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“I snuck into the forest. It took me three days to find the tree.” Arkimedes was pulling her toward the door. Admittedly, Nava wanted to be as far away from this room as possible, too. Even now, it remained colder than the rest of the house, like the places in the forest that were haunted by the Neems. “Although she abandoned me in an orphanage, I can’t help but think that she was protecting me from something worse.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
This was why he was so keen to stay and explore the archive. While Nava understood that he wanted answers, the why hadn’t registered as important before. He’d never known his mother, after all.
But after seeing the spirit—her charred skin and hollow eyes—she needed to discover the truth every bit as much as Arkimedes did. And she’d stay here for as long as that took.
“You left me in the midst of a duel, and there are feathers all the way up the steps. And you broke the chandelier. You know you can’t fly in a house with low ceilings…” Devon burst into the room, in the middle of buttoning his shirt. His hair stuck to his face—from a recent bath or from sweat? Who knew.
Nava blinked. She hadn’t even noticed that Arkimedes’s wings were extended, crowding the small room with their impressive size.
“I was in a rush.” Arkimedes shrugged and met her eyes, right as his wings disappeared behind his back.
Devon glanced around the room with a growing look of concern. “Who broke the window?”
9
NAVA
“Where are the dungeons in this place?” Nava’s voice echoed through the massive room. The ceiling rose into a vault-like dome, decorated with intricate molding and painted in mauve gray. She stepped carefully down the wide staircase, her feet slipping against the polished stone.
Black feathers floated over the steps, carried by the air of their movements.
“Dungeons?” Arkimedes’s serious expression broke as he glanced over his shoulder at her. He raised a dark, bushy eyebrow in response. “Why are you always asking about dungeons?”
Her cheeks burned. How long had it been since she’d challenged him to take her to his dungeon at the castle? Somehow, it felt like years ago. Not weeks.
With a shrug, she reached for the banister. “Where else would they keep their prisoners?”
He scoffed, shaking his head but continuing on his path.
“Seriously, though—where are the weapons the Crows used to murder all these innocents? This house seems rather normal.”
Apart from the whole spirit thing, the reality of their environment was rather underwhelming.
“We are the weapons,” Arkimedes tossed back and carried on down the rest of the steps. He sounded so much like his old self. Her heart squeezed tighter.
Hadn’t he said those exact words to her the first time they’d trained together?
“Your modesty is astonishing.” She ignored the fluttering in her stomach and the hope that blossomed somewhere so deep it blasted away the chill left behind by her ghostly encounter.
“Modesty is a waste of time,” Devon called from behind.
A large iron chandelier lay shattered at the bottom of the stairs, fragments of wax candles peppered across the cracked floor. How hadn’t she heard this break in the middle of her spirit-induced nightmare?
They cut through several rooms on the ground floor. She hadn’t been here before, had she? They were taking her somewhere new. Although, admittedly, that covered most of the safe house.
“Are we going to the archives now?” Nava followed Arkimedes down an eerie corridor that led them to the back of the manor.
“Yes.” He opened the first door into an empty ballroom. White sheets obscured every inch of furniture, except for the grand piano. “We should see if there’s even a scrying mirror in there.”
“I haven’t agreed to do it,” Devon warned. But he hadn’t said no either. Clearly, he was only dragging out the inevitable.
They walked past a locked chamber with wards buzzing around it that would probably call the entire Society if they tried to break in. Then past the infirmary, a smallish room with a cot on one side as well as shelves packed full of old potions caked in dust and covered in spiderwebs.
It all gave her the creeps.
“After what just happened, I want us to get out of here as soon as possible,” Arkimedes whispered so only she could hear. He hadn’t told his brother about his mother’s spirit, and Nava had kept her mouth shut.
