I blinked. “A rock?”
He jerked his head once in confirmation. “It has an engraving on it. Been passed down from generation to generation.”
“May I see it?” I asked, looking around the small library.
“Mm-hmm,” he answered, the sound rumbling up his chest in a deep vibrato and curling my toes in my boots. “It’s not here, though.” He motioned to the ship we stood in.
“So, you think a female family member will harness it once we find it?”
His brows pinched, and a flicker of pain cut across his gaze, but he nodded. “My mother, perhaps. She is the only one left.”
Something softened in my chest.A mother. Kellan had a mother. Why did that feel so…precious?
I nodded, and my brows pinched as I scanned Kellan’s face. He tore his gaze away from mine and stepped toward me.
“I brought you here to show you this.” He changed the subject and reached above my head for an ancient-looking book. The old caramel pages were nearly falling from it.
“Careful—” I warned, reaching out as he brought the book down and placed it on the small table.
His eyes brightened in amusement, and he gently flipped through the dried-leaf pages.
“This,” he began, ringed fingers hovering over the crinkled pages, “contains the instructions on how to land on the Arx.”
I leaned forward, my arm brushing against the pirate’s coat.
“I don’t understand,” I murmured. “Isn’t it just an island at the center of Votruvia?” My mind spun through the countless maps I’d seen of Morwyn’s place of birth. Six islands, five inhabited, the one in the center deserted for reasons I didn’t know.
“It is afloatingisland, Bonscaíh. And you may only enter,” he said, tracing the words with his finger, “with magic.”
“Has Isla seen this?”
Kellan shook his head as he straightened. “Not yet. I wanted to show you first.”
“Why is that?” I whispered, turning toward him but keeping my eyes locked on the pages of the book. “You don’t owe me anything. Our air oath is broken.”
The oath had died with the pirate lord, and my chest clenched as if I could still feel the air slip off the tips of my fingers. Kellan’s eyes sparked, and he took a step toward me.
“You know why,” he breathed.
My heart squeezed as the air around me stilled, and that little tendril of power connecting us seemed to tighten.
“Do I?”
Kellan’s lips parted, but his eyes focused on something behind me. His dark brows narrowed. My body rotated,following his as he stepped past me and reached for a thin, bone-white book from the back shelf.
“Speaking of the People of the Stars,” he breathed, pulling the book free from the shelf. “I thought I’d lost this.”
My mouth fell open, but my breathing stopped as my eyes landed on the bone-white book that had appeared in the stacks of the Living Library last summer. He opened the familiar edition ofFabia’s Fables.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NERISSA
…a commander of the Lotrennian War Slayers whose loyalty willalwayslie with the Land of Light and Life.
– Formal request for Nerissa Ravindra’s extraction from the dungeons of Mount Telum. Signed by Princess Carina Ravindra. 50thof Spring, 021.3E.
Nerissa – Nivis
