“When we come to it,” Bel growled.
Suyin lay awake in bed, thinking. She’d stayed in the library for a long time after Murmur left. So long that she heard him return from checking his wards and then lock himself in his bedroom. She’d been immersed in reading and hadn’t stopped until her eyes were closing. The books he’d chosen for her to study were fascinating, but she was most interested in the one he’d written himself.
Unsurprisingly, it was nearly as convoluted asThe Book of Gamigin. His penmanship was atrocious, and he often went on long tangents until she’d forgotten what the original point he was trying to make was. But the more she read, the more she started to get a grasp of how his mind worked, and she had to admit it impressed her.
The book was packed full of information, and yet he’d told her there was an entire section of his library full of books he’d written. This was obviously only the tip of the iceberg. To say she was curious was an understatement.
And she couldn’t lie … She was curious about Murmur, too. How his mind worked. What motivated him. What he’d seen and done in his impossibly long life. Why he was half mad and a control freak. Why he was so secretive. And most of all … what the hell he was planning with that damned spell.
She was nervous about the casting, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because she’d had access to his library for several days now and she still hadn’t found any answers to her questions. Or perhaps it was because Murmur seemed like an unstoppable force, yet even he seemed unsure of his success. That put her on edge.
She wanted answers, and she was running out of time toget them. If the spell was successful and Murmur had his way, she’d return home without any idea what he’d done or why.
She sat up in bed suddenly, covers falling to her lap, as an idea formed.
Murmur had forbidden her from touching anything on his desk, which meant the information she sought had to be there. And Murmur was also currently asleep—a rare occasion, from what she’d observed. If she didn’t start taking risks, she wasn’t going to get anywhere. She’d decided to play nice so that when her chance came to learn more about herself, she would feel secure enough to take it, trusting that he wouldn’t hurt her in retaliation.
Well, a chance had come.
She leapt out of bed before she lost her nerve, dressing in a hurry as the cool air prickled against her skin. She started to put on her boots and then changed her mind. Her footsteps would be quieter in just her socks.
She slipped out of her chambers into the stairwell and climbed the steps silently. At the top, she pushed open the door and padded down the hall, pausing outside Murmur’s bedroom and listening for signs he had awoken.
Hearing nothing, she entered the library, grateful for the quiet door that whispered shut behind her. Everything was dark, just as she’d left it when she’d blown out the lanterns and let the fire die.
She didn’t waste time. She’d come here with a purpose and knew what she was looking for. At Murmur’s desk, she studied the array of scattered papers. The first time, she’d been caught before she could learn anything, and she was hoping to remedy that now.
She already knew that flipping throughThe Book of Gamiginwould be fruitless, so she concentrated instead on reading Murmur’s notes. She looked at his messy scrawl andgrimaced. It was worse here than in the grimoire he’d written. She could barely tell if she was reading English or Sheolic.
She picked up a random sheet of paper and dropped into his chair, holding it in front of her face and trying to make sense of it. The only illumination came through the window from the red sky, and she didn’t dare light a lantern in case she was discovered.
Souls contained behind …What the hell did that say?Additional force … required?She squinted at the page.Form … portal?But that didn’t make sense.
And whatsoulswere contained? Was he trying to get more for his army? But surely he already had a way to trap them. Maybe he’d lost his way of getting new souls somehow, and he was trying to get it back?
It might explain his obsession, since he derived much of his fearsome reputation from the ghosts who swirled at his feet. But something about that explanation didn’t ring true.
She kept reading.
“Angel blood … outer layers. Added fortification.”Angel blood?She glanced over at the sigil on the floor, the lines painted in dried blood. Where the hell would he get access to an angel? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
She skimmed over the next section, which appeared to be a list of somewhat disturbing ingredients.Pickled heart, liver, claw of winged demon, incubus semen—gross—blood of …She peered closer at the last word, trying to decipher—
A howl split the quiet.
Her spine snapped straight, and she scanned the dark library. Chills raced up her back. That terrible sound of despair had come from very close by.
Another cry echoed through the halls. It finished in a hoarse groan, and she suddenly realized she knew that voice very well.
She was out of her chair running before her next breath.
AROUSINGSUSPICION
THAT FAMILIAR BURNING ENGULFEDMURMUR’S BODY. HEknew this agony well, but every time it consumed him, he suffered anew. His screams of pain morphed to screams of terror as his body dissolved, and he found himself trapped with thousands of other souls, locked together in endless suffer—
“Murmur!”
He stilled. That was new. That had never happened before, and he was quite sure he—
