Page 48
“I’m already freezing.” I pulled the cloak further around me when really I wanted to pull him closer but didn’t dare to.
“You only complain when you’re cold and tired.”
It was too intimate, being here like this with him, when I didn’t know what we were to each other and I couldn’t bear to have the truth spoken out loud.
Aster dug his heels in and clicked at the horse. “Let’s go, boy.” Boy, like the beast wasn’t hugely powerful. The horse trotted and then its hooves sped up into a heart-shuddering canter.
I had ridden as a child, but never like this—never one horse, one saddle, one body pressed against another. The rush of icy air stinging my cheeks, pushing my hood back, and the pounding rhythm beneath us tasted of true freedom and made a laugh escape. Aster’s arm tightened around me in reply. We spent our childhood riding as far and wide as we could, and there was a part of me that was glad Aster had gotten his love of riding back. I was glad that the Fates had given us this, even if we were fleeing toward yet more danger.
The path climbed fast. Branches reached overhead, turning the sky into a black lattice. Frost glittered on every needle and bare twig. More than once, shapes seemed to flit between the trees, but whenever I focused on them, there was nothing there but darkness and snow and the thrumming of my own nerves. And Aster’s arm wrapped around me, holding me close. Grounding me in the way he always had.
The codex and the little book thudded against my side.
“You think it knows where we’re taking it?” I asked after a long stretch of silence. “The book?”
Aster’s chin nearly brushed the top of my hood when he answered. “Those books know more than people like to admit. It’s why your uncle hid them, the Barren stole them, and why Morlan had you get them back.”
“That’s either reassuring or deeply sinister. Although the library books I worked with turned out to be quite bloodthirsty.”
“With the codex, it’s probably all of those things.” There was a pressure on my head—he had rested his chin on it, and I relaxed back into him. “There was a reason that they were all broken after the castle fell.”
“And you don’t know what that was? Even though you were training as a Shadow then?”
He only hummed in answer—it was so like a spy to give nothing away.
I adjusted my grip on the pommel. My wrists ached. My neck stung where the bandage rubbed on the gouges. Behind me, Aster’s breathing remained maddeningly even, as if fleeing in the dead of a Yule night with a stolen woman and two broken magical books was just a ride. This was the thrill he lived for—we lived for—defiance of an authority we didn’t choose. Over the years, it had become our lifeblood.
“You said restoration,” I murmured. “Not just storage. So, what exactly is in this library?”
He was quiet for long enough that I wondered if he would answer at all. “Scribing chambers. Binding rooms. Old presses. Mineral inks. Spell-work benches carved into the stone. It was built by the Skyworld scribes after the Old War, when they thought peace would last forever. They believed their books were the most precious items they owned, so they did all they could to protect and save them. Then a lot of what they wrote became banned. The Kings worried what their words would incite. ”
I stared out between the horse’s snow-tipped ears into the dark. “Protect and save. You say it as if you believe it.”
“I do. It’s why I sent you to the Grand Library.”
“Not to find a book that your friends are looking for. One that will tell them how to break the curse? No one has even read the codex for a generation. We’ve no idea what’s in it.”
“Your uncle created a long list of banned, each one was one he wanted for his collection. The list was the perfect excuse to have his Riders hunt them down. Most of the Skyworld scribes’ stories and research had been destroyed, but the witches had hidden a few.”
“He was searching for books that could tell him how to break the curse?”
“It was getting in the way of building the perfect flying army.” The path narrowed, and we slowed down as the horse picked its way through the snow. Aster’s voice was louder out in the open; for the first time in so very long, we could talk like we used to in the library archives. “Lex needs that curse broken.”
“I don’t need reminding of Lex.” I couldn’t get the image of him plummeting to the earth out of my head. A pulse of hot, angry grief washed over me. “I’ll fix the codex and break the curse if I can. But I’m not sure it’s the solution you all think it is.”
His grip on me shifted slightly. “Then what?”
“Then I’ll make sure I’m free to take my revenge. We always planned for revenge, or did you forget?” I said.
“Feather, I remember everything. Every. Little. Thing.” His voice was a whisper now, as if he were talking to a scared, wild thing that would scatter on the wind with the slightest sound.
“They’ll be tracking me for what I did to Frickel. They will have picked up our scent by now. Sooner or later…” I took in a long breath and put up as many walls as I could between us and the pain that was coming. “We were probably always going to end up…” Very far from each other. But my throat caught, and I couldn’t say the words which would hurt us both.
He didn’t answer. There was no arguing with the cold, hard truth of what we had sworn to do.
The horse continued to run as snow hissed under its hooves. My bones rattled with the movement and my inner thighs stung with the friction, but I gritted my teeth and allowed myself to relax back into him—even if it was just for this one ride. One moment. One night.
When Aster finally spoke, his voice had gone rough at the edges. “So many times I took missions away because staying would have gotten you discovered… killed sooner. The Barren guards were always hunting me, and then when the General showed up on the scene… They were following me everywhere, and it wasn’t safe.” His hand, spread out over my stomach, pulled me even closer.
