AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I keep my chin high and my strides steady. As I pass the library door, a couple of women standing just outside it titter to each other, but there’s no reason to think their giggles have anything to do with me.
No reason to think they don’t either, but what should their judgment matter to me?
The hall narrows around the bend. Several faded tapestries hang over the gray stone, bringing muted color to the space.
There’s a courtly image of some past queen I don’t recognize. A scene of Creaden placing a crown on the supposed first king of the entire world.
And then Signy, the greatest hero of the last century. I’ve seen—and read—so many depictions of her that I can identify her from the very first glimpse.
Like usual, the weaver has set her on a small hill. Her black hair unfurls behind her golden face, and a glow nearly as bright as what artists reserve for the gods shines around her. She’s wearing an odd combination of flowing dress and battle armor, her sword pointing toward the massive army of the Darium empire below her.
Only three figures stand around her, just beneath the crest of the hill: the three men she took as lovers and then husbands. With the godlen of love giving her blessing, no one dared to argue about the legalities.
When you free your country from centuries under an imperial dictatorship, people cut you a little slack.
It wasn’t evenourcountry Signy freed, but every realm on the western side of the continent celebrates her. She showed the way for the rest of us to shake off those shackles too.
I’d bet the countries on the eastern side celebrate her as well—quietly, where the current emperor and his lackeys won’t overhear them. They must hope that one day they’ll wrench free of his grasp too.
By the far edge of the tapestry, I pause. No one else is wandering through this end of the hallway.
The sconce just next to you,Julita says.Tap the base two times on the left, once on the right, then give it a tug.
All right then. I set my fingers against the bronze fixture with its magical glow as she said.
At the ending tug, a narrow shadow spills down the wall in front of me. A shadow shaped as if it’s falling away into a tight, dark passage—a conjured secret entrance someone permanently fixed to this spot.
“So very sneaky,” I murmur under my breath as I step into the passage. Darkness closes behind me.
We’re dealing with people willing to kill to gain power, who’re practicing right here in the college. We can hardly afford to be careless. Even being careful…
Julita pauses, with a hint of tightly held emotion. She’s kept up a pretty blasé attitude about the whole murder thing, but the woman did justdieyesterday.
I can’t imagine the shock and horror she’s going through, that she’s keeping to herself rather than venting all over me. She didn’t want to be stuck in this situation any more than I did.
Maybe I should give her a little more benefit of the doubt.
The passage quickly descends into a series of steps. I can’t see them, only feeling my way with one foot in front of the other and my hand against the cool stone of the wall.
Alek found this passage,Julita continues after a moment.It leads down to one of the smaller rooms in the archives. They have a normal entrance too, inside the library, of course, but that’s more noticeable. Gods know what the scholars used to get up to down here that they felt the need to make a secret entrance.
My lips twitch with the start of a smile, even as I file away the name. Alek—one of the friends who’s helping uncover the scourge sorcerer conspiracy, presumably.
I’m opening my mouth, about to ask for the others’ names, when I take one more step and find myself emerging from the darkness in between two bookcases in a hazy, low-ceilinged room.
The figures already standing around the desk in the middle of that room look up, and my mouth freezes before any sound can come out.
There are four of them. Four men, all different in looks but striking in their own ways.
The massive one with the blood-red hair.
The one with the warm smile and the short, tawny waves.
The one with the polished leather mask hiding more than half of his bronze-brown face.
And the one whose skin looks as sun-kissed as his rumpled locks, although the smirk I remember is faltering at the sight of me.
The same four from the image that swam up in my mind while I pressed my hands to Julita’s bleeding neck—
