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The spirit was frightening but safe, and she was here to show him something. He checked to see where she was guiding him, then got to his feet and headed toward Nava first.
“She’s not a Neem and won’t hurt us.” He touched her face, shrouding her vision of the ghost with his body and wings.
“How do you know? We’re in her space, and she looks angry,” Nava whispered. But she relaxed inside his arms. Her fear was almost too much as it poured through him from their bond, paralyzing him all over again.
“I know she is frightening, but ever since I arrived at the castle, she has been leading me to clues about what really happened.” He stepped away from Nava and glanced over his shoulder. The ghost was still there. “When you’d just arrived at the castle, I was in the main library, trying to find some answers. She showed me a book, which I took to Devon to be translated, and we discovered an old prophecy.”
“Was that the one Devon spoke about back at the Society’s safe house?”
“Yes. The child of royal blood came to this world sick, poisoned by evil, and was taken to the world of shadows, away from our land and our people,” he recited. “I thought it referred to me, but it was always about Leir, and my mother must have known that.”
“Even though the king killed her, she still wants us to stop her soulmate.” Nava dropped the clothes she’d been clinging to for dear life and followed him across the room to the fireplace, skirting his mother.
Their steps left marks on the dusty ground, and for a good while, they searched behind the cushions of the sofa, only to come up empty-handed. Arkimedes flattened his lips and examined the mantlepiece, but other than the resident spiders, it was empty.
“There is something here that she wants us to see, but I can’t seem to find it.” He glanced at the ghost, who continued to point in their direction, unmoving. No matter how often he saw her, the image would never cease to upset him.
He frowned and glanced at Nava. She was kneeling on the floor, peering below the sofa. “Nothing— Wait… There might be something under here.”
They pushed the settee aside. It didn’t take them long to find the tile on the floor that had jagged edges, as if someone had repeatedly picked at the mortar. Arkimedes stepped on it, and it shifted under his feet. Nava sent him a charged look, and he opened his palm, his magic pouring from him in a burst of black ink. The tile moved aside, leaving behind a shallow hole carved into the stone beneath.
From a pile of rock debris and dust, he pulled out a rectangular wooden box that had lost its luster. Almost too large to fit in the hole, it had slumbered there, hidden for the past thirty years.
Settling on the ground, Arkimedes dusted off the top and found her name engraved in mother-of-pearl and gold. Briar. He looked for the ghost, but she had vanished. He swallowed and took a breath, hoping it would give him the strength to push forward. It was easier to keep going when anger drove his actions, and right now, he needed that focus to get her the revenge she deserved.
Inside the box was a small diary. Its leather binding had twisted with moisture and age, its parchment pages faded into a multitude of shades of browns. He withdrew it and placed it in Nava’s expectant hands. Then he rummaged through the contents again, finding a small bundle of golden hair, wrapped in blue ribbon with a small tag with his name on it.
Orion, five months.
“I don’t see how any of this will help us.” He cleared his throat and placed the strands of his hair back into the box. He couldn’t use it for anything other than to make himself spiral into sorrow at what the twins had stolen from him. Most of the remaining items weren’t useful at first glance, except for the intricate ring made of silver. Symbols he didn’t recognize were carved into it, and it was decorated with green emeralds.
“The ring—it says here that her soulmate gave it to her when they first met,” Nava said, calling his attention to her. She was paging through the diary with a frown, her face an inch away from the pages. “It’s very hard to understand her writing, but she drew a picture.”
Arkimedes glanced over her shoulder as she continued to read.
“He told her that wearing it would ease the discomfort when they were apart, that it would call him back to her, except…”
“Except what?”
“She saw him again a few days later at the royal masquerade ball.”
“And let me guess, he didn’t remember who she was?”
“No.” Nava’s gaze cut to him, and he fell quiet, allowing her to continue uninterrupted. “He seemed to follow along with her story, though he didn’t recognize the ring, so she didn’t bring it up again. She wrote that the king told her he liked to change his eye color with magic.”
They’d been right. His mother had met Leir, her soulmate, before she’d met the king. Probably when he was out on a mission for Dargan, and she was here traveling. Then he had been forced to leave, and she’d told his father about them being soulmates, sparking his curiosity.
Arkimedes brought the ring closer to his face, inspecting the designs carved into the band. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could sense the subtle vibrations of magic emanating from it. An artifact, although not one with a lot of power.
“Ark—your mother knew the king wasn’t her soulmate.” Her face shifted with an emotion that was hard to place. Disappointment—or anger? Her eyebrows pinched in the middle.
“What?”
“It’s written here.” She closed the diary and handed it to him. Her fingers were icy when he touched them.
Arkimedes put the ring aside, flicking to the page Nava had read last. His mother’s writing was the finest calligraphy, elegant swirls written in deep green ink.
The twins believe I’m a naïve idiot if they think I haven’t figured it out. And perhaps at first, I was for believing their lies. I suppose being seventeen will do that to a person, not that they would understand, with time holding such different meaning to fae.
