"I am." I start toward the door.
"Weren't you the one who pointed out how many times we've failed?"
I glance back, a smile tugging at my lips. "Weren't you the one who said you didn't have me before?"
Something shifts in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or something softer. I don't wait for a response. I slip out of the room and close the door behind me, leaving him with the mess and the silence and whatever thoughts are churning behind those golden eyes.
Sleep doesn't come.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the scars on Malachi's back. The ragged arcs where wings used to be. I think about Larimar burning, and Pia taken, and the hunters in the alley with theEverlasting branded into their skin. I think about what Malachi said, about bonds being severed, about nothing in Lunaris being what it seems.
That thought is what drives me out of bed. I retrieve the books I took from the vault and spread them across my desk. Among them, a slim volume bound in black leather, unmarked. I don't remember taking it.
I don’t even remember seeing it on the shelf. I open it anyway. The first line stops my heart. I slam the book shut. My heart hammers against my ribs. My hands shake around the leather cover.
There have been only a handful of moments in my life when I've stood at the edge of something that would change me completely. Irrevocably. This is one of them. I lift the book with trembling hands and study the cover.
The Veritas symbol is etched into the leather, so faint I nearly missed it before. That symbol used to mean truth. Valor. Justice.
It used to mean everything. I let myself mourn the girl who believed that. Just for a moment. Then I open the book again.
In the end, nothing will matter, except everything.
Chapter Nineteen
AStudy in Darkness: The ShroudAccounts kept by Lenora Bromwell for the Veritas Order of Tenebris in the city of LunarisYear: 250 A.S.
I am not a scribe, but my predecessor advised us to keep our own account of our findings in the event the forgetting elixir is used against us.
After years of unrest and no formal government due to the absence of King Runerth and Queen Neith, a new arrival has caught the Sages' attention.
Constantine "The Just," a solar Duende from a small town between Mizu and Arusha, claims to have an answer to Lunaris' problems. The forgetting elixir.
The Sages are wary. Constantine is part of the Shadow Guild, and we all know what Cato has done with that elixir and that stone.
Yet Anala the All-Seeing's visions cannot be ignored. She saw Larimar burning. She saw Pia fleeing. She saw Constantine, the curse, and the evil lurking at our door.
Thus, the Veritas Treaty has been drafted and the forgetting elixir included, despite our concerns.
My predecessor warned them of two things:
A loud thump tears me from the page. The book slips from my fingers. My knee cracks against the desk as I jolt upright, and my sigil flares hot beneath my blouse.
"Godsdamn it." I shove back from the chair and storm to the door, yanking it open with more force than necessary.
Malachi and Kage stand in the hallway, eyebrows rising in unison as they take in my expression.
"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed," Kage murmurs.
"I was reading," I snap.
Malachi lifts a black leather book. "Kage brought this."
"And this." Kage dangles a brown paper sack between us. The scent of Milly's bakery wafts out, butter and sugar and something sweeter beneath.
My stomach growls, loud enough for both of them to hear. I exhale and step aside. "Fine. You're forgiven."
Kage chuckles as he follows me to the table. "I will never understand why men think women are unpredictable."
