Page 54 of To Dance with Death

It’s worth a shot, considering we’ve had little luck despite our findings.

I close my eyes as if that might clear my mind, addled as it is, though I feel nothing save the tight string of anxiety weaving through my nerves. But once I’m on the other side of the river again, I begin walking, grazing the nearby shelves for support.

It’s almost like relying on a scent, rather than sight. Ignoring what my eyes see.

Perhaps it’s my imagination, but something is there. Like an anchor on a ship, tipping me to one side. A rope coiling tighter with each step I take. I follow the sensation until, after a moment, I feel a jolt that rattles even the bones of my hand.

I pull the codex I have stopped at. It’s large, wrapped in oily crimson cloth, like blood on skin. A macabre sight. It makes sense when I part its pages.

This is my father’s codex.

My fingers tremble. It takes everything within me not to rip it apart. Trample it to dust to see if that might end his life. But then, next to his, another book begins to glow. Already I know it’s my mother’s. Even so, my heart skips a beat. I barely remember her, but I recall lying in her bed, longing for her when she passed. I’d been five.

Carefully, I gather her codex, noticing that the empty spot beside it also glows blue, almost as if lit by a phantom tome. Except there’s no codex there.

This is where mine should be.

Except…it isn’t.

I’d noticed empty spots earlier, but none were lit. It’s further confirmation that itshouldbe mine.

“It has to be here somewhere,” Sundar says over my shoulder. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Considering it’s said that even Moranya herself can’t alter them. Otherwise I’m sure she would have. Unless…she threw it into the Sands.”

Yet another fear takes root.

“If she can’t alter them,” Sundar says staunchly, “then I doubt she can destroy them. And…yours isn’t the only one missing. Maybe they are stored somewhere else? You already said Anton had some in his study.”

“If mine was there, I would have seen it.”

“Even so, it means the Abyssal doesn’t containallthe codices. Ask him about it,” Sundar urges. “In the meantime, you continue to search for Anton’s. I’ll search for mine or my mother’s. I’d suggest we try to make him read Arjuna or Veer’s, but I don’t think we’d be able to convince him considering we can’t tell him why—blasted curse!—and he’d have to sift through thousands of pages to find anything relevant. At least I could taunt him with mine or my mother’s; he’s especially angry with her.”

“I doubt he’d even listen to you,” I say. “Fates—he’d probably find some way to punish you if he saw you here.”

“I’m not scared of him,” Sundar says, and at my frown, he holds up his hands. “I know it isn’t the best plan, but it’s better than nothing. Meanwhile, see what you can learn. Besides, if he begins to doubt what he believes, that would be a start.”

A seed of doubt. That’s what we need—something that might take root. I mull that over as the hours drag on until, finally, an Aegis finds me. “His Gloriousness has sent for you.”

After changing in the Modiste’s Hall—where I select a simple plum dress made from that velvet-soft, silky material, then gather my hair into a loose plait—I am led by the Aegis into a wing of the palace I haven’t been to before, up a few stories from the pavilion. Full, floor-to-ceiling windows follow the curvature of the long hall, the evening sky a deep tanzanite expanse feathered by the soft, ethereal light of the aurora.

Beneath, the city looks as though it’s encrusted in glitter.

Eventually, the hallway ends in an open, columned expanse save for the fragmented glass dome that severs the night into shards. Beneath it, a small, round table sits—an intimate setting with a lantern at its center. More lanterns ring the space, a soft, pearlescent glow emanating from within.

It feels like something from a dream—as does the man sitting there, his verdant gaze softly limned. Tonight, he wears a charcoal robe that looks more like a jacket, sewn with threads of iridescent blue. Necklaces drape from his neck, several hoops hug his ears, and his hair is half up, a few strands pulled loose to hang about his chin.

I take too long to study him, and when our eyes meet, his smile ticks up a degree, as if he knew it all along. “Vastianna.”

It’s still strange to hear him call me that. It was only ever Minnow, or Vasalie when he was worried.

“Sire” is all I respond with. I take stock of the table, already laden with fruits, cheeses, pastries. Purple wine, there within a decanter, our flutes already filled and augmented with pearls of pink that I assume are some kind of fruit.

“Where does the food come from?” I ask. I can’t imagine a farm here.

“We have orchards on the other side of the mountain. The Sustained tend to them. Of course the crops there are not like mortal ones, subject to death. Everything you see here comes from one of those—even the cheese, which is not actual cheese, but from gurya pears that can be prepared to taste much the same.”

“But why do souls eat?” Sundar confirmed that souls don’t need food to sustain them.