“You had a good night last night?” Cadence asks, pulling me out of my head.
I bet she senses it was craptastic—which is saying a lot—and is needling me to test my mood.
“Just awesome.” The ring bumps the wall, shooting pain into my swollen finger. I gnash my molars and curse under my breath.
“. . . no longer use gloves for paper, only photographs,” Cadence is saying as we walk through the archival room arcing around the mechanism of the astronomical antiquity.
The glass walls are thick, and yet the slow, steady ticks of the turning crown wheel penetrate them.
I cock an eyebrow, having no idea what she just said. “What?”
“You can shed the gloves.”
I shrug, playing off the glove-thing like it’s a personality quirk.
The glass room is cold but warmer than outside. They must have had it specially outfitted not too long ago. Everything that isn’t glass is white metal, from the floor to the ceiling to the three long curved tables to the shelves.
Cadence tucks her hands into the sleeves of her turtleneck. “So, what is it you’d like to see?”
For starters, what’s underneath that bulky sweater. I clear my throat. “Two things, actually. The history of the Clover Council—”
“Quatrefoil Council.” Her mouth pinches as though she’s pissed I muddled the name.
“—and whatever you’ve got on a magical ring with a red stone.”
A faint frown touches her brow. “That’s very specific.”
“I’m a very unambiguous man.”
“You’re the exact opposite of unambiguous.”
“Not when it comes to what I want.” I take a step toward her, going for my well-oiled intimidation technique.
From the quickening pulse in her neck, I suspect it’s working. Her gorgeous red mouth pops open but nothing comes out. Instead, she backs away and takes a special pair of gloves from a drawer, then turns to a row of shelves near the middle of the crescent-shaped room. And, yeah, I cop a look at her ass again. Especially when she stretches to reach a high shelf and her turtleneck rides up.
She eases out a tome of leather and vellum, which she deposits carefully on the nearest table. A gold-leaf quatrefoil brightens the pebbled green hide.
“This isIstor Breou.The History of Magic, specifically the one in Brume.” She looks pointedly at my hands. “If you want to page through it, no leather gloves. Leather sticks to paper, which could ruin it.”
I fuse the tip of my middle finger between my teeth, then slowly ease the glove off my left hand.
When I make no move to take off the other, she sighs and opens the book. “The language is a mix of old French and Breton.”
The words scrawled over the page are tiny and jittery, as though written by a broken hand.
“Do you speak Breton?” I ask.
“A little.”
I don’t ask her to translate anything, too busy taking in the accompanying illustration—an illumination of the clover resting behind a tangle of trees, ferns, and fog. Various moon phases dot the top of the page, from full to crescent to new. I scan the text, catching some French words:Berceau. Magie. Pouvoir.
Cradle. Magic. Power.
I try to decipher the Breton beneath the image but can’t. “What does the caption say?”
Cadence tucks back a brown strand that’s escaped her ponytail and reads, “The source of all magic can be traced to a golden Quatrefoil found in the forest of Brocéliande. For millennia, people flocked to Brocéliande to live near the source of magic.”She glances at me. “Local lore says that over time, more and more people settled in the forest, thus turning it into a town: Brume. Named, of course, for the ever-present cloud of mist that covers it.”
How depressing. “No wonder Brumians worship something golden and shiny.”
