Page 110 of To Dance with Death

He trails his finger along the page. Ah, there it is.

A conversation he doesn’t even remember having—in his bed for that matter—on the Isle of Anell. All from her perspective, as if she’d narrated it herself.

“You could use a dose of humility, Sire.”

“Why would I dose myself withthat? Sounds terrible.”

I can’t help the laugh that spills out next. But then he takes my chin with his fingers. “Your laugh. I could drink an ocean’s worth.”

“Moranya!”

Anton’s steps echo against the citadel’s glossy floors. He trudges up the stairs until he finds her, curled into a chair, the shattered mirror cradled on her lap.

Her eyes flutter open at the sound of his approach. “Anton?”

He comes to a halt, his rage—once simmering—now heating to a boil. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“My codex.”

Her hands, fidgeting with the mirror’s hilt, still. “Why?”

“It isn’t in the Abyssal,” he says, marching toward the shelves. He grazes the first shelf, cracking each codex open, then swipes it clean, tomes toppling to the floor in a series of thuds. He moves to the next one.

She’s risen now, the mirror clutched to her chest. “Anton—”

The next shelf, he clears, too, before moving on to a third, then a fourth, pausing there when he opens a codex to find a familiar name.Emilia Alendina Stova.That he tucks under his arm, then continues his desperate search—

“It isn’t there,” she says.

He pauses. Swings around, expectant.

“Did you destroy it, then? What did you do with it, Moranya, after we cut our deal?”

At that, her gaze swings back to his. “Are you telling me you remember? But that isn’t—”

“Possible? Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? That I wouldn’t eventually come across the truth in one of the codices? All it took was reading Vasalie’s…”

He trails off. Because to his utter and complete shock, Moranya’s face brightens into something akin to…relief.

“You read her story,” she says, her eyes bright.

“Of course I did.”

“Because you love her.” She looks positively pleased. “And all the more, now that you know the truth about her.”

“And you took her away, just as you did everyone I cared for, all so that I would lose any and all connection to my life. All so that I might do your bidding…”

She has the gall to wave him off. “Even if you read her codex,” she muses, “your memories shouldn’t be fully restored. Such a thing is only possible if you hold your own tome.”

She’s right. It isn’t that he remembers, exactly. More that hefeelsthe truth of it, stark and clear as the sun on his skin. The truth of everything he read.

“I ask again,” he says. “Where is it?” Fates, none of this is making sense. But she’s already walking away, up the stairs and back into her room, and all he can manage is to stand there, dumbfounded. Then she returns, not a minute later, a codex in hand.

Immediately, he starts toward her, but she holds up a hand. “I will give it to you,” she says. “But first, you will allow me to explain.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven