After a shared look, Soria went ahead, with Pellie falling into step with Kerym. He didn’t like the cool worry simmering in her eyes, and she must have noticed his pinched brows because she shook her head.
“Merrick is right,” Pellie breathed, apparently trying to ensure neither Merrick nor Lessia would hear her.
“Why?” It was the only word he was able to get out as he watched his friend hold on to his mate as if theworld were about to end, as if the castle might cave in on them and swallow her forever.
“I don’t like this either,” Pellie continued. “It’s… it’s not supposed to be one. The powers she has? That’s why there are several veiled queens… The snake… it made me remember something.”
“Is it the balance thing again?” Kerym whispered as Lessia and Merrick disappeared around a sharp bend, the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows on their left, its light shimmering across the reddish stone of the walls.
“Yes.” Pellie’s hair sparkled like the walls around them as she faced him, and despite her beauty and the eyes he wished never to leave his, a shiver traced down his spine. “Merrick’s parents spoke of ‘the one who clings to life.’ That’s the one the living should protect. I… It can’t be Lessia herself. I don’t understand.” Pellie shook her head again. “Unless… unless the other… hasn’t awoken yet?”
Kerym could tell she didn’t like it—that Pellie was actually scared—and he pulled her to him, coming to a stop in the glittering hallway.
“We’ll figure it out,” he whispered as he lifted his hands to her cheeks. “We’ll keep her—them—alive. We will.”
She just blinked back at him, but he could sense…
Kerym bent down to press his lips against hers, a groan slipping out of him when she wound her arms around his neck to deepen the kiss. But even as she responded, her body molding to his, there was something… something he couldn’t quite put into words. Something that broke through the warmth filling him upon the kiss.
He frowned as he pulled back, but Pellie just shot him a quick smile, and with a soft tap to his chest, she continued walking up to the thick wooden doors where a vast library spread out and where Merrick and the others had already begun dividing up between the shelves to look for?—
What were they even looking for? Some type of book that would explain how Merrick had pulled Lessia back from the dead when it shouldn’t be possible? How they could see and command the dead, including his own brother? How they would find this elusive person or thing that ‘clings to life’?
Kerym sighed as he followed Pellie for a long while, until shadows lengthened and cast different parts of the library in shade, the two of them only strolling up and down the long aisles with shelf after shelf filled with books.
He’d heard that all books ever to exist within the Fae world had at least a copy here. Rioner might have been a royal bastard, but he did understand the value and power that could be found in the written word, and he’d made sure the Rantzier family had access to all of it.
The air in here was heavy, and it only seemed to press more heavily the further Kerym ventured. Somehow, even though the rectangular room had stained glass on both sides, letting in trickles of colored light, it was as if the entire thing darkened with each long breath he pulled.
He’d never been much for studying, even if they had been expected to at least learn the Fae history growing up, and he had always found libraries more intimidating than training rings and fights.
As his eyes traveled across the shelves,disregarding works of fiction and old Rantzier dossiers, Pellie’s gaze sought his once in a while from where she strolled a few feet ahead.
A glacial frost wrapped around his heart when he realized…
The glances she threw him over her shoulder mirrored the ones Merrick kept shooting toward Lessia in the aisle beside them.
As if one—or both—of them wouldn’t be around much longer.
Huffing a breath through his nose, he was about to storm up to her and… he wasn’t sure. Kiss her until she realized he was going fucking nowhere? Yell at them all that they needed to stop for a while—think about how they would fix this? But something started thrumming in the air.
It was… magic.
It was the same feeling he’d get right before siphoning from an especially powerful Fae.
It was something that caused a pull deep in his gut. Something that called to his own power—something that wanted to be siphoned. Something old and strong, and he’d never felt anything more alluring than when his eyes latched onto a book casually resting beside him.
“Kerym, no!”
Pellie’s scream sounded as if from far away when his palm slipped across a thick gilded book lying cover down on a dusty shelf, and he couldn’t help but pull its magic into himself, the taste of it so strong it shoved the air from his lungs before the entire world went white.
Chapter 19
Frelina
Maybe it was a little bit vain, but Frelina spun before the mirror in her room.
The deep blue dress the Fae leader had lent her hugged every curve with the intricate lacing on both sides of her waist and made the golden tones in her hair and eyes sparkle even though night had already fallen.
