“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry, did I hurt you?”
What was I thinking—I should have just let her.Elysia’s thoughts became a torrent.
Beatriz just blinked and gingerly propped herself up to a seated position. “How in the name of the undead gods did you learn to do that?Whydid you learn to do that?”
It was Elysia’s turn to feel her face turn fiery and warm. She ignored the pointed questions. “What does that coin mean to you?”
Beatriz held her stare in a way that clearly noted Elysia’s evasion, but answered her anyway. Her voice was low, serious. “Stay away from them, Lys. This isn’t some silly castle intrigue or case for you to break open.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Just mind your own damn business for once, Elysia, and stay away from them.”
Elysia shook her head and tears pricked her eyes as she slumped down to the floor. “There is no story.” She looked up to meet Beatriz’s eyes. The last week had broken her. She’d like to blame it on her bellyful of wine, but the truth was her life was crashing down around her ears and she desperately wanted to shove all the fear and anxiety into someone else’s hands. She hadn’t expected those hands to be her sister’s, but here she was, saying what she shouldn’t. “I want to meet with them because I need their help.”
Elysia ground her palms into her eyes, not wanting to see her sister’s face after how Beatriz had reacted to the coin in the first place. Fear clenched her throat. How terrible it would be to be turned in by her own damn sister. No one would be surprised—a Parker eliminating another Parker. They would call it poetic. The Crown’s children had turned out to be the beastliest of them all.
Her sister did not snarl or shout now. Her face lost its color entirely. If Elysia didn’t know any better, she would have said she just broke her sister’s nonexistent heart.
But Beatriz did not have a heart, unpolished angry child that she had been, and Elysia did know better, which was why it could not possibly be a tear, silent and gleaming, in her eye.
Beatriz shook her head, her normal sharp light dimming, and grabbed the wine jug one more time. The arrogance in her posture fell away as she held the bottle back with just the sound of the wine glugging down her throat. She paused and held the bottle out to Elysia wordlessly.
Elysia grabbed it only to find the dregs. She stood to dig out another bottle from the cupboards, glad that she’d been hoarding a few for times like these. She plunked back down on the floor, bottle in tow.
Beatriz sat with her legs bent and forearms resting loosely on her knees. “Tell me where this story starts. Because I can promise there is no happy ending involving that coin and those fools.”
Elysia pulled out the dagger that had been tucked into the pocket of her pajamas. Gage’s lessons to always be prepared were hard to forget. She began mindlessly spinning it between her fingers, letting the rhythm soothe her jagged thoughts. Biting her lip, she weighed how deeply she could trust the woman sitting in her living room who shared her last name.
Maybe it made her naive, but she wanted to, she really did.Desperation will get you killed.She ignored the thought. Even if it was the truth. She had told Rollie the facts, but tonight, she wanted to tell the story and pretend her big sister would actually show up forherfor once. Against her better judgment, her mouth opened.
“It started months ago,” she began. “But today, I was at the library and something happened.”
She lost track of herself for a moment as she flashed back to how Topp had pushed her flush to the shelves, not caring that books had rattled and fallen like gilded, crashing bricks to the floor. Her back pinching against the wooden edges of the shelves. His fingertips pressing into the hot skin beneath the edge of her shirt.
Elysia blinked and found her sister grinning like a cat with a bird. She tried to fix her face, but it was too late. Beatriz might not live and breathe secrets, but she had their father’s gift for being an uncanny reader of most situations. If she could use those skills to torture her little sister, then all the better.
Beatriz pounced, knowing exactly what she was doing. “By yourself in the library, were you? Didn’t think so. But do go on. I love a steamy bedtime story.”
“Oh, shut up.” Clearing her throat, she kept her face perfectly even. “As I was saying, I was in the library when a book fell and caught my eye.”
Beatriz’s grin widened as she let out a lustful sigh. “I bet it did. I could use a little book shaking, if you know what I mean.”
Elysia’s fingers flexed on the hilt of her dagger in exasperation.So annoying.
Mostly because she wasn’t wrong.
Elysia recalled what had happened next. How she had dragged one particular old volume closer across the cold stone floor. Trailed a finger down its golden edges, feeling the slip of the gilded pages. She’d whispered the title aloud and shivered.Travels of the Undead.It was a book on the many gods that had been revered before the Fall. It was a book that should have been burned with the rest of the religious and magical works. Cracking it open, she had found a purple flower pressed between the pages.
It wasn’t one of her own flowers, though. It had been left between the pages like some dark beacon pulling in stray maidens who made the mistake of kissing amongst dusty tomes.
Elysia released the memory, crawling over to her flower house where she had stuck the bloom earlier. She gently brushed her fingers over its still soft edges. Velvety and pliant, she had a sinking feeling the petals were not going to dry out. “This flower was in the book. I think it's in some kind of magical stasis.”
Beatriz dropped her head to her knees. “Of course it is.”
“It held the book open to a story. A story of a girl who went to a dark, dark land and retrieved the light for all her people.” Saying the words aloud gave her chills.
It was just a story. Just a silly book that had been knocked from its home.That drawing, though…Elysia shut down the thought. The drawing was a coincidence. Nothing more.
