His face filled with sympathy, and though Marc’s and my situation was well known – and discussed – in Trollus, it still troubled me that we were seen as a tragedy. “I’m not dead yet,” I snapped, then pressed a hand to my temple as he looked away in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Martin made a noncommittal noise, then ran a finger down the spines of a long row of books. “There are innumerable accounts of survival, as well as the steps certain individuals took which they believed allowed them to endure the loss, but…”
That was exactly what I was interested in, although his hesitation told me all I needed to know.
“But there is no pattern,” he continued. “No way of predicting who will survive the severing, and no proven method for improving one’s chances. If there were, it would be well known and practiced. I’m happy to set the best of them out for your reading, but I do not think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
The words on the spines seemed to blur and dance, taunting me with the futility of this errand.
“And there is no way to break it?” To even have asked the question felt like infidelity on my part, to consider destroying the greatest gift that had ever been given to me.
Silence, then, “None other than death, my lady.”
Which circled back to the only solution: my survival. “What literature do you have on afflictions?” I asked. “Specifically, my own.”
The section was enormous. Row after row of volumes detailing the impact of iron, inbreeding, and confinement on my people, but as much as I was tempted to blame the human witch Anushka and her curse, my fingers drifting to the gold necklace at my throat told the truth. It was our own doing, our ancestors’ greed that had tied us to this world. All Anushka had done was make our world smaller.
“This isn’t one of my areas of focus,” Martin said, examining the shelves. “I’m afraid it never really captivated my attention.”
“Because you aren’t afflicted.” I immediately bit my tongue, because it was possible his was an affliction that was as hidden as my own. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the case. There was a certain selfishness to interest: one cared about what affected oneself, and only the best of people cared for what lay beyond that sphere.
A frown furrowed his brow, but he didn’t answer, only selected a volume. “This is specific to your concern, my lady.”
Sweat rose on my palms. I knew I couldn’t be cured. But maybe, just maybe, the key to understanding my ailment, to surviving it, resided within these pages. But as I flipped the cover, only unmarked paper greeted my greedy gaze. Startled, I flipped from cover to cover, but there was nothing. “These are blank.”
“Pardon?” Martin snatched the volume out of my hands, staring at it in bewilderment. “How strange.” Setting it aside, he extracted several more volumes, and the prickle of agitated magic across my skin told me that it was more of the same. I stood frozen in place while the librarian tore into the shelves, swiftly tossing aside those specific to my affliction and turning to those more encyclopedic in nature, but everything to do with uncontrolled bleeding had been excised from the pages.
“Impossible,” Martin whispered, a book held loosely in one hand.
Except that it wasn’t. Every scrap of research the royal library possessed about my affliction had been purged. And I knew who was responsible.
My father.
And there was only one reason I could think of for him to do it. He wanted to eliminate any chance of me surviving my pregnancy. The worst part of it was, there might have been something here. Something within these pages that would have ensured that Marc, our child, and I would endure, and now it was gone.
“Who would have done this? And why? For what purpose?” Martin demanded, but I wasn’t really listening, my ears roaring with fury. “Please excuse me, I have to go,” I said, and I bolted to the front of the library.
And nearly collided with Marc’s mother.
“Pénélope,” she said, taking my arm. “You shouldn’t be out unaccompanied.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “I’m tired of hiding from him.”
“I know you are, dear, but today isn’t the day.”
Only then did I notice her agitation, her face turned toward the far side of the city as though her blind eyes saw more than just blackness. I tensed, realizing now that half my agitation was not just my own – it was Marc’s. Something was amiss. “What’s going on?”
The Comtesse didn’t answer. Or if she did, I didn’t hear it, because a heartbeat later, Trollus shuddered with a horrific boom. Stone blasted out from the Dregs only to come smashing down, screams and turmoil filling the air.
Next to me, Marc’s mother collapsed.
I managed to catch her, lowering her to the smooth white stone. “My lady? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“No,” she whispered. “Not yet. Please… not yet.”
Then she went still.
“No,” I pleaded, knowing in my heart that this was somehow my father’s doing. Then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I screamed, “Help! Somebody help us!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marc
The ground shook, rock flying every which way, colliding with Tristan’s shield as he dragged me through the collapsing tunnel, out of the destroyed building, and into the streets. Streets that were filled with screams, none louder than my own.
“Let me go back,” I pleaded. “I need to help him.”
“If you go back now, then his sacrifice will have been for nothing.”
But it was my father. My father. My father.
Yet no matter how hard I struggled, Tristan wouldn’t let me go. We crouched in a side alley, him holding onto me with a death grip, eyes jerking from the rocky cavern above, to the entrance of the alley, to the windows of the ramshackle buildings, as though danger could come from any direction. And I stopped fighting him. Because I knew.
I knew.
Ana?s found us not long after, sprinting up the alley and flinging her arms around our shoulders. “Stones and sky, I thought he’d caught you. I thought you were both dead.”
“He did catch us,” I whispered.
Ana?s tensed, and Tristan explained what had happened, his words barely registering in my ears.
My father.
“I need to go back.” Climbing to my feet, I walked slowly down the alley, feeling Ana?s’s magic against me as she lifted the dust from my clothes and mended tears in the fabric. Making me appear innocent, though I was anything but.
They flanked me as I strode up the now empty streets, the half-bloods hiding from what they rightly believed was a quarrel between greater powers. The destroyed tavern lay ahead of us, shattered rocks and bits of furniture resting where they had fallen nearly a block away, the buildings next to it one-sided shells. I stared at the yawning opening that had been the cellar, at the ring of the King’s guards who stood around it. Several of them turned as they felt our approach, expressions grim.