~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Fiona
I feel the hum deep inside me, and I grit my teeth. Azric’s pouch of beads is somewhere nearby. Darian’s standing beside me, my guard for the afternoon, and he has an amused smile on his face.
I still feel exhausted, but my body’s working again. The handprint on my throat has faded, and Isola thinks it will be completely gone tomorrow, but I still can’t stop my thoughts from being drawn to Azric. That kiss was… a lot.
At least until I started hunting for my cloak. Now, those twinkling bells sounding from the ermine fur pouch are all I can think of.
“What do you mean it’s close? How can you possibly know that?”
I try to focus on the sound no one else can hear, even as I speak. “I don’t know. I’ve always been able to find god-touched items, and I happen to have one in my cloak.”
Then I’m moving as I identify the direction it’s coming from. We’re in a part of the castle that no one seems to go to very often. In the west tower on the fifth floor, it’s obvious the servants haven’t cleaned the cobwebs from the corners or restocked the candelabras.
“Wait, you can find god-touched items? How’s that possible? Not even Maeve can do that, and she’s always been able to find things with her House of Earth powers.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just drawn to them.”
The hallways are only lit by the windows as I follow the sound of a soft bell ringing. Darian is on my heels, but he’s not really helping. My father would have known to be quiet while I was hunting for something, but Darian just keeps talking, and as we stand at a fork in the hallway, I pause again.
“How can you not know why or how? You realize that’s not normal, right?”
I turn to him, finally getting frustrated. “Do you know how your body turns wine into piss? No, you don’t. It just happens, right? Well, it’s the same with me. What I know is that the more you jabber, the harder it is for me to hear the sound. You wouldn’tsit there and make idle conversation while a tracker was hunting a deer, would you?”
He closes his mouth and accepts my chastisement without argument. I listen again and turn right, hoping the sound grows louder. It does, and I start running. Our footfalls don’t get close to drowning out the ringing that’s growing in intensity.
A thick wooden door appears on our left, and I slam the door open, not even considering that it might be locked. We step into a closet meant for the servants to keep cleaning supplies in. Brooms and mops lean against the walls. Shelves hold jars of powder and liquids with hastily scribbled labels on them.
I ignore all of it, moving toward the sound as though a tether were pulling me toward it. The back wall. The cloak isn’t there, but the sound is so close. I run my hand over the stones of the wall, and my fingers find a tiny hole that’s been carved out. There’s a defined edge to the hole I know from experience to mean there’s something hidden.
“There’s a key somewhere nearby,” I say as I open boxes on the bottom of one shelf. “Ithinkit’s close by, but I can’t be sure.”
“A key? To what?” Darian asks, sounding very confused.
“Just look for a key or something that might be a key.” I fling the first box open and dig through the rags stored in it. Nothing here.
I open the next one while Darian looks on the top shelves, lifting jars and opening boxes. There’s nothing in here except silver polishing supplies. I open the next one, and right there at thebottom of the box is a long sliver of metal with a key bit at the end. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to open a locked secret room.
I stand up and go to the hole in the wall. Darian comes up behind me to watch as I slide the length of iron into the hole and turn it. It takes a bit of effort, but as soon as I hear the near-silent click, the entire back wall slides two feet and reveals an entryway.
“How in Kaelith’s name did you know that was here?” Darian asks.
I shrug as I move toward the entryway. “I didn’t know it’d do that. All I’m sure of is that my cloak is on the other side of this wall.”
He tries to go into the room, but I stop him. “Sometimes these things are trapped. Whatever’s hidden on the other side of this wall is probably valuable. Pay attention and don’t get us killed, okay?”
He nods and puts his head into the room. His eyes change, growing larger until they look almost like… bird eyes? “There are little pieces of twine running across the floor.”
I keep my eyes out for them as I walk into the room. The only light that illuminates the room is the dim bit coming from the entryway, making it impossible to see anything, and I swear. Then, Darian begins glowing, and it’s like someone opened a non-existent window.
I have to blink a few times to let my eyes adjust to the light. “Well, that’s a useful trick,” I say.
He chuckles. “House of Light powers don’t come into play nearly as often as I’d like.”
Everyone knows about the Great Houses from before the gods woke. They ruled the High Fae and Lesser Fae along with Draenyth. They were powerful enough that the House of Steel can go toe-to-toe against the Godforged. However, in the smaller Fae cities, the Lesser Houses ruled, the House of Light being the best known.
My attention is focused on the loud ringing of that silver bell in my mind, and I don’t respond to him. Careful not to disturb the tripwires that have been set up in the room, I cross the space. Against the back wall is a simple wooden box. Iknowmy cloak is inside it.
