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It didn’t take me long to strip off the dress, ball it up and toss it in a corner, wipe my face clean and pull on the servant’s uniform, wrap my hair in black and slide my feet into the worn slippers.
I draped a cleaning rag over one arm, the pail over the other, hunched my shoulders and slipped out of my room.
No one spared me a single glance as I made my way through the Keep, reaching the king’s apartments in a matter of minutes. He’d still be tied up with his sycophants and courtiers. It took him hours to make his way back to these apartments, even on the best of days.
I slipped through a side door, bypassed the grand salon where he greeted his official guests, and made my way to his private rooms.
I wasn’t the only servant here, which made my job easier. Fresh flowers were being arranged on tables, servants with armfuls of linens rushed toward the back stairs and all I had to do was poke my head in every room until I found the right one.
Shelves stacked with books rose behind a cluttered desk, filled with half burned candles and oil lamps, two faelights floating unused in a corner. I locked the door behind me, crossed to the windows and opened the heavy drapes. I set the pail down, folded the rag beside it. If anyone came in, I would pretend to be cleaning the windows, which were inexcusably filthy.
Serpens office was pretentious and utilitarian at the same time, a carved desk with gilt corners, rolled up maps stacked haphazardly in one corner, reports from the front lines strewn across a table top carved from an enormous emerald.
But the king wouldn’t leave his valuable possessions out in the open.
He’d keep them hidden.
I approached the book-laden shelves, carved from a rich black wood I’d never seen before, layered with dust—except for one place—where the wood was rubbed clean and covered in fingerprints.
I slid my nails along the tops of the books, and tipped one out. Then another. On my third try I heard the dull click of a lock and the bookcase swung inwards, enough for me to squeeze through. There was no light in here, so I brought in one of the faelights, tapped the edge until it glowed.
The small space was crammed with treasures, gifts from visiting monarchs, heavy velvet bags of gilder—I slipped one into my pocket—piles of ancient texts and about a thousand dusty scrolls, rolled and piled along the wall, as if they didn’t matter.
Not like the one displayed proudly beneath the glass cover, the golden case gleaming brightly, the umbilicus decorated with rubies. I carefully lifted up the glass top, slid the casing off and unrolled the scroll.
The writing was spidery, like I’d expect from the Oracle, and I scanned through her prophecy once, then again, sure I’d misunderstood. By the time I read through her words a fourth time, I was curled on the floor, shaking so badly I dropped the scroll.
I had my answer.
We hadn’t been chosen out of chance.
We’d been chosen because our bloodlines went all the way back to Old Valarian, before the Fae even existed, straight back to the Old Gods. Julian, Raziel, Zorander, and Tristan were listed on the scroll by name. I was simply designated “the vessel” like I wasn’t even worth mentioning.
Each of us possessed the essence of the Old God’s magic and so long as we remained apart…none of us were a threat.
The chances we would have ever met were so ludicrously small, I couldn’t even begin to calculate them.
But together…once we were bound together, there was no army that could stand before us, no kingdom that wouldn’t fall to its knees before our combined magic.
We would wipe entire populations from the world.
Because extermination was what the Oracle promised the Shadow King.
An army of five, controlled by the Oracle, capable of destroying Caladrius, its people and especially, its king.
We were to beherweapon.
And if I read between the lines, the Oracle’s hatred ran deep enough, her genocide wouldn’t end there. We would give her the chaos she craved. The chaos she thought this world deserved.
Fae magic—allmagic that existed—had been stolen by the first Fae King, ten millennium ago, when he and his armies slaughtered the Old Gods and supplanted them with Fae culture.
As far as she was concerned, the Oracle was merely reclaiming what was rightfully hers. Once she did, she would reward the Shadow King with whatever remained of Caladrius.
Old Valarian would be united under one king, but I doubted for very long. The Oracle would eradicate the Shadow King as well, and then…
Then I didn’t know.
Outlined, in hideous, graphic detail, was my part in her monstrous plan, and I was too late to stop it.
