Page 49 of Blood of the Fairest

"What's in the last room? Through the green door?"

"I have no idea," he shrugs one shoulder. "If there is any reflective surface I could occupy in there, it is not lit by magic sconces, like these other rooms. I'm not sure Reinhilde ever went in there."

I know curiosity kills cats and all, but I feel a lot less anxious about this creepy passage now, knowing what's in these two rooms. I don't want my brain to populate the third one with all my worst nightmares at night.

So I grab the handheld mirror and one of the candles, take a deep breath of crisp goodness, and leave Rhinestone's lair, turning left.

I have to tuck the mirror holding Eris under my elbow to twist the handle of the third door. It's dusty to the touch and creaks softly as I push it open.

My heart pounds as I peer into the utter darkness. Holding out the mirror like I can somehow use Eris as a shield if some monster jumps out at me, I venture inside.

It's smaller than the last two secret rooms. There's nothing in here except for row after row of shelves holding thick leather tomes.

There's also something hanging on the wall opposite all the shelves, draped in a thick dark velvet. Knowing the queen's vanity, I assume it's another mirror and turn back to the books.

Setting the candle on a shelf, I pick up one heavy-ass book. I blow dust off the cover and squint at the four squiggles on the front.

When I hold Eris up for a better view, he reads it.

"Telling Eighty-Four."

I brush thick dust off the next book for him to see.

"Diary Forty-Seven."

Diary?

I groan as I look over all the other dusty, thick, ancient-looking books.

"Fuck. These must be all the queen's diaries, and they're not even organized chronologically. How long is it going to take me to learn to read and scour all of these for possible answers?"

Eris waves off my concern. "There's nothing to scour. Some look decades old, so I doubt there's any ink remaining in them."

I crack open the one in my hands. Seeing that it's full of scrawling text I can't read, I hold it up to him, arching a brow.

"I get that they're kind of old-looking, but ink doesn't fade that fast."

He looks shocked. "Open another."

I do, blowing off this one too. Then the next, and the next.

By the time I feel like I'm covered in dust, Eris is floored. He looks at the other shelves like they hold bars of pure gold.

"This…this should not be possible. Either Reinhilde enchanted this room with spells that defy the very fabric of this world, or something else is afoot."

"What do you mean?" I ask. "Aren't there a bunch of old, dusty books sitting around in old libraries and stuff?"

He shakes his head. "Eidengrau is a land without written memory. Everyone knows this. Even the most heavily enchanted catacombs of Turnstadt's oldest libraries are filled with nothing but blank, old tomes. Whether ink or carving, writing can only last a decade or two at most before it vanishes away."

Huh. This fairytale world gets weirder by the day.

Eris scowls at the rows of books. "In all the years I've been forced to stay at Reinhilde's side, I never saw her write in a diary. How can she possibly have this many?"

Maybe the queen was a vampire after all—one who's been around way longer than Eris knows. She could have recorded all of these journals long before trapping him.

Deciding Eris will have a better view of the work we have cut out for us if he can see it from a bigger mirror, I turn back to the draped thing on the wall and pull off the velvet.

Except when the flickering candlelight spills onto this large mirror, I go still.