“Courtesy of Veya,” he continues, snatching something off the table, “I have the perfecttreasureto test your capabilities.”
Kaan thrashes and snarls with surging ferocity, perhaps realizing Veya’salsobeen rounded up.
Caged.
Arkyn chuckles, moves back, and plows his arm across the tabletop. My meal slops to the ground, plate clattering with a pitching echo as he slaps a book on the stone.
No, not a book …
A—
Kaan stills. Goes deathly silent as my blood chills, gaze hungering over the swirled design painted on the cover. A beautiful, near-perfect depiction of Kaan’s málmr, the two dragons bundled together like a moon.
My fingers twitch with the desire to brush across the leather. To feel the pages flick beneath them, bring the diary close and breathe its ancient scent. Because that’s what it is, I recognize.
Ancient. The diary of someone lost to the world.
My exhale is a shudder.
Slowly, I look up, straight into Kaan’s catastrophic eyes—unsaid words battling between us. All the confirmation I need that this diary belonged to Elluin. To the version ofmehe fell in love with so many phases ago.
The me he lost.
“This is the diary of Elluin Neván.”Arkyn leans over my shoulder, his breath sour like the reek of rotting fruit. “Former Princess of The Shade.”
Former princess …
The Shade …
The statement crumbles in my head like a ball of crushed parchment, making it hard to understand. A sentence stripped of its shape, words floating on a long-forgotten wind.
“Well, until she becamequeen,” he murmurs, lifting the front cover to reveal a scrawled entry written with such beautiful, delicate handwriting. Letters that resonate …within. Little pieces of a puzzle I want to pluck off the page and cradle close to my heart.
Mine.
Those words aremine.
A lump gathers in the back of my throat, painful to swallow past.
“Not that she ever signed off as anything other than Neván,” Arkyn mumbles, turning another page with a careless swat I want to strangle him for. “So muchintrigue!”
The world around us smudges as I meet Kaan’s gaze through the flames, the haunting weight in his eyes telling me everything I need to know:
He, too, has no idea what’s pressed between these pages.
Surely something terrible for Arkyn to be so giddy.
“You know what, there’s a lot of unnecessary drivel. I’ll paraphrase.”
Kaan’s eyes ignite, his muscles flexing against the chains constricting his bulging might while Arkyn continues to turn through the entries.
“It starts a bit boring, really.Elluin loved her brother—blah, blah, blah.Felt responsible for the injury that crippled him.”
The wordsmaim—a thunder of dragons swooping down, slashing me.
“She tames a mature Moonplume at nine phases, before even hearing the Creators’ songs. I must say,that’simpressive,” Arkyn continues, flicking forward another page. “Then she dons the Aether Stone and becomes the subject of an arranged binding, carted off to The Burn after her entire family is poisoned in their sleep, and things getreallyjuicy.”
“Stop.”
