The Nushtonia wentquiet after Shade’s failed blood oath.Not silent.Silence implied emptiness, and there was nothing empty about this place.The book breathed around them in slow, heavy motions, like some ancient creature settling after deciding not to devour them.The parchment sky above had softened from bruised gray to muted sepia, and what looked disturbingly like ash drifted lazily through the air.
Except it wasn’t ash.
Myanin caught one between her fingers and stared at the fragment of paper resting against her skin.Words covered it in faded ink, cramped and hurried, written in a language she didn’t recognize.
The paper dissolved before she could read more than a single symbol.
“Well,” she muttered, dusting her fingers off on her pants, “that was disturbing and satisfying at the same time.”
Behind her, Shade made a low sound that might have been agreement.Or exhaustion.Honestly, both fit.
The strange chamber the book had formed around them no longer burned with fire and memory.The walls now resembled towering shelves made entirely of stacked parchment, untouched by the fire, and bound pages, stretching impossibly high into shadow.Somewhere deeper inside the structure came the endless sound of turning paper, slow and methodical.
Like the book was thinking.
That was not comforting.
Myanin walked toward the edge of the room and peered into the dim corridor beyond.The floor shifted beneath her boots, text bleeding briefly across the stone before vanishing again.She was beginning to suspect the Nushtonia couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a prison or a story.
Which honestly felt relatable.
“You’re pacing again,” Shade observed.
She shot him a glare over her shoulder.“I am aggressively processing trauma.”
“That explanation is becoming less convincing with repetition.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
Shade didn’t answer immediately.
The lack of response made her glance back toward him.
He sat against one of the curved walls, one knee bent, forearm draped loosely across it.As before there was no arrogance in his posture, no deliberate provocation in the tilt of his mouth or challenge in his eyes.The exhaustion on him had settled too deep to hide beneath sarcasm.
Myanin looked away quickly.
Images of what the book had showed them were burned into her mind.The image of him kneeling beside Tarek refused to leave her alone.Neither did the sound of his voice when he’d said, he died afraid.Then, the promise he’d made Thadrick, his tone full of rage.
There had been no performance in either.No manipulation.No carefully crafted charm.Just grief and rage.
Ancient grief was strange.It didn’t bleed the way fresh wounds did.It calcified instead, becoming part of the structure holding a person upright.Something quiet and permanent.Something they learned to carry so well that others forgot it existed.
She hated that she understood that.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Shade said.
Myanin blinked.“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to solve a puzzle you resent being interested in.”
Her mouth opened.Closed.She needed to quit doing that.When she finally found her words she said, “Well, that’s annoyingly specific.”
One corner of his mouth twitched faintly.“You’re transparent when you’re distracted.”
“I am literally never transparent,” she said, her tone sharp.
“Literally transparentwould be weird.But, emotionally, you absolutely are.”
