I trail my fingers down his sweat-slicked chest, fussing with one of his missing buttons. He was right. Everyone is going to know. It’s written all over our skin and faces.
And I want to laugh with joy, because he’s finally mine and now I get to share that with the world. No more hiding.
“Together,” I whisper. “Forever.”
Thiago kisses the tips of my fingers, and then he sets about cleaning me up, grumbling under his breath at the fact I’m not wearing any underwear and he has to use the hem of his cloak.
“Poor little princeling,” I tease, my gaze dipping over the generous vee of his chest that his shirt reveals. “All mussed and torn. You’ll have to find a new shirt.”
And I watch his face as he props himself on his knuckles, giving me a satisfied little smile. “Fuck the shirt. We’ll just say I fell into a thicket of thorns. Repeatedly.”
Chapter Eleven
Ravenal’s library is what I’m here for, and the following morning I slip away to find it.
The lock is easy to pick and I slip inside, summoning a tiny faelight to brighten the gloom. Heavy drapes spill to the floor, but the tower that houses the library is silent. Cold.
Empty.
Perfect.
Thiago rode out with Lucere, Corvin and Kyrian while I pleaded a light headache.
He gets to enjoy the company of the Ravenal siblings and the Prince of Stormlight, while I can go play in the library. I don’t envy him.
If I were an ancient book about dangerous crowns, where would I hide?
I spend the first half hour investigating the shelves to the south of the room, but there’s nothing of interest.
I tug Age of Immortals by Galen the Great down from a shelf.
Hmm.
I flip through the gilt-lined pages. When the Mother of Night tasked me with finding the Crown of Shadows, she told me it was lost to mortal memory. But words mean a thousand things in the fae courts.
And there are still a handful of true immortals remaining in Arcaedia.
“What are you doing in here?” a voice demands.
I nearly drop the book on my foot. The faelight winks out with a thought, but there’s nowhere to run. A trio of faelights bob toward me, one hovering right in my face so I can barely see the woman stalking toward me.
“Reading?” I suggest.
The light lowers, and then a slim young woman comes into view, scowling at me. “This is a private library that belongs to the royal family of Ravenal. And it was locked, because I was the one who locked it.”
“One of the maids directed me this way. I was looking for something to read.”
“And did they unlock the door for you too?”
I shrug. “Don’t tell me you’ve never slipped through a locked door when there was an entire treasure trove of books on the other side.”
“That is beside the point.”
Ah. A fellow book thief. “I didn’t think the crown princess would mind. She told me to enjoy the hospitality Ravenspire offered. I took that as invitation.”
“Well, the library doesn’t belong the crown princess. The library is mine,” the young woman snaps.
A royal library…. There were other princes and princesses introduced to me last night—Lucidia’s line was particularly fecund—but I don’t think I saw her face in the crowd.
“What’s your name?”
The young woman replaces the book on the shelf. “Imerys.”
“Princess Imerys? You weren’t at the ball last night.”
She steps forward and I catch a better look at her as the faelights back away.
I’m a little envious, to be honest. Her hair falls down her spine in a silken waterfall so black it almost gleams like a raven’s feathers, although some strands of it are dyed blue on the ends.
My hair is neither straight nor curly, and the second there’s any humidity in the air, it’s a mess.
Imerys has cheekbones that can cut, and there’s a touch of the Danesh Su about her features. Their empire lies to the west of the Far Isles where the fae male I once thought was my father still lives, though merchants from the empire make up a large majority of the Far Isles’ population.
“I have more important things to do than drink and dance all night.”
“I’m Iskvien.”
“I know who you are. And I know what you want.” She turns to walk away. “You need an alliance so you can take my kingdom to war. But you’re not going to find it in the library. And I’m not going to kiss your feet and offer you welcome, like my sister has, when you’re going to get my people killed.”
Your kingdom is already at war. But there’s no point saying it. “I think you and I share different ideas on the type of welcome your sister has granted me.”
It startles her.
“And what I want is a list of the Arcaedian immortals that survived the wars,” I call. “That’s all. And I hear the library here at Ravenspire is the best in the south.”
“A list of immortals?” Her footsteps stop, and she stands within a halo of light that streams down through the central core of the tower. “Why?”
“Curiosity.”
Imerys turns around.
I know her type. I am her type. Books filled the void within my life that my sister’s loss left. Books were sometimes my only companions when my mother exiled me from the main chambers of her court.
When my favorite nanny vanished when I was eleven—or was probably made to vanish—I found the library at Hawthorne Castle and with it, peace. A world outside my own. Families who loved each other. Friends who existed within the pages when no fae dared extend a smile in my direction.
An escape.
Imerys can no more ignore my question than I could have, because it’s a chance to prove her knowledge and a lingering itch to share her
