Page 78 of The Stolen Throne
I try to suck in again, but it’s not helping. I can’t breathe.
I was counting on this—
A brush of shadow is my only warning before I’m suddenly on the other side of the room, Reven’s hands at my waist, intent gaze trained on my face. He lets go instantly, and by his expression, I think he’s already regretting touching me at all. Almost like he couldn’t help himself. “Breathe, princess. It’s going to be okay.”
Princess. He called me princess. I’d missed the way he used to do that. But the fact that he does now just adds to the not okay.
Nothing is okay.
The musty scent of books and parchment that I remember from when Reven brought me here—when he showed me how he was trying to find evidence to use against Eidolon, when he told me who he was, when he kissed me the very first time—that scent is barely here anymore, faint under a combination of smoke and mold.
Smoke because of the fires set by the Tyndran soldiers. Mold because the wave of water Cain sent into the trees that night to put out those fires apparently hit the library directly.
I hadn’t thought about the water. Goddess. What if all the knowledge we needed has been washed away? It’s not like we’ll find it somewhere else. Books are rare and precious. So are the scrolls stacked in their own corner.
“Vos can remove the ice, and we can salvage most of them,” Reven says.
I shake my head again, but with less conviction. He’s right, sort of. The ones that got the wettest are likely lost no matter what we do, but not all of the books have been destroyed. I swallow. “We’ll just have to pray that what we need is still intact.”
Standing here moaning doesn’t help. Get a move on, Meren.
I pick up the book nearest me that has a promising title, a tome as thick as my thigh, and drop down to sit on the floor cross-legged with it in my lap. Very carefully—because paper this old is delicate and could disintegrate in a puff of wind—I open it to the first page.
“Some of us,” Pella says in her irritated-as-usual voice, “can’t read.”
For once, I see past the irritation in her face to the very real, legitimate emotion underneath. Pella is embarrassed. Not that she needs to be.
“I’m sorry,” I offer sincerely. Maybe the first time I’ve ever spoken those words to her, because I should have known better. I lived half my life on the streets of Enora. No one I knew there could read. Even many authoritates can’t. It’s not like there is a lot of reading material to go around. “I should have asked.”
She opens her mouth, pauses, then says, “Yes. You should have.”
I ignore the verbal jab, instead glancing around to the others. “For anyone who can’t read, I figure we have two options. Someone who reads can show you the specific words you’re looking for and we trust you’ll see them, or you can start going through the damaged books and trying to salvage what you can.”
“I can read Savanahan runes,” Hakan says. He studies the texts littering the space, then gingerly picks up a ruined book closest to the door. He pushes past Vos to head outside, where I can see him spreading it open on the balcony floor and brushing off the pages carefully one at a time.
Immediately, Cain and Tziah join him, and I blink, because I didn’t expect that Cain couldn’t read, either. And I should have. Wanderers take with them only what is worth packing and hauling through the desert. Books, which are heavy, and scrolls, which crush easily, are not on that list. All their knowledge and history and information is passed along orally. Some of the most beautiful poetry I’ve ever heard comes from Wanderers.
I know this, and yet I assumed, since he was the zariph’s son… When did I get so out of touch? So unlike them? Or maybe I never really was.
Pella plops down beside me, and I lean away on instinct. The last time she was this close, she dropped a howling spider down the back of my shirt. Spiders land on the same list as heights as far as I’m concerned, and she figured that out. She’s good at figuring out a person’s buttons and pushing them.
“Show me the words,” she demands with a wave at the book I’m holding.
Oh. I ease up a bit. Rather than make a thing of it, I ask Reven for something to write with. All he can find is a piece of coal, but that’s okay. On the wooden floor of the library, I draw the symbols and explain to her what the difference is between those and others and what combination she’s looking for.
Which is when I hear it. A whisper. A murmuring of several indistinguishable voices that seems to move by me like I’m passing a group of gossiping courtiers in a palace hallway.
I stiffen, glancing from face to face. Did anyone else hear that? No one seems to have noticed anything.
Stop it, Meren. That weird occurrence at the tower must’ve gotten under my skin, but we’re not there now. Tension is getting to me. That’s all.
“I will seek out a high perch and keep watch for intruders,” Bene tells me, his large head sticking through the doorway, which is too narrow for his broad shoulders to get through in his current size. Backing up, he stretches out his wings and flies away.
See, I tell myself. You have a Devourer keeping watch. Stop working yourself up.
I pause as that thought sinks in, then, on a huff of a laugh, rub a hand over my face, giving a mental shake of my head. Thinking of a Devourer as protection would have been inconceivable even a few weeks ago. The world truly has unbalanced and keeps right on spinning.
Shaking it off, I get started. A buzz of anticipation overrides everything else, including my nerves. We came for one reason and one only. We will find something that tells us what we need to know about Eidolon. We have to.
