Page 94 of The Incendiary

“Thank gods,” I whispered, my nose burning with emotion. I yanked out a key ring with at least twenty keys. The one I needed stood out: ancient, tarnished, cross-shaped. I wondered when it had last been used. By the thick layer of dust on the library’s hidden door, it looked to have gone undisturbed for a while.

I removed the key, unsure how or when I would return it, if at all. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice its absence. Breaking into his quarters to put it back would be twice the risk.

Eager to escape, I came to an abrupt halt only when the door handle jiggled. Under the bed was the safest place to hide, but the desk was closer.

The handle turned.

I silently cursed and threw myself beneath his desk, making myself small as the door creaked open and flooded the room with moonlight.

A steady, familiar gait closed in on the desk. I covered my mouth with my palm. Valda could not find me in here. I’d have to reveal who I was, and I still wasn’t ready.

A drawer to the left flew open with force. She rustled through parchment before releasing a relieved sigh.

“There they are,” Valda mumbled to herself. I flinched when the drawer slammed.

I didn’t see what she grabbed, and I didn’t care. Only when the lock on the main door clicked did I blow out a shaky breath of relief and open my eyes.

I left the same way I entered: quickly, silently, and mercifully unseen. I locked the door behind me, leaving as few signs that I’d been there as possible. At least any footprints in the room could be passed off as Valda’s.

When I returned to bed, I barely slept. The next day, I couldn’t focus on anything besides the key tucked inside my pillowcase. I suffered a few blows during sparring due to distraction. When the twins asked if I was all right, I lied and said I was. I didn’t know if anything important was in that secret room, but the thought of saving Gavin from his father had me so anxious I could barely stand still.

I didn’t dare ask myself what it meant for him if he was free. What it meant for me. For us. I barely let myself think about us in present or future terms.

I was afraid to hope.

I went to the library after dinner. I told Mina and Mavic I needed time to myself. That wasn’t a lie.

I wedged a chair beneath the door handle to impede anyone from entering or at least to give me notice if they tried. My feet carried me swiftly through the room to the shelf, where I began to frantically remove books. Once clear, I reached through the shelves and slid the key into the lock while a nervous sweat spread across the back of my neck. What if I’d grabbed the wrong key?

“Yes!” I exhaled in relief when the key slid in and clicked while turning. The door, stuck in place by time and lack of use, required my full weight to open.

In books I’d read, hidden rooms were often grand. This one wasn’t. I wasn’t sure it could be called a room at all. More like a small closet, narrow enough that I could stretch out my arms and simultaneously touch both cobweb-covered walls, and only eight to ten feet deep.

My damp neck chilled with the feeling of being watched. I nearly gave myself whiplash while checking the doorway, but no one was there. I turned back to the single shelf of books on the other end of this tiny space. They were covered in a layer of dust so thick I had to pull my shirt over my mouth and nose to keep from sneezing.

“Shera?” I said down our pathway.

“Yes?”

“I’m inside the hidden room. It’s underwhelming. There’s a single shelf of books. Ten of them, maybe, covered in dust. It looks like they haven’t been touched for decades. Maybe longer.”

I felt her disappointment through the bond we shared, but she didn’t respond. I left the secret door open just a crack and sat on the floor while sifting through the books by lantern light.

I spent at least two hours on the floor of that tiny room, paging through each book, coughing quietly through dust and mold. Most of them detailed history before the Rexus family’s reign over four hundred years ago. Some were even older. There was one copy of The Book of the Selvaren that I set aside, because I could recite that book in my sleep, and there was nothing inside about dark, ungodly magic in the form of blood oaths.

There was, however, someone’s note in an old index of Nyrida’s libraries.

Find the Duke of Peradine’s enchanted tome and discover what’s across the Brinnean Sea.

The rest was just a jumbled mess of maps and locations without order or reason.

“This could be something,” I said, explaining what I found to Shera. “I recall Gemma once mentioning that no one had dared cross the Brinnean Sea in centuries. But there’s nothing about blood oaths.”

“It might help you against Molochai, though,” Shera offered. “I think you should look into it.”

“Yes,” I agreed. Perhaps I’d raise the suggestion to Elias that he might want to send someone to Peradine to look for this tome. “As for the rest, I don’t know why they’re hidden back here,” I told Shera. “They’re just history books.”

“Maybe there’s a part of history your uncle wants to erase.”