“How do you know it’s got one of the lost languages in it?” Noa asked.
“Well, it’s written in a magical language that Julian isn’t able to speak.”
“But—oh.” Noa swallowed.
Julian could speak all nine magical languages. That is, he could speak all nine known magical languages.
“So it’s true,” Noa murmured. Lost magical languages did exist, and they’d found one of them before Xavier had. It was an enormous victory. And yet . . .
“But Julian—” Where magic was concerned, Julian could do anything. It made Noa feel anxious and unsteady to imagine a world where he couldn’t. “He must be able to speak it. If he can speak all nine known magical languages, surely he can speak the unknown ones, too. Maybe there’s a spell on the book to protect it from being read.”
Renne gave her a weary look. “You sound just like your brother. Julian is convinced that he’ll be able to find a way to read it. You can guess what that means.”
Noa bit her lip. “We’re going to sit here until he figures it out.”
“Exactly,” Renne said. “Or drives himself insane, I suppose. Which, given the mood he’s in, I’m slightly more worried about now than I have been in the past.”
Noa waited a few hours, then pounded on the door to Julian’s tower. He didn’t let her in until she’d been at it for at least five minutes. By then, her fist was sore, and she was in a thoroughly bad mood.
“Was I not loud enough?” she snarled as the door swung open, revealing a pale and unkempt Julian, his hair sticking up and his shirt untucked.
“I believe we’ve discussed this,” he said. “When the door is locked, it’s because I’m working on something important. You can open it yourself if it’s an emergency.”
Noa knew this, of course, but she hated overriding Julian’s lock, which only she and Mite could do. You had to stick your finger into the lock like a key so that the lock could sense if you had Marchena blood. It didn’t hurt or anything, but Noa couldn’t shake the impression that something inside the doorknob was sniffing her.
Noa marched past Julian, then stopped in her tracks. Mite sat at the table, swinging her legs, in the middle of devouring a sandwich. Her mouth was smeared with cheese grease and tomato sauce.
Noa whirled. “So you’ll let her in, but not me?”
“She is considerably quieter than you,” Julian said pointedly.
Noa huffed. She wasn’t really upset about Mite, who had been hysterical when she had learned that Julian was going to be spending the night on Evert and would not be there to tell her a bedtime story. Or at least, she had been hysterical in the way Mite became hysterical, running from one end of the castle to another like a silent whirlwind, with Noa and half the castle staff trying to catch her before she fell down the stairs and broke her neck or got herself so wound up that she blew up another wing. As it turned out, Julian hadn’t forgotten after all, and had returned to tell her a story at the usual time before sailing back to Evert. But that hour of uncertainty had not been pleasant for anyone involved.
“Renne’s worried about you,” Noa said. “He thinks you’re going to drive yourself mad.”
Julian waved a hand dismissively. “Renne worries too much.”
“Well, if you are going to go mad, I’d prefer it if you could wait until after you’re king of Florean.” Noa hesitated, then went over to the book sitting on the table. She poked at it, half expecting it to burst into flame or something. “For an enchanted book, it doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“I don’t like it,” Mite said through a mouthful of sandwich. “It smells funny.”
Noa agreed. But in addition to smelling funny, the book made her feel strange. When she touched it, she got that scratchy-throat feeling again, as well as a weird sense of anticipation, like a sneeze. A strange murmuring filled the tower, like the hushed voices in a library. And also—
“What was that?” She spun around, her heart pounding.
Mite gave her a funny look. “What?”
Noa scanned the tower. She could have sworn she had seen someone out of the corner of her eye, a tall figure in a gray robe. There was something strange about his face, but the apparition was gone before she could pinpoint it.
She rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well last night. Whatever Julian had been doing over on Evert had made a warbly, sonorous sound, like a thunderstorm with a cold.
She flipped open the book, and found herself staring at a lot of gibberish. Unlike most magical gibberish, though, the words swam strangely when she looked at them.
She slammed it shut. “This thing is giving me a headache.”
“You’re not the only one.” Julian tossed the book he had been staring at across the tower and pressed his fingers into his eyes. He had flopped down on the floor against one of the bookshelves with his long legs stretched out.
Noa sat beside him. “You really can’t read it?”
“No—it’s like the words fall out of my head as soon as I look at them. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
Noa bit back a retort. That was how she felt when she looked at any magical language. “You don’t say.”
Julian reached for another book. “It’s clearly enchanted. The mages would have wanted to protect it from being read.”
“They put it in an inside-out island,” Noa pointed out. “Julian, have you considered that . . . well, maybe you just can’t read it? Maybe you can’t use whatever power is in that book.”
“Yes, Noa,” he said irritably. “I’ve considered it. Contrary to what my mages say about me behind my back, I don’t think I’m all-powerful. But I have to try.”
“Why don’t we look for the other lost language?” Noa pressed. “Didn’t Xavier find two sets of coordinates? That mage you wrecked said so, didn’t he?”
“Oh!” Julian’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his hair. “So
