Inez shook her head. “He’s not safe because you are here. He will be safe while you are here. That’s all I could tell.”
“That’s all right. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Tears burned in her eyes, threatening to spill, but Erinna blinked them away. She would take it. Anything that could give her solace that her father was still tucked away at home. Cursed but alive.
She patted Inez’s hand in gratitude before slumping onto her mattress. She watched the remaining wisps of smoke dance up to the rafters, seeping through cracks in the shingles. Inez pulled her sleeping mat and blankets next to hers.
“Do you mind?” she asked but was already curled beneath the quilt before Erinna could respond. She nodded and couldn’t help the sense of comfort Inez’s proximity brought.
Erinna snuffed out the remaining candles and let exhaustion take her. Her back pressed against the diviner’s as they both drifted to sleep.
Stars littered the sky.Their light reflected in the obsidian water beneath Erinna’s feet. Shit. It was happening again, the same nightmare. Dark evergreens rose from the treeline. She was in the same lake. The same nightmare. In the stillness, sobbing echoed from the shadows.
No. It was starting earlier this time.
“You’ve come back,” the Weeping Queen sobbed, her figure emerging from the forest. The edges of her body were sharper than before, like the apparition had strengthened since Erinna last slept. She sprinted across the lake, desperate to escape. The sobbing grew louder; the queen grew closer until?—
THWAK.
Erinna jolted awake, pressing a hand to her cheek to ward off the sudden, sharp sting. Inez grumbled and shifted beside her, limbs stretched in all directions. She’d slapped Erinna in her sleep. She must have.
“You left,” Inez mumbled, voice thick and groggy. She yawned and turned on her side before falling back to sleep. Under normal circumstances, Erinna would have taken great amusement in the moment. But there was that nagging feeling of danger she couldn’t shake.
The feeling that Inez had saved her from another awful encounter. Sighing, Erinna curled deeper beneath the worn blanket and tried to drift off into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter
Eighteen
The earth rumbled beneath Kane’s feet, and arcanum thrummed in the air. The Minor Apprentice squinted at the doors to Fort Solitude, murmuring to himself as he tried, for the third time that day, to unravel the pesky arcanum bindings that kept the slabs of metal shut and unyielding.
A few of his crew members halted their activities and cast wary glances at the entrance to the fort. This wasn’t the first time Afton’s attempts had shuddered the ground, but it was by far the strongest.
There was only one way into the library, and that was through that damned military stronghold. If Kane were in a better mood, he would appreciate how well-constructed the place was.
Weathered stone walls remained defiant against the forces of nature that would seek to undo them. Built centuries ago to guard the precious library, Fort Solitude’s foundation was a masterwork of massive blocks of granite fitted so precisely that not even a blade could slip between cracks. The outer walls were scarred by wind and rain, but retained their imposing height, their crenellations like broken teeth against the sky. Rising fromthe center was the library—a tower of knowledge built six stories high, the outer walls pristine and unmarred.
A few unfortunate souls had tried and failed to enter the island before. All met the same fate. The dirt beneath their boots was likely mixed with the bone dust of past looters. But Kane would not meet the same fate. He was sure of it.
The hinges of the iron doors groaned against the pull of Afton’s Talent, but Kane knew better than to hope. The warping of arcanum had reached a breaking point.
One final shudder and everything settled back to the way it was before.
With a grunt, Afton caved. The doors remained mockingly shut and sealed.
“Still not enough,” Afton sighed, riffling through his book.
“I thought this was supposed to be the easy part, mage?” Kane grumbled through heat and frustration. They had been working for hours, the same as the day before, and the same as the day Kane got to the island. From what he could gauge, they were no closer to opening the front doors of the godsforsaken fort than they had been the first time they tried. They were running on borrowed time, and that only added to Kane’s frustration.
“I said it would beeasier.” Afton looked at the high peak of the tower. “It will beeasierto get into the library. Though perhaps ‘less deadly’ is a better way to phrase it…” The mage trailed off beneath the glare aimed his way.
Kane didn’t have the patience to deal with Afton’s semantics. Easy, less deadly, he didn’t care. He wanted progress. And from the looks of it, there was no progress being made other than the failed attempts.
“What’s taking so long?” He’d skipped lunch, and the hunger only sharpened the hard edges of his mood. Flame flickered to life in his palms and licked at his fingertips.
“If you set the place on fire, we’ll be able to do nothing but watch the place burn to ash,” Afton cautioned. This wasn’t the first time Kane had thrown a small inferno at the door. They barely had time to dodge the recoil after it set off another ward.
“I didn’t rot in prison for your pretend kidnapping just so you could laze around.” Kane rounded on Afton, who remained entirely unaffected by his growing vitriol. Instead of deigning a response, Afton moved to the large iron doors and pressed his palms against the metal.
“It’s been barred from the inside, and I can feel the traps that await us in there.” Afton stepped back and scanned the large grey walls. Small windows lined the top, protected by metal bars to prevent scaling and entering.
