander herself. “I’m helping him.”
The blood mage stared back as if trying to will out more, but she only grinned in a self-satisfied way that made Damien want to hand over the world to her.
“Now,”—she cleared her throat and sat straighter, focusing on the books—“I’m going to need some parchment and reeds and a little better candlelight if I’m going to get through any of this.”
CHAPTER 4
IRONIC TRUST REPRISE
The work was long and tedious, but that was the crux of translation. Amma’s hand cramped midway through the day, and Damien took over, writing as she dictated. He often had to cross things out and rewrite when she discovered she’d made an error or changed her mind about the order of letters, flipping between the Lux Codex and the old tome of Empyrean songs. But he only grumbled once, and playfully, about how she should have been punished for paying such poor attention in class, giving her a look as if to say he’d be happy to do it himself. There was a flash of heat all over her body at that, and she was grateful for the sleeveless dress even though the redness showed more prominently on her skin.
Despite that it had given her significant pause, picking out what to wear that morning had, perhaps, been her least difficult decision—all of the dresses in the wardrobe provided were nearly identical. Much more difficult was convincing herself to walk out the door and face Damien. Her night had been wrought with indecision and fear, startling herself awake from shadow-filled nightmares. But then she had seen him that morning, and the concern swallowed itself up, packed away for a later time. His face did that to her, somehow, scar and all.
Damien had moved his chair closer to Amma in the study, though still kept his distance as he copied down in Key the things she said. His handwriting was lovely and careful, and she’d found herself staring at it as he wrote, the scratch of the reed filling up the chamber as rain pattered softly on the massive windows. How could someone with such nice script want to ruin an entire city? A whole realm? It really seemed quite preposterous, and when she caught herself, glancing up at him as he waited for her to go on, the gentle bend of his smile only endeavored to convince her further that things just weren’t as they seemed.
Xander was significantly less helpful, though also less threatening as the day wore on. He wandered about the chamber, poking at his own artifacts, picking them up and admiring them as if they were brand new, and then he would pull down a random book to thumb through it and replace it on the shelf without having read a page. And of course there was the sighing, like they were putting him out by not instantly doing whatever it was he expected with the Lux Codex.
“This word doesn’t have a translation,” Amma said as she came across one she didn’t recognize at all. “But there’s mention of it in both books and it’s the same in Key and Ouranic, but the letters are funny.”
“Luxerna,” said Damien. The letters didn’t read that to Amma, but there was a symbol amongst them she’d never seen before that she assumed changed the pronunciation of the word.
“Ah, finally!” Xander shot across the chamber to lean over their shoulders, and Damien scowled at him when he got between the two. Too excited, Xander backed up just as quickly—it seemed neither of them could get too close to the book without physical harm.
Amma had heard the wordluxernabefore. Damien had mentioned the codex itself being dipped in it, and there was something familiar tickling at the back of her mind, like it had a place in a childhood fairytale. She blinked, thinking of the Everdark and the stories that came out of the fae’s plane, then shivered. Fae were purported to be dangerous, though not as dangerous as blood mages, and Amma was sharing a tower with two of them safely. So far.
Marching around to the far side of the table and leaning over it to look at both of them, Xander snorted. “Well, go on. Does it say where we can find it?”
Amma skimmed the page, flipped through the other tome, and frowned. “No, it’s just listed as an ingredient in a spell that I haven’t quite…wait.” Her eyes widened as her breath caught. “Flip these letters and—spirit resurrection! Oh, that makes so much more sense than what I puzzled out.”
Damien chuckled, crossing through the note he’d originally taken. “Sinister erotic purr.”
“Well, we know where her mind’s at,” Xander grumbled. “So, there’s a spell in there for resurrection? And all those divine mages are always going on about how evil necromancy is.”
