She rose from the table, mumbling an excuse to leave.
Caspian’s gaze lifted and slid up and down her frame.
“Er. Enjoy your evening, gentlemen,” she said quickly, not wanting such attention, and fled the hall.
Closing the door to her chambers, she wrinkled her nose.
She hadnotbeen thinking about a demon—one who was quite literally drinking a goblet of human blood. Someone had met their end to sate his hunger tonight. Thinking of him as any adjective other than vile felt like a betrayal to every person in Asteria.
Pacing did nothing to erase the image of him smirking at her like he wanted to eatherfor dinner.
She cast around for something to distract herself with, her eyes landing on a newly arrived letter, sitting on her writing desk.
The familiar handwriting grabbed her attention, and she eagerly tore it open.
She read the lines several times, memorizing them. Her dress hissed across the floor as she quickly strode to the fireplace and placed the letter over the flame. The fire devoured the parchment, until nothing remained of the elegant script.
Donning a cloak, she went for a walk in the gardens.
Not even a few steps outside, she felt someone—something—watching her and looked up.
A figure with enormous wings stood on the balcony of the second-highest tower. The demon from the library.
She raised a hand in greeting, as if to say,I remember you.
The monster jumped into the sky, soaring away from the castle with furious pumps of its inky black wings. She watched its progress across the sky until it ducked behind a cloud and passed from sight.
***
Later, Elizabeth was in the library reading when she noticed a tendril of shadow snake out from between the books and swirl upwards in the air, like a wisp of smoke.
She rose to peer at it, wondering where it had come from.
Her breath caught as the wisp of darkness snaked through the air, and vanished, leaving no trace that it was ever there.
A desk nearby looked disturbed, with a drawer left slightly ajar. Elizabeth’s heartbeat quickened as she approached. Someone had been here recently.
The gargoyle-shaped handle was carved into a permanent snarl. She sat gingerly on the chair, tracing a finger along the strange symbols covering the desk’s surface—whorls and marks that seemed to shift in the candlelight.
Curiously, she opened the drawer. No quills or parchment lay within, just a coin and a metal stamp nestled in black velvet.
She had never seen a coin like this one before. All the kingdoms in Asteria used the same gold, silver, and copper nobles. How strange.
She picked it up and turned it in her fingers. The coin was surprisingly heavy, with a roaring dragon pressed on one side, and a pentacle on the other—a five-pointed star within a circle, the device of demons and dark magic.
The stamp in the drawer bore an even stranger sigil: a pentagram with crescent moons tucked between each point of the star, each end of the star extending outwards like arrows. Was this Caspian’s house sigil? Or something more sinister? Like some kind of secret organization?
Elizabeth replaced the items in the drawer, taking care to place them exactly how she had found them, and stepped back to survey the library.
Where did the wisps of shadow keep coming from?
She ran her fingers over the legs and the underside of the writing desk, feeling for some sort of catch or hidden device that might hold answers, but there was nothing.
Taking a few steps back, she narrowed her eyes and looked around the shelves by the desk, but saw nothing else that seemed out of the ordinary.
Before she could investigate further, she turned and came face to face with Caspian. She gasped in surprise.
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
