Noa plopped down on the throne. Sometimes she came here when she wanted to think—sitting on the throne felt like being at the prow with the wind in her hair. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor, but that was okay.
What were they going to do if they got to Greenwash Strait and it was bristling with the king’s warships? What if they got there and found not only warships, but a strange new magic at the command of Xavier’s mages? She opened the Chronicle and unfolded the map of Florean she had glued into the inside of the cover. But even as she tried to focus on strategy—usually her favorite subject—her thoughts kept returning to the book.
Her gaze fell on a strange statue that had appeared beside the council table. It was a woman, carved from bronze, her mouth open in a silent scream. Something about the statue made Noa’s skin ripple with goose bumps.
She hopped off the throne and walked over to it, peering into the statue’s face. Then she recoiled.
It was Esmalda.
“Doesn’t much improve her, does it?” a voice said.
Noa started back with a cry, and nearly tripped over Asha, who put out an arm to steady her.
“J-Julian did this?” she said.
“Who else?” Asha looked grim. “I wasn’t here to witness it. But I hear it wasn’t pretty.”
Noa forced herself to look away from Esmalda’s horrified face. “Why?”
Asha blinked. “Didn’t he tell you? Renne caught her writing a letter to Xavier, offering to turn spy for him—for a price.”
Noa’s mouth fell open. “Esmalda?”
Asha nodded. “You’re not the only one who was surprised. It seemed like she worshipped the ground King Julian walked on. But I’ve found that when it comes to spies, it’s always the person you least suspect.”
Noa’s thoughts whirled. Julian had once turned one of the king’s soldiers into a tree. That had been different, though—the man had snuck onto the island and stabbed a villager. Esmalda was one of his own mages, and a councillor. As much as Noa disliked her, she was one of them.
“When did he do this?” Her mouth felt dry.
“This morning. You saw the mood he was in when he returned from Evert. I suspect Esmalda could have fared worse.”
Noa didn’t see how. Her hand shaking, she reached out and brushed her fingers against Esmalda’s wrist. It was cold as stone, and horribly smooth. Noa imagined that cold metal creeping up her legs, freezing her stomach and stopping her heart—
“Why did he leave her here?” she asked.
“He said it would be a warning.” Noa had never heard Asha criticize Julian, and there was no criticism in her voice now. But she didn’t look happy. “In case anyone else is tempted to betray him.”
Noa couldn’t sleep.
She stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom. It was a nice bedroom, in her opinion. At first, she had missed her room in the royal palace in Florean City, and had tried to make this one look as similar as possible. But even after the mages moved the walls around, and even with all the furniture in the right spots, it would never look like her old bedroom. Her old room had overlooked a manicured garden full of daisies, miconia, and lanternflowers; her new bedroom looked out over a rocky shore often populated by smelly sea lions. Her old bedroom had a floor of polished black marble; the new one was uneven with missing tesserae that formed a simple blue-and-white pattern. Eventually, though, she had come to like the new bedroom just as well, with its shell-shaped balcony and stone walls that kept it cool even on hot days. Over time, she had filled it with blue whales—they were woven into the rug, and painted onto the walls, and lined the windowsill in the form of ceramic figurines. Julian had even placed little whale-shaped lights in the ceiling that came on after sunset.
Noa pressed Willow to her chest. Her thoughts kept returning to the book. She knew with a bone-deep certainty that there was something wrong about the power it held. She didn’t know how she knew, but that didn’t make her any less convinced. Julian might believe that magic couldn’t be bad, but Noa wasn’t so sure. Maybe there was a good reason why the mages had bound that old language and hidden the book away. And maybe Julian shouldn’t have the power it contained. Maybe it would only make him stronger, and crueler, and less like the old Julian.
All these fears mixed together with her strange desire to look at the book again, to hold it in her hands and stare at those mysterious words. She had never felt that way about any magical object before, and it made her even more convinced that something about the book was wrong.
Finally, after tossing and turning for an eternity, Noa flung back the covers and hopped out of bed, pausing only to tuck Willow back in. She picked up a lavastick, blowing on the end to stoke the ember, then padded past Mite’s room and up the stairs that led to Julian’s tower. The door was still locked.
Grimacing, Noa stuck her finger into the lock. There was a small scraping sound, which was disturbing, and then something that felt like a tiny creature breathing on her fingernail, which was worse, and then the lock clicked and Noa pushed the door open.
She gazed into darkness. A strange, shifting darkness. Setting her jaw, she stepped inside.
The moon hadn’t risen yet, but starlight shone through the tower windows, and the lava slumbered in its cauldron, dark but for a few gleaming fissures. She didn’t see the book anywhere, so she quietly climbed the spiral staircase up to Julian’s loft. This held only a bed and a carved wooden wardrobe that Julian had owned since he was a boy. Piled around the bed were more books, seemingly at random. Julian
