Page 94 of Soul of Fire

Eisa and I exchanged a look as we followed behind the old woman.

The archive room was slightly curved like the rest of the rooms built into the stone hallway, its ceiling sloping up toward the inner sanctum and down to the floor on the other side. Bookshelves were carved into the stone walls, and several wooden tables for study sat in the center of the space like in the castle library.

But I didn’t have to ask where the Book of Chaos was. In the center of the library, a single tome sat atop a stone plinth, its pages glowing a pulsing blue.

Eisa gasped, taking a step back as if she had been struck. I put an arm out to steady her, feeling the cloying pulse of Chaos in my head.Alright?

She nodded, eyes wide.Idunn said the Book in your father’s library felt wrong.

She what?

Sigrid chuckled as Eisa rushed toward the plinth, and I offered the old woman my arm as we followed more slowly. The top of her head barely reached my waist, so it was exceptionally slow going.

Sigrid said your father only has a copy. This is the original.Eisa bounced excitedly on her toes as she stood before the Book, the blue reflected in her eyes as Idunn peered out with interest.And Idunn kept saying it didn’t feel right. This is why. The real one is full of Chaos.

The Book was unobtrusive, except for the pulsing blue light that glowed from within it. Its leather binding was clasped shut with metal latches, and Eisa reached out to open it.

“Wait–” I reached for her, but she was already flicking the iron latch.

She hissed, withdrawing her hand as the Book pulsed placidly, uncaring about her pain.

“Iron bindings,” I murmured, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the palm. I let Baldur’s magic ease the sting, absurdly pleased I could do so once again. “To contain the magic?”

Probably.Baldur’s ancient voice was filled with awe.I can feel it.

“Let me.” I took Eisa’s place before the Book and braced myself, sucking in a breath as pain shot up my arm. The latch clicked open.

Eisa crowded in next to me, and I shifted so she could see the pages before us.

They were utterly blank.

“What exactly do you see?” Sigrid asked curiously as Eisa flipped to the next page.

It was an illuminated manuscript. Elegant black text covered the next two pages, images of dragons scrawled up the margins of the page. For a moment, it looked like any other old book, and I couldn’t understand why it had glowed from a distance.

Baldur pushed forward into my vision, and that’s when I saw it.

Behind the words was something else. Symbols that glowed a faint blue and only became intelligible if I focused on letting Baldur see them.

“What is that?” Eisa frowned down at the page, and the longer I looked at it, the more I recognized it. I wore it on my fucking skin, after all.

In the beginning, there was the Darkness, translated Baldur.And only one with a soul of fire can hope to stand against it.

“Dragon language.” I looked at Sigrid, and the old woman smiled triumphantly. “You don’t see it. Why?”

And how?I asked Baldur in my mind. There were no written examples of dragon language. The dragons believed their writing to be sacred, and the only reason Revna had been able to tattoo it on my skin was by having Kindra show her the words mind to mind.How is there dragon language if the Book of Chaos was written by men?

Baldur rumbled a laugh.Who told you it was written by men?

I reached over Eisa’s shoulder, turning to the next page. Under a diagram of the different sizes and abilities of dragonkind was more of that glowing blue text. We flipped through several more pages.

It was on every single one.

“It is a skjult tunge,” Sigrid said, sitting heavily upon a stone bench and tapping her cane absently against the ground. “A palimpsest.”

“What in the name of the Goddess is a—ah!” Eisa asked, before swearing and covering her nose with her sleeve. The fabric turned crimson.

“Kjære.” I placed my hand on her lower back, catching her arm as she swayed and guiding her to the bench where Sigrid sat.