The moonlight from one of the bedrooms shifted over the hearth, hitting the emerald beneath my fingertips. It glittered faintly in the dark.
I frowned, wondering at the exact timing of light and my touch. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that there was, in fact, no moonlight. Direct light couldn’t reach this far into the dark room. Nerves skittered down my spine and pulled the hair on the back of my neck into standing.
Turning back to the fireplace, I increased pressure on the gemstone. The pigmentation increased, causing the green of the emerald to sparkle a brilliant hue. My heart beat faster. My mind spun with what this could mean.
Emerald was the power stone.My mother’s words swirled around me. The past rushed to flood the present. The impossible storming the physical world as if under siege.
I wiggled the gem in its setting, wondering if I could pry it out of the stone façade and keep it. Wondering if it really did hold some ancient power that had been outlawed long ago.
To my surprise, it shifted. I tugged harder, trying to wedge my fingernail between the gem and the wall. My finger slipped instead, and I pushed instead of pulled.
There was a clacking sound, then a whirring as if gears were turning behind the stone wall. Oliver was speaking behind me from one of the bedrooms, but I was too fascinated to pay attention.
Below the emerald, a ruby suddenly glowed, burning bright red in the dark room. I reached down and pushed on it. More clicking. More whirring. And then the diamond toward the floor, flickering to life and then extinguishing so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn’t been so wholly focused. This time, the sound of shifting gears lasted longer. Then spread within the stone wall to impossible to reach or see places.
The hearth was set against the wall and took up the majority of it. The suite of rooms was set into a large turret that jutted into a private courtyard. The king’s bedchambers were back where Oliver was snooping. Along with the queen’s. Although I remember my parents sleeping in the same bed for much of my youth. The staircase between the two chambers wound around the curve of the walls and led to the nursery. And above those, rooms for the maids and handmaids. Most rooms boasted large windows. Only this room, closest to the castle proper, had bare walls.
Instead of windows, the fireplace took up almost the entirety of this curved wall. And designed in an extravagant style, it protruded away from the castle wall by two feet and was made for a king to enjoy. To my right, toward the ground, was another click and whir. I stepped quickly to the side to watch a drawer pop out from the lowest section of the hearth.
I stooped low to inspect the hiding place. The cut into the stone was so precise, I knew the drawer would be invisible unless you knew to look for it. The decorative gemstones in that section were cut in half to further disguise such a hidey-hole would even exist.
I marveled at it. Was this Mother’s doing? Father’s? Tyrn’s? Or someone else entirely?
Inside the velvet-lined drawer was a book. I felt disappointed at first. I wanted kingdom secrets or a severed head orsomethingmore interesting than an old tome. Morbid maybe. But one didn’t tend to find secret drawers very often.
Instead of anything of note, it was only a book. Gold filigreed and leather bound. Well-made to be sure. But still, just a book.
“Tess,” Oliver hissed from over my shoulder. “Whatareyou doing? I’ve tried every bed and every chair, and all I’ve found is a sinking sense of low esteem. I am apparently too small on your uncle’s purview to warrant a decent mattress. Or even a sturdy chair. I feel quite like a servant.”
I’d been to Oliver’s quarters. He was right to feel that way.
“I found a secret drawer,” I whispered, waving my hand over the compartment.
He dropped to his haunches and nudged me to the side so he could inspect. “How?”
“The gemstones lit up at my touch” felt like a rather stupid explanation. So instead, I admitted, “Quite by accident. I meant to pull on a gemstone, and instead, I pushed. And here we are.”
Oliver poked at it with his pointer finger. “What is it?”
“A book.”
He pursed his lips at my dry tone. “I see that. But what kind of book? Why would anyone need to hide it away in a secret drawer? There must be something more to it.”
He was right. I pulled it out, surprised at its heft. My palms buzzed as I stood again. Oliver stood as well, peering over my shoulder once more. I opened the front cover and stared at text I couldn’t read.
“This... is familiar,” I murmured, my memory searching to place it.
“I don’t know that language, do you?” Oliver asked, his fingers hovering over the page but not touching it.
“Father Garius,” I said, realization dawning. “He showed me a similar book before we left the Temple.”
“It’s a religious text then?” Oliver moved as though he was going to run his finger down the gilded edge of the page but seemed to think better of it.
“No.” Less afraid than Oliver seemed to be, I thumbed through the pages until I found a match to the one Father Garius had shown me. A raven, wings stretched out, claws seeming to dig into the very pages, an ancient language neither of us could read. “Not religious.”
“Tessana,” Oliver shrieked. “Is that a grimoire?”
Grimoire. I knew what the word meant, but it hadn’t occurred to me to use it. I also knew Father Garius had kept his hidden for a reason, but at the Temple, I had assumed it was because the witch’s spell book would go against the religion of the Light. I had reasoned he’d kept it hidden from his brothers to maintain his priestly legitimacy. It hadn’t crossed my mind that it was an illegal tome and to be in possession of something magical or magic-minded would mean imprisonment or death.
