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“I need a drink.”
“Mmm, yes. Faerie wine, please. That stuff is delicious. I could purr if I had a tongue and lips in this state.”
Rolling my eyes, I pull Loric’s cloak around me, tying it again around my neck. Then, I slip my socks and boots on, taking extra care to stay quiet. No one else should have to lose sleep.
Gently, the door tugs open, and I send up a prayer that it’s still cracked, letting me skip having to mess with the knob. Especially once I see Loric. He’s still sitting against the wall, a sword across his lap, still in the sheath. There’s a quiver full of red-feathered arrows attached to his belt. A few are spilling out from it, theends resting against the stone floor. His arms are crisscrossed, leaned against the curved wood of his bow, the drawstring pressed into his legs. He’s using it as a pillow.
I pause in the open doorway.He looks so peaceful…
Dark brown wisps of hair fall in his face, mussed as if he’s run his hands through it one too many times. His lashes fluttering against his cheek give the illusion of him dreaming, and I can’t help but wonder what about.
He’s stayed here all night.
He slept outside my door… but why?To make sure Brenn didn’t try anything? His sister had to have been worried, since she left me her knife. For a moment, I wonder if I should go get it, but I quickly shake the notion free. If it weren’t safe, he wouldn’t be sleeping.
“Our chances of getting him to court with us are looking better by the second. If I were a betting woman, I’d stake my odds on it.”
“It’s not a game,” I whisper, stepping farther into the cavern, away from the room. There’s got to be something to drink around here. I’d rather not wake him if I don’t have to. The dark circles under his eyes tell me he needs sleep just as much as I do.
“No, you’re right. It’s not a game. It’s our livelihood. Much more important.”
Checking the store room I saw Jesper walking out of when we arrived, I sneak inside, sleuthing through the rows upon rows of shelves. It’s all canned goods. A lot of it is the chocolate whipped stuff Loric gave me. The rest, who knows.
I search the other rooms, placing my ear to the door before opening it. Most are bedrooms, empty. It’s too dark to really search them but I doubt there’d be anything to drink inside them anyway. One door sounds like snores, so I continue, moving to the next, and the next, before accidentally opening one withFaelor and Vik curled up together. I quickly cover my eyes and close the door, hoping I was stealthy enough to not wake them.
Out of doors, I glance at the stairs. The last one is nearly ten feet off the ground. There’s no way I’d manage to pull myself up there on my own. Not even if I carried over a chair. No wonder Loric didn’t worry about locking me in the room. If he was worried about me running off, he knew I wouldn’t be able to.
Sighing, I look around again, scouring for something–anything. I double-take on a tapestry, hidden underneath where the stairs let out. It stretches up from the floor, easily the height of one of the doorways. There’s plenty of space above it, and one would think if Gael was going to hang something on the wall, he’d center it like a normal person. But he hung it low…
The golden tassels brush the floor, the fabric depicting a dozen wolves, half body, half smoke, swirling in various directions.
He hid the entrance down here behind a hutch. What if…
I creep closer, lifting the fabric off the stone. Sure enough, a rough doorway exists behind it. Just an arch, no door, but the amount of dust that plumes into the air has me resisting the urge to cough. Squinting through the haze, I see cobwebs, and I reluctantly bat them away.
Another stairway perhaps? Maybe one that leads to the bar?
It’s dark inside, too dark for me to see anything beyond a foot or two, thanks to the fire still burning in the middle of the open cavern. I need a lantern, a torch, or anything that can provide light.
Not wanting to wake Loric, I decide to grab one of the mage light torches from the hot spring, basking in the heat a moment before returning to the tapestry. I slip inside, letting the fabric shut, and as the light unfurls, my mouth drops open.
“Holy mother of pearl. What is this place?”Hyde asks, and I’m not sure how to answer.
It’s a study… no, an apothecary. I shake my head. It’s a library, but with swirling glass tubes, beakers… It’s a white room, justnot…My brows furrow at the idea that Gael would have a place like this, then again, he never told the truth about anything. Who knows why he was in that dungeon. I didn’t know him at all, not like I thought I did.
The walls are lined with amber bottles and vials and potions… There’s an intricate track with glass spirals that run around the room, fixed in various places to shelves or hooks driven into the stone wall. It’s much more elaborate than the set up my father had in the white room. There are shelves of old books and dust covered trinkets, but no altar. No table big enough for a body to lay upon. Whatever Gael was studying, it wasn’t with people.
An array of circular glasses hang from hooks, and as I wipe the dust away and peer through them, it’s blurry, some more than others. I run a hand over my mouth, squeezing my jaw a bit as I gawk at the room, wondering what secrets lie within it.
A soft light catches my eye and I glance up, awed once more. On the ceiling is a map. It’s invisible until I stand directly below a portion with the light. Each step I take reveals a new portion, extending far beyond Solaria and our realm. It's mesmerizing, the way it appears and disappears, as if it's a living entity, breathing and shifting with my movements.
Finding another lantern, I use a stick to transfer the flame, letting the amber glow reveal more of the hidden sanctuary, layer by dusty layer. Each step I take is hesitant, reverent, as if the very ground beneath my feet could give out at any moment. Deciding to start with the shelves, I thumb the spines of the ancient tomes, their spines cracked and worn, and some broken altogether. Dust dances in the light, swirling around the room like tiny, ethereal spirits.
As I move, my fingers trail over the various trinkets littering the shelves amidst the books. There are small, intricatecarvings of creatures I've never seen—perhaps figments of Gael’s imagination or beings from other realms, though I’m not sure how he’d know about them. No one can leave this one, aside from the dragons. They’re the only creatures that can penetrate the barrier, but even they can’t take things or others through with them.
The books here are mostly about shifters, which might come in handy, considering I have to figure out what kind I am. Each one I pull from the shelf seems older than the last, their covers frayed and pages yellowed with time.
My gaze falls upon a peculiar box nestled amongst the myriad of artifacts. It sits on a lower shelf, somewhat obscured by the shadows, but there's an undeniable aura of magic emanating from it. The dark-stained wood is adorned with intricate metal swirls and set with red stones, similar to that of my necklace. They seem to pulse with a life of their own, drawing me closer.
