I don’t catch the end of his sentence. My adrenaline, or whatever was sustaining me, crashes. My head lolls back against Lambert’s warmth, and my vision goes dark.
Two
Galileo
Dakari races up the stairs, a limp and bloody Kyrith cradled in his arms. Concern for her pulses through my veins, urging me to join Jasper, Eddy, and Lambert and follow him. But I’m frozen. She’s breathing.Living. A woman made flesh for the first time in centuries. Stars only know how that’s even possible, or what that will mean for her.
I take a step in her direction, then hesitate.
I’m in the Vault.
She’ll never let me down here again. This is my one chance.
I don’t know what I imagined, but the reality is infinitely more impressive. Purple flames cast shadows so deep that the room seems to sprawl on forever in every direction. Maybe it does.
A person could get lost in the vastness of this place. Surely somewhere on these shelves there has to be a cure to the redmark pulsing on my skin. Yet, hot on the heels of that certainty comes a dose of cold, painful truth.
Even if the answers to my affliction are down here, the odds of me finding them are a million-to-one. The only person who’s been alive long enough to read all of these books and scrolls is Kyrith.
Without her, all of this knowledge is meaningless.
The golden dagger lies in a pool of her blood on the cracked stone floor. North takes a step towards it, and I realise belatedly that I’m not alone down here. I shove my arm out to stop him.
“Don’t touch it.”
That’s a powerful magical artefact. The kind that’s normally kept under lock and key by the parriarchs.
Between that, the altar, and the spire looming over this atrium, we’re surrounded by dangerous magic.
He ducks beneath my arm, ignoring me as he picks it up with his bare hand. Eejit.
“I already did, remember?”
Unfortunately, it’ll be a good while before I can forget the sucking sound of the knife drawing free of Kyrith’s chest, and the geyser of blood that followed it.
It’s the stuff of nightmares.
I take two steps closer, carefully skirting the crater in the floor Lambert made when he decided to jump instead of taking the stairs. He scared the bejesus out of me, but I understand why he did it.
The idea of Kyrith down here, alone and terrified, makes my jaw clench so hard that it aches.
The ruby in the dagger’s pommel glimmers as North raises it into the light. It matches the scarlet of Kyrith’s blood still smeared across the etched blade. Is it… pulsing?
What the…?
“We should leave it here,” I caution, as he wipes theweapon on the hem of his shirt. “The Vault is well protected.” I hold my hand out for it, and North hesitates. “That thing cannot leave this room.”
We don’t know what it does, but it must be connected to Kyrith and her miraculous resurrection. Magic only knows what would happen if it fell into the hands of someone like his father, or worse, the Carltons.
North shrugs, pretending disinterest as he hands it over. My gut twists viscerally the moment my skin makes contact. This blade thuds with its own heartbeat, something that shouldn’t be possible and yet…
I turn on my heel, returning to the monstrous altar of black and gold granite. The thing is carved with so many runeforms it would take weeks to decipher them all. The cuffs attached to it are still open, and the top is coated with a mixture of Kyrith’s blood and shards of crystal. There are six intricately decorated grooves around the edges, and it takes a second for me to realise they’re inbuilt bookstands.
That’s where the parriarchs of so long ago rested their grimoires while they went about the gory business of murdering her.
The one closest to me is as good a place as any to leave the dagger with its disturbing heartbeat. Itchinksas I set it down. I can’t help but think, ‘good riddance.’
Now that I’ve touched it once, I never want to again.
