Page 62 of The Thirteenth Count

A floorboard sighed behind her.

“From the valley,” said Cassius.

Fern jerked in her seat. He was standing just behind her shoulder, close enough that the heat from him made her uncomfortably warm despite the library’s chill. Her pulse kicked once, hard enough to annoy her.

She twisted in her chair, making no effort to look welcoming. “How long have you been standing there?”

Cassius took in the open books, the torn page, the ledgers she’d left fanned half off the table. “Long enough.”

Warmth crept up her neck for no good reason. “You might have announced yourself.”

“You seemed occupied.” His fingers brushed the edge of the torn page. “And intent on murdering ward theory.”

“Then ward theory should explain itself better,” Fern snapped.

Cassius smirked. “It wasn’t written for beginners.”

Fern huffed. “Yes, I’d gathered that.” She gestured sharply at the books. “Your ledgers name things plainly enough to be infuriating, then refuse to explain any of them. Your treatises speak in circles. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’m meant to pretend this mountain isn’t built around something no one will name.”

He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he aligned the nearest volume with the edge of the table.

“It’s named,” he said at last. “Just not anywhere the wrong hands can reach it.”

Fern gave a short, humorless laugh. “And whose hands are the wrong ones?”

Cassius crossed his arms. “At present? Yours.”

Her temper flared. “I’ve seen what lies beneath this place,” she hissed. “I’ve seen the vats. I’ve heard the walls breathe. I’ve read enough of your family’s ledgers to know blood is being fed into something far larger than wardcandles and polished hallways.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “So stop speaking as though I’m too dull or too lowborn to understand what’s right in front of me.”

He set two fingers against the torn edge of the page, flattening it. “You’ve mistaken fragments for understanding.”

Fern’s nostrils flared. “Then correct me.”

Cassius rounded the table, letting silence linger. Then he closed the ledger with a careful touch and said, “Very well.” He sat across from her, fingers laced, chin resting atop them. “Tell me what you think you understand.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He cocked an eyebrow as if it were answer enough.

Fern straightened her posture as she was taught. “I think your family bleeds the valley because blood is power. I think the Keep—by the Mother, the whole of the second and third tiers—runs on it. I think everything beneath this place exists so the Highbloods can keep pretending they were born to rule.”

“And?”

Fern made a face at the books. “And I think greed explains most of what I’ve seen.”

“Most,” Cassius repeated. He rested his palm on the closed ledger. “Then why track shroud repulsion separately from lamp fuel?”

Fern frowned. “Because it uses more blood.”

“That is quantity, not purpose,” Cassius said. “Why not have one category for everything that maintains the Keep? Wouldn’t that be simpler?”

She folded her arms. “Fine. Because it matters more.”

“Why?”

Fern dropped her attention to the repeated entries, to the words she’d nearly worn thin with rereading.

“Because… whatever it does,” she said slowly, “it’s not ornamental.”