I didn’t waste a breath. Handing him my heels, I stepped through the rack as if through a veil and landed in a dark, eerie corridor—an uncanny mirror of Mageia’s.
I jogged down the narrow hall and slipped under an arch into a small abandoned library—or perhaps an office.
Shelves circled the room from floor to ceiling, most of them bare. Whoever had worked here had taken nearly everything. A wooden armchair sat pushed beneath a rickety desk littered with the stubs of burnt candles, a dried ink vial, and a few ancient quills with feathered ends I’d only seen in pre-war history books.
Turning to the shelves, I found bottles of all shapes and sizes—many coated in dust, their contents cloudy or curdled with age. The labels were handwritten in curling ink, and unlike anything I’d ever studied:Blood of the Pure Fae,Essence of Pixie, and one that stopped me cold—Purple Dragon Scales.
I brushed my fingers over the glass container, clearing a circle in the dust. The scales inside shimmered with an otherworldly gleam, their violet hue glowing faintly in the dark. I couldn’t look away.
Praying to the elements that whoever once occupied this space wouldn’t mind, I twisted the lid off the container and carefully extracted the smallest scale I could find. The purple scale fit perfectly in my palm. I curled my fingers around it protectively and rose, pulse quickening as I resumed my search for the final piece of the Mareki’s Key.
Then pain shot up my leg.
“Shit,” I hissed, grabbing my foot and cradling my aching toe. In my rush, I’d stubbed it hard—completely forgetting that I’m barefoot.
I glanced down—and stilled.
Something was jutting out from beneath the lowest shelf, its sharp corner barely visible now that it had been nudged free.
Heart hammering, I knelt, gathering the hem of my formal gown to keep it from the dust. My fingers closed around worn leather and I pulled it out slowly.
The same textured cover. The same etched spine. The same blank pages.
Another tome—identical to the two Scarlet already has.
And now, I have the third.
Chapter 48
“They found it,” I breathed.
Rhodes’s hands gripped my shoulders, turning me to face him. His whole face lit with a bright, disbelieving smile, his eyes locked onto mine. “They found it,” he echoed, his voice shaking with relief.
Tatum and Davis broke into cheers. Cami’s hands flew to her mouth, eyes wide with wonder. Rhodes whooped and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me clean off the ground and spinning us in a tight circle.
“We make a good team,” Fallon’s voice rang clear in my mind.
I grinned so hard my cheeks ached. “Don’t you forget it.”
“I don’t think I could. You look just like me.”
Rhodes and Davis clasped hands in a hard grip, yanking each other into a rough hug and thumping each other’s backs. Tatum squealed as she crushed me in a hug, wrapping her arms around my neck and rocking us side to side before darting over to squeeze Cami with the same enthusiastic embrace.
“Every time you’re mad at me, I hope you look in the mirror, just so I never leave your mind,” I teased my sister.
“Damn. I’ll seem like a conceited bitch then.”
I laughed out loud.
Cami rounded the table and gently cupped my cheeks, just as she had with Rhodes before. She gazed down at me with an expression I struggled to name—awed, hopeful, fiercely protective. Her smile spread wide, and even in the dim cellar her crystal-blue eyes shone with life—the same blue gleaming in Rhodes’s right eye.
“You, my dear,” she whispered, her voice trembling as she took in my crimson eyes, “you and your sister are truly a force to be reckoned with.”
“I’ve told her something similar before,” Rhodes added, tugging at the end of my braid.
The cottage door clicked shut as Davis and Tatum left for sparring lessons. Watching her toss him on his ass again and again was always worth the show, but I lingered among the bookshelves, waiting for my chance to speak with Cami.
She was mid-conversation with Rhodes, and I couldn’t help noticing how at ease he was in her presence. His smile softened, brighter somehow, as she swatted his arm, and their shared laughter filled the small space like sunlight.
