Chapter Thirty-Five

Quinlan stared at the Keeper, his stomach filled with dread. “What do you mean all of the books have been checked out?”

The gargoyle girl pursed her lips. “I’m very sorry, Prince Quinlan. Prince Taeron borrowed them yesterday.”

Quinlan cursed his brother. The thought to research his condition hadn’t even occurred to him until earlier today, when he’d spotted Avris and Avon arguing about a misplaced library book on the chemical compositions of archaic poisons. Taeron, on the other hand, must have seized the books right after their confrontation.

In a polite monotone, the Keeper inquired, “Would you like me to recall the books, Your Highness?”

“No,” Quinlan said, a little too quickly. Forcing Taeron to return a book was as good as declaring war in his brother’s eyes.

“If it helps,” said the Keeper, “we do still have a selection of materials pertaining to shadow magic available. Would you like to take a look?”

Quinlan sighed and turned away. “Yes, but I know my way. Thank you.”

Of course, both he and Rose had already pored over all of the texts in question cover to cover. The tenth element had captured Rose’s interest years ago, and it had only intensified when dark, prophetic visions began plaguing her sleep—such as the vision of Quinlan’s father impaling her own father, the King of Eradore.

To Rose’s everlasting frustration, out of the hundreds of thousands of books in the Royal Library of Eradore, only a meager half-dozen shelves were dedicated to shadow magic. Though to be fair, Quinlan doubted most royal libraries boasted even a half-dozen texts on the subject in total.

Quinlan found a student leaning against a trolley in the aisle of his destination, flipping through a slim book with pages dipped in silver. He pressed his lips in a cordial smile, but she coldly ignored him. When he located the shadow magic section, he squatted down to examine the bottom few shelves. There was a large gap of missing books on the third shelf—most likely the ones that Taeron had already stolen.

After a moment, the student released an unhappy sigh and dropped her book back onto the trolley before stalking away. The trolley reshelved it on the second shelf right in front of Quinlan, slotting it between A Brief History of Forbidden Magic, Volume I and Journal Entries of a True Shadow Wielder, the latter of which was notoriously written by a man who could not wield magic at all.

Quinlan’s eyes narrowed on the newly reshelved text. He couldn’t remember ever seeing it before, let alone reading it. It was of extremely modest length, bound in fabric. Its spine lacked a title, only adorned with the gold outline of a tiny triangle. Had it been shelved mistakenly?

With his index finger, he tipped the book off the shelf and turned it over in his hands. The front cover was charcoal-black and just as rough. Equally as barren as the spine, it was once again titleless and marked solely by that gold triangle. Now certain that he had never seen the book before, he flipped it open to a random page.

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” interrupted a voice at his shoulder.

Quinlan snapped the book shut and whirled around, keeping it hidden behind his back. Why did he feel so guilty? Like he’d been caught committing some sort of crime—by what, holding a book in a library? He blinked at the Keeper from earlier and gave her a smile with all of his teeth. “Hi!” he exclaimed, high enough that his voice cracked.

The gargoyle returned his smile with an equal amount of teeth, a terrifying image that seared itself into Quinlan’s mind forevermore. “Queen Orozalia requests your presence in her chambers at once.”

“Oh.” He swallowed a sudden sense of foreboding. “Thank you.” Unless she was pissed at him, Rose always met him in his chambers if she wanted to discuss something—meaning, of course, that she was probably pissed at him.

The Keeper bowed her head and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Quinlan called, the book still tucked behind him. He almost asked to borrow it, but some instinct stopped him. Instead, he merely displayed it to the gargoyle. “Would you happen to know the title of this book?”

The Keeper’s head tilted to the side with a gravelly scrape. “No. Where did you acquire it? You did not have it in your possession when you entered the library earlier.”

So many lies came to his tongue, but in the end he went with, “Someone left it for me.”

The last time he had tried fibbing to a Keeper had not ended well.

Apparently, his untruth was vague enough that it passed beneath the Keeper’s radar. She frowned and opened her mouth to respond when Quinlan decided to cut her off.

“Well, never mind, I’d best be going! I would hate to keep Her Royal Majesty waiting!” Forcing another radiant smile, he swaddled the nameless book in his arms and made his escape out of the aisle. As he exited the library, he could feel the stares of the other Keepers sentried along the wall pinned on his back.

How the hell was he going to make it to Rose’s chambers without getting caught with a stolen book? While he might have managed to fool the Keeper, the other palace guardians possessed much more complex thinking processes and would undoubtedly detect that something was amiss.

With his mind whirling with plans for how to make it past the Lotus Chamber without being drowned by Rufus and Rulus, he hightailed it into the watery room, only to find the two stone dragons snoring soundly overhead. The stepping stone bridge surged to the surface as soon as Quinlan stepped toward the water to allow him passage.

His suspicions skyrocketed.

After jogging through Seventh Wing, he took a shortcut to Fifth Wing through a storage closet. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Whether they were statues or portraits or marble busts, every Warden he passed either had their eyes closed or their faces—or multiple faces—turned away from him.

“What in hell,” Quinlan whispered to himself, clutching the nameless book tighter to his chest. He briefly entertained throwing it into a fireplace but quickly dismissed the thought. After all, he still didn’t know what he might find inside . . . like a cure, said the little voice in his head, but he banished it.

He refused to hope. Recently, hoping had more often than not led him to crippling disappointment.

When he reached Fifth Wing and the great double doors that would lead him to Rose’s chambers, the nine-headed serpent Warden carved into the doors swiveled toward Quinlan, fixating on him with their eighteen gold eyes. Apparently the influence of whatever or whoever that had caused the other palace Wardens to turn a blind eye to him didn’t extend to the serpents.

“Hello, little prince,” the middle serpent head greeted. Vis, for wisdom. Each of the nine heads represented a different trait—which, if the legends were to be believed, embodied the whole of Lord Tidus’s personality.

“Hiding something?” the serpent head at Vis’s right inquired in a smug tone. Hras, the serpent of audacity. Khaz, the serpent of wrath, hissed at Hras. A fourth serpent, Mijya—for mercy—flicked their tongue in disapproval at both of them. Savir, Perstevo, and Armaré, serpents of patience, perseverance, and adaptability, watched on in silence. Foresight, Eloré, seemed to be asleep as usual, though it was hard to tell since serpents didn’t have eyelids.

“Yes, Hras,” said Quinlan. “What are you going to do about it?”

If snakes could smirk, he was certain Hras would have. “Nothing, for once. Lord’s orders.”

Lord’s orders? Quinlan thought to himself in a daze.

The eyes of ever-silent Müse, the ninth serpent head of mystery, flashed red. A moment later, the doors swung inward.

He bowed and crossed the threshold, all the while staring at the book in his hands.

“Quinlan Maximillius Barnaby Holloway,” came a seething voice.

Quinlan all but stuffed the book into the back of his trousers as the Queen of Eradore stormed into the main parlor with a half-eaten custard in her hand.

“Ah, hello cousin dearest, how are—mrumph.”

Rose crammed the remaining custard into his mouth. “Shut up and eat, idiot.” His cousin pinched him by the ear and dragged him into the tearoom, where he found the rest of his immediate family sprawled among the velvet floor cushions around a low teakwood table teetering with steaming platters of food, tea, and desserts. The twins were building a tower out of cookies. Taeron seemed to have dozed off, an empty cup of tea dangling precariously from his fingertips.

Along the wall were Rose’s collection of maps, some yellow and cracking with age, some gleaming with metallic paint, some illustrating kingdoms or continents, and some the streets of a single city. In the center of it all was a world map, the largest in her collection. She had drawn all sorts of lines and squiggles across it, including a perfect triangle that nearly spanned the entire map and suddenly reminded Quinlan of the triangle on the nameless book still stuffed in his trousers.

“Taeron,” Rose commanded. “Wake up.” She prodded him in the stomach with her toe.

Taeron jerked awake. “Ngk.”

The first thing Quinlan noticed was his brother’s wrinkled shirt. He had never seen Taeron wear wrinkled clothes a single day in his life. “You look like crap,” Quinlan told him bluntly.

“You too.” Taeron picked himself up from his cushion on wobbly legs, looking slightly guilty but determined despite his disheveled state. He moved a plate of sandwiches on the floor and replaced them with a stack of books.

Shit, Quinlan thought when he caught sight of the topmost title. Ten Traumas of the Tenth Element. Everything clicked into place. “You snitched on me?” he spluttered.

Taeron folded his arms. “Of course I did.”

The Queen of Eradore picked up a long loaf of bread from the spread of food on the table and whacked Quinlan hard across the head. “Quinlan Holloway, you atrocious, insolent, good-for-nothing half-wit.” She accompanied each insult with a separate whack. Eventually the loaf ripped in two, but she just kept on clubbing him with what remained.

Avris and Avon observed the spectacle in wide-eyed silence. At some point their cookie tower had collapsed.

“Rose, please,” Taeron finally piped up with a wince.

Anger swelled through Quinlan. “Go to hell, Taeron,” he snarled, the brands on his back prickling as memories of his father washed over him. There was Taeron, lurking somewhere in the background, begging Gavin Holloway in a kitten’s mewl to stop hurting, stop beating, stop burning my little brother. “It’s your fault for telling Rose in the first place. You always try to help at the last second, especially when it’s too late.”

His brother flinched. “I—I know, I’m sorry, Quinlan. I just wanted to—”

Quinlan swallowed his resentment and looked away. “Save it.” He sighed, the usual four words surfacing to his lips. “It’s not your fault.”

Everyone knew broken bones could heal at a spoken word. Gavin knew that most of all. That was why he had hired a healer to be at hand at all times and paid triple her fee for her silence—so he could break his youngest son again and again without a single worry.

Every time, after Gavin left the room, Taeron would be waiting outside the door with the healer and an apology on his lips.

And every time, Quinlan would say the same thing.

It’s not your fault.

How many times had he uttered those four little words? How many times had he pushed them out of his throat after he had finished vomiting out his last meal, or fallen asleep on the floor because his aching body refused to rise?

In those days, all Quinlan had ever wanted was someone brave enough to protect him from his father’s wrath.

He had so desperately wanted for Taeron to be that someone.

But Taeron could never find the courage or strength to stand between his younger brother and their father. The best he could ever do was clean up the aftermath.

“It’s not your fault,” Quinlan said again now, softly, because he loved his older brother. He really did.

Rose harrumphed. “Both of you are a real special kind of stupid, you know that?” She brandished what remained of the loaf of bread like a sword at the floor cushion between Taeron and the twins. “Sit, Quinnie.”

Quinlan obeyed without hesitation and collapsed onto the cushion.

Rose reached over to the table and loaded two plates with steamed vegetables. She dumped the first plate into Taeron’s lap and the second into Quinlan’s.

Taeron wrinkled his nose.

“Taeron Holloway,” Rose growled, “I swear to the Immortals that if you don’t finish your food and lick every last morsel off your plate, I shall exile you from the library. Eternally.”

Taeron actually gasped aloud. “You wouldn’t.”

Rose simply jerked her chin at his plate with a glare that would have sent anyone sane running for the mountains. “Try me.”

Taeron reluctantly stabbed his fork into a cauliflower.

They ate their vegetables in silence, with Rose watching over every bite with a gaze so cold and merciless that the late Queen Lillian would have been proud. The twins reconstructed their cookie tower until Avon sneezed and accidentally knocked it over. In retaliation, Avris crushed a cookie and shoved it down her twin’s collar. Rose threatened to ground both of them—separately, of course.

Quinlan supposed it was about as domestic as their little family could ever get.

He finished his food at the same time as Taeron, washing the last of it down with some tea. He set down the empty cup. The dread from earlier had yet to leave his system, and it only worsened as everyone stared at him in expectant silence.

“What?” he finally demanded, wishing more than ever that he could sink into the floor and disappear.

“When did it first happen?” asked Rose.

Quinlan picked up his teacup again and fiddled with the ornate handle. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific. My first kiss, for example? Several years ago. Next question.” Hopefully she would reply with something vaguely sarcastic, and then he could dodge the question and—

Rose didn’t even blink. “When did the residual shadow magic first attack your body?”

So much for sarcasm.

“You know,” Quinlan began, examining his teacup. “Whoever made this really knew their craft. I mean, just look at the shape. It bears such a subtle elegance, it . . .”

Rose stood from her cushion and strode around the table. She wrenched the cup from his grasp and hurled it at the wall in an explosion of porcelain.

In the ensuing silence, no one dared to move. It was a new kind of silence, the kind that made Quinlan afraid of breathing at the wrong moment. He stared at his cousin, at her heaving shoulders and the dark fury blazing in her golden eyes.

“Fix it, Quinlan,” said Rose.

His throat locked around his words. A strange noise escaped him.

Rose thrust her finger at the fragments littering the floor and yelled. “I said, fix it !”

“I can’t !” Quinlan shouted. His hands shook uncontrollably. His vision blurred with tears.

The twins scrambled over to him. Avon stroked his hair while Avris lay her little auburn head on his chest, her ear pressed over his heart. He wondered what she could hear.

Rose muttered, “Reyunir,” and the teacup remnants drifted into the air and mended themselves before drifting back onto the table, whole and unbroken once more.

How stupid, to be envious of a teacup.

Rose knelt before Quinlan and placed a gentle hand on his knee. The next time the queen spoke, her voice was soft. “I thought so.”

Taeron, too, came to crouch at eye level before him. “I know it’s hard for you to ask for help,” he began. “I know you probably don’t want our help. But we’re your family, little brother. We love you more than anything, and we could never bear to lose you. So please. For the love of the Immortals, please, Quinlan. If you’re hurting . . . let us help you heal.”

Quinlan’s grief streamed down his face. He cursed, trying to wipe the tears away, but for some reason they refused to abate. Stop crying, for Immortals’ sake, he ordered himself as the shame and the guilt and the anguish crashed down upon him all at once, only making him cry harder. Avris wrapped her freckled arms around his neck and patted his back. Avon used his sleeves to dab at Quinlan’s cheeks.

“Quinlan,” said Taeron, despair lining the pinch of his brow, his glistening eyes. “I know that you don’t want us to help—”

“No,” Quinlan at last managed hoarsely. “You’re wrong.”

Rose sighed. “Cousin dearest, this really isn’t the time to be stubborn—”

“I do want your help.”

Rose went silent.

“I’m sorry I kept this a secret,” Quinlan stammered. “I thought I could handle it on my own, but it turns out that I can’t.” He hiccuped. “I don’t know what to do. I—I’m dying.”

Taeron grabbed his hands. “No,” he whispered fiercely. “We’re going to get you through this, little brother.” Taeron swallowed. “I . . . I know I couldn’t always be there for you when Father was still alive, but I promise you that I won’t rest until we find you a cure. I won’t let you down, not again.”

Quinlan maneuvered Avris and reached into his trousers pocket. “Here, Taeron.” He pulled out the locket Taeron had ripped from his neck and tossed it to him—literally putting his fate into his brother’s hands. And somehow, it felt . . . all right.

Rose craned her neck to peer at the locket clasped in Taeron’s fist. “What was that?”

Hastily, Taeron tucked it away. “Nothing,” he lied. Then he shot Quinlan a look of understanding. “From now on, little brother, no more hiding. You tell us everything. Promise?”

Quinlan closed his eyes and exhaled. “Promise.”