“I—” Kaazhim began, but I decided I didn’t give a shit what his response was.
“The journal’s this way,” I spoke over him, stalking through the atrium and down a marble corridor between the wings of two curving staircases. Kamaal followed me without a word, his silent protection giving me enough nerve to carry me through this strange house—someone else’s house thatwe’d broken into—and to a darker room at the back of the manor. The walls here were the dark teal I’d seen echoed throughout, as if it was the family’s colours, but they were barely visible because of all the bookcases and podiums and displays that were crammed into the room.
“The family collection,” Kaazhim said with a low laugh. “Well, well.”
“Keep your grubby hands off everything except the journal,” I snapped, glaring at the smiling bastard and following the insistent throb in my chest towards the left side of the room where glass displays held marcasite tiaras and plates of hammered silver and a locket of carved jade. “We’re not here to rob this family.”
Just being here made me guilty. It was a beautiful home, and one the family clearly took pride in. But more than that, it was the smiling portraits of people young and old and everything in between, and especially the love that had emanated from them, that made me feel bad about stealing from them.
“Ameirah,” Kamaal said, not a hint of inflection in his voice as he gestured me over to a wooden cabinet protected by a door of glass. Rows of hand-bound books sat upon its shelves. The thump in my chest didn’t intensify, but it remained pulsing, insistent, almost urgent. And for a split second, I wondered if it was Raheema calling to me from Ithanys.
“Will it open?” I asked, surprised the gentry bastard wasn’t breathing down our necks as we carefully opened the glass door and inspected the books within. I skimmed my eye over all of them, but a green leather book caught my eye simply because it had no title, only a gilded wing. Membranous and veined like a wyvern.
I held my breath as I pulled the book off the shelf but again no defences erupted to snare me. I exchanged a glance with Kamaal, and strangely enough Varidian’s brother being here with me set my nerves at ease. It was a shame he wasn’t the king; I got the sense none of our current problems would exist if he were.
A tremor went through me when I ran my hand down the book’s cover, over the gold-embossed wyvern wing, and cracked it open.
The journal of Jiang Xiaoyu,it said on the first page.
“What language is that?” Kamaal breathed, reading over my shoulder.
“What do you mean? It’s Ithanys—” But it wasn’t. I blinked, and the words were written in a beautiful, artistic language I’d never seen in my life. When I blinked again, the words resolved themselves in my head, their meaning clear.
I quickly turned the page, scanning a list of dates and a timeline of events. “This was written during the Zalaam war,” I breathed, quickly turning pages, devouring whatever words I could before Kaazhim returned to confiscate it.
There were sketches among them by an artist’s hand—wyverns and tigers and fae rendered in charcoal. And others too, fae with hands full of shadows and magic, with sharp ears and wings but not like the fae we’d seen on the Riverren streets. The illustrations had eyes as black as coal.
“Zalaam warriors,” Kamaal hissed, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Why did the king send us here to find a journal about the araethawn? They were eradicated years ago.”
I’d never seen such detailed sketches of them, had never looked into eyes seething with malice and hunger. I’d expected them to be empty, mindless, but there was an intelligence to these people.Commander,it said at the side of the sketch. On the next page were more drawings, more notes. These had wings like a wyvern’s but thinner, longer, as if to fit a smaller body, and eyes black but hollow, empty.Soldiers,these said.
On the next page, the same face stared out at me from five different drawings—female, beautiful, and harsh. Black hair framed a face of pure ivory and devastating beauty, but her mouth was pressed flat in one drawing, curled in a sneer in another sketch, parted in a snarl in another. Whoever created this art had brought the woman to life with enough detail and realism that a shiver went down my spine.Queen,it said next to a drawing of her looking straight out from the book. I nearly dropped the damn thing.
“Is that her?” Kamaal whispered, standing as still as stone.
I nodded. “This word here says queen. Don’t ask how I know, I have no idea.”
“Who in the dark realm are you people,” a sharp woman’s voice cracked through the room, startling Kamaal and I apart, “and what are you doing in my family collection?”
Kaazhim laughed. Low, rolling, as ominous as thunder. He strolled out from behind a podium, his hands in his pockets. “Do you not recognise me, Mingyue?”
“You,”the woman seethed, pure murder in her voice.
I shot Kamaal a look and we backed up, shielding behind a solid bookcase, as yet unspotted by the woman whose house we’d broken into.
“I’ll kill you,” she said with enough passion that I believed her. Magic throbbed through the room like a heartbeat, indeed alive with lethal intensity.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Kaazhim replied with the arrogant amusement that made me crave to break his nose. “Or you damn your own granddaughter to death.”
Silence—only silence from the woman. The pulse in the air died.
Kamaal silently beckoned me closer, eyeing a window on the far wall. But to reach it, we’d have to jump from one row of shelves to another, exposing us for fraught seconds. I shook my head. Better that we stay hidden and let Kaazhim hold all her attention.
But the smug fucker said, “Come out, Ameirah.”
I gave my middle finger to the general direction of his voice.
“Only blood of your blood can find this house, can’t they?” he remarked, addressing the woman once again. I barely heard what he said next over the roar of my own blood.
