“Start reading,” I command him.
He gives me a little salute, and soon his eyes are whizzing across the page as well.
Then I take the final tome left standing on the shelf. It looks just as old as the others, and when I open the pages I see, like Fly’s book, it’s written in my language, just phrased a little more old-fashioned. It’s hard work reading the swirly calligraphy, but I scan my eyes across the text as quickly as I can, flipping pages as I go.
We all read silently – just the distant sound of dripping water, the flipping of pages, and our own breath the only sound in this entombed part of the library. I don’t know how long we’re in there reading. We’re all thoroughly absorbed by the history written down in each of these books. But finally, we’re all slamming them shut – Clare first, then me, then Fly – and then we’re all looking at each other.
“What did yours say?” I ask Clare first.
“It’s a history of the realm,” she says. “From hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago. A time before there were demons, when there were light wielders, shadow weavers, dragons, shifters, vampires, and all sorts of other magic too. A time when there was no academy, no Quarters. When the emperor or empress was chosen by the people.”
Fly and I stare at her aghast. It had never even occurred to me that that could be a possibility. The Emperor – Empress in our time – has always been the Empress. It’s never been a question of someone different, of someone we could choose.
I snap my head around to Fly.
“What did yours say, Fly?”
“It’s later than Clare’s, although still pretty damn old and odd, and it’s less of a utopia sort of thing.” He scratches his cheek. “Let’s say things are starting to fall apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“Factions, infighting. People trying to seize control of the throne, undermine the voting of the people in their choice of emperor.” I nod again. It makes sense. “What did yours say, Briony?”
“It’s the story of the end,” I say. “The end for light wielders like me.”
They both look at me quizzically.
“The shadow weavers killed us.” They don’t look surprised. It’s the scene we saw enacted before our eyes – one we now understand.
I take a step back and swing my gaze between my two friends, who are looking at me and not the book in their arms.
“It means the shadow weavers killed the light wielders. Destroyed them. It wasn’t some consequence of fate. It wasn’t the fading of our magic. It wasn’t demons.”
All along I’d known it, right from the beginning, that the shadow weavers were my enemies. And now I know it for certain.
They killed my people. They killed my kind. They killed my sister. And now they want to kill me too.
Chapter Nine
Dray
“There’s no way I’m being fucking executed,” I mutter to the other two. “There’s no way someone’s swinging an axe through this neck. I’m far too fucking beautiful to die.”
“It could just be a threat,” Beaufort says. “Aaron trying to scare us.” But there’s no conviction in his voice. He doesn’t believe that for a moment. He knows how ruthless his mother is. How many of her enemies she’s killed. She’s had us kill many of them for her.
I shake my head. “It’s not happening, Beaufort. Not today, not this week, not ever. If I’m dying, I’m dying in the arms of my fucking mate and nowhere else.”
Thorne is quiet. Beau looks at me like I’m freaking mad.
“You got a plan then, Wolf?” he snarls.
He never calls me that. Just goes to show how stressed out he really is. I guess an impending execution can do that to a man.
I let the side of my mouth curl into a smile. “Yeah,” I say. “Actually, I have.”
While the others have been moping around like a pair of love-sick poets, I’ve been working away at the binds. Sure, it’s cut my arms, my wrists, and my hands to pieces – sure it’s fucking hurt – but it’s not like I’m going to have any use for these body parts if I’m dead, is it? And my persistence has paid off.
“What?” Beaufort says, sensing I’m keeping something from him.
