Sixty-Three
Odessa
Ransom was curled around me, his body keeping me warm beneath the thin bedsheet. His chest was to my back, his leg entwined between mine. And his arm was draped across my ribs, pinning me in place as he slept.
I lifted his wrist, slowly easing it away so I could slip free. But as I tried to tug my leg out from beneath his bulky thigh, his hold cinched tight and he hauled me back.
My third escape attempt. Thwarted.
"You can't keep me in this bed forever."
He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled. "I can try."
"Rest. I'll be back soon." I twisted to kiss his nose, then wiggled free. This time, he let me go.
Another morning, he would have fought harder to keep me in bed, but his eyes stayed closed as he hugged my pillow.
The siphoning and a sleepless night in the jail cell had drained him so completely that he was already asleep by the time I was dressed. With my satchel over my shoulder, I eased out of the room.
The suite was quiet and still. Cathlin, Zavier, and Evie were all still in their beds. So I tiptoed out the door and made my way to the infirmary just as the light of dawn kissed the castle's golden spires.
Alore answered on my second knock. Her hair was piled on top of her head, secured by two wooden sticks. She wore a pair of tangerine glasses and a matching frock. "Highness. Is everything all right?"
"Here." I handed her the small glass vial I'd filled with my spit on the walk downstairs. "Test this with the elixir instead."
Two familiar figures loomed in the castle's foyer, their heads bent together in quiet conversation.
One was dressed in black, the other in armor that shone nearly as brightly as her white hair.
Thora wore her signature scowl, while Jodhi sported an arrogant smirk that widened when he heard me approach.
"You're back?"
"Miss me, doll?" Jodhi grinned.
"Actually, yes." I missed feeling like there was someone else in this castle, besides Ransom and Mae, who would take my side in a fight. Granted, these two would tell me I had to pay for it, but I had a feeling both were more loyal to people than they showed.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"Your father called us back," Thora said, her voice flat. "He made us an offer we couldn't refuse."
"When?"
"Five days ago."
Five days? That would have been long before our conversation last night.
"What was his offer?"
"That we'll have our chance to be rid of Salem. In turn, we just have to keep you alive." She frowned like she'd been manipulated into this agreement. "Do me a favor, Sparrow. Try not to die today. I'm not in the mood to play bodyguard at the moment. I'm going to find a bed and take a nap."
I waited until they walked away to smile.
The library was every bit as intimidating and magnificent as I remembered from my youth.
The atrium smelled of lilies, cedar, and old books. If wisdom had a smell, it was this library.
Margot had always arranged for lessons to be in our private rooms, rather than in the library with the students taught by the library's scholars.
At the time, I'd thought she didn't want Mae or me to mingle with the other children, even if they were noble born. That she'd deemed our education more important and therefore separate.
Now I wondered if all the seclusion in my childhood was really just another part of her keeping me safe. Keeping the little girl with golden eyes hidden away.
It was strange to see a person I'd known my entire life in a different light.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd walked through the library's gilded double doors. Maybe when I was four or five. I weaved past tables and chairs in the atrium, making my way toward a tall, empty bibliosoph's desk. The head librarian was nowhere to be seen.
As I reached the counter, an old man with a beard that fell to his belly emerged from behind a towering bookshelf, carrying a stack of tomes.
He took one look at me, and the books tumbled from his arms. "Caspia?"
"Oh, um, no. I'm…" Hearing her name was such a shock that I momentarily forgot my own. "Odessa. I'm Odessa. Her daughter."
No one spoke my mother's name. Either because Father forbade it or because she'd been forgotten.
But hearing it nearly brought me to tears.
A man with silky black hair and smooth, olive skin rounded the same corner and stopped short when he saw the mess of books on the floor. "Father, what happ—"
He noticed me, and his jaw dropped. But unlike the older man, who was still gaping with watery eyes, the younger man recovered quickly. He blinked twice, and then a handsome smile lit up his face. "Welcome, Highness. Please excuse my father. He believes in ghosts."
The old man scoffed and shot his son a glare. "She just startled me. It's not my fault they look exactly alike. I haven't seen her since she was this tall." He held out a hand, measuring it to his waist.
"My name is Kos." The younger man bowed. "This is my father, Faxon."
Two people so important to my mother that she'd filled page after page with stories of them in her journal. If we'd met before, I didn't remember. But today, I knew them both through her words. Through the love she'd left behind with ink and paper.
I wished she were here to make this introduction. I wished she were here to see her friends.
I wished I had come to the library a long time ago.
More tears flooded my eyes, and I wiped them away. "Sorry."
"No apologies," Kos said. "What brings you to the library?"
I took a calming breath and patted my satchel. "I was given a journal of my mother's. She wrote about how much she loved this library and how she had a special place to read. A carrel. I was hoping I could see it for myself."
Kos and Faxon shared a smile. Then the older man waved me forward. "Right this way, Highness."
"Odessa," I corrected. "Or you can call me Dess."
The carrel was cramped but clean. The air had a slight stale smell, like the tiny room was rarely used.
After he waved me inside, Faxon insisted I sit behind the desk while Kos went off to retrieve a book he wanted me to see.
And so as we waited, I let my hands skim the desk's smooth surface, imagining my mother bent over a journal, writing her own history and the story of Nelfinex so that someday, I would come to understand my dynasty.
My satchel was beside me, the flap open and the books spilling out.
"Here we go." Kos swept into the carrel and handed me a green leather journal.
"Where did you find that?" Faxon gasped. "She told me to hide it."
"Third floor. Tucked behind a series on fundamental arithmetic principles."
Faxon frowned and smoothed the length of his beard. "You know, I hid that book so well I forgot where I put it."
Kos chuckled. "Then it's a good thing I enjoy arithmetic."
I flipped open the cover and found a note tucked inside.
"She brought that to me after you were born," Faxon said. "Told me to add it to the journal I'd stashed away. That was before I forgot where I hid the book."
"May I?" I asked, taking out the note.
Kos nodded. "Of course."
Dear Kos,
My sweetling boy. (Though when you find this book, you won't be a boy.) Please do me three favors. Give your fathers my love. Take a piece for yourself. And when my girl comes to see you someday, give her this book.
Caspia
"How she knew I'd find it, I have no idea," Kos said. "But I'm glad I did so I can give it to you." He touched Faxon's shoulder. "We'll leave you to your reading."
"Thank you." I didn't look up as they slipped out of the carrel, instead turning the page of the book.
…
A boy sits on a floor, surrounded by scattered books. He has silky black hair and eyes so dark they shine blue. He picks up a book and tosses it into the air. But the book doesn't fall. It floats, like it's hooked to an invisible string as it lifts higher and higher in the air.
…
Visions. This was another book of her visions, just like the journal I'd carried with me across Calandra. Each entry was written in the old language in her familiar script. Each was a story that I hoped would eventually come to mean something.
But if not, each was a piece of her I would cherish.
I was reading the fourth page when a shadow fell over my desk.
Brother Skore swept into the carrel, taking the spare chair.
I couldn't feel his magic. Not a sting or prickle.
"Is it difficult, suppressing your power?"
"Yes."
"You don't need to. I can manage it."
"You will have the chance to manage much when it comes to magic. Today, take the respite."
I nodded, closing the green journal to take the black book with the winged emblem from my satchel. "This was my mother's. She left it in a cabin in Genesis. How did it come to find its way to me in Turah?"
"Destiny."
Luella had told me she'd found this book hidden away at the apothecary's shop. Maybe the person who stole it from my father's cabin in Genesis had owned that apothecary. Maybe this book had changed hands a dozen times before it fell into mine.
Destiny? "It sounds more like magic."
"If you've read all of those books and still don't believe in magic, then you've missed the point, girl."
Then I guess it was a good thing I believed in magic. "My mother had visions and wrote them in these books. Some were for her. But others were for me. Brother Dime told me it meant I was going in the right direction."
"Yes. And here you are, with the last of what she left for you." He pointed to the green journal Kos had found hidden in the library.
"Did you ever know her?"
"Yes. Though she knew me as Brother Nold when I still wore red."
Was she part of the reason he'd joined the Kennin? Someday, maybe he'd tell me the story of why he'd left the brotherhood.
"Where will these visions take me? And please don't answer with some vague, grandiose, one-word statement, like Destiny.' I've had about as much destiny as I can stomach."
Skore's mouth turned up in a faint smile.
"I do not know what you'll find in that book.
But if I had to wager a guess, you are correct in your understanding.
Her visions were both of her future and of yours.
Some have come true. Some might never. She was blessed by the Divine, and by that grace, those stories will lead you to the other orbits. "
"Finding them won't do any good if we can't destroy them."
"No. But it is a start. Have faith, Sparrow. Hope is not lost." He made no move to leave, like he could sense I had more to say.
"Why do I feel your magic? Why does it hurt when I touch you?"
"You are Starling. Magic is poison to your bloodline."
"Then why doesn't the magic impact me like it did my mother? My blood is red. I can't see in the dark or move at twice the speed of normal people."
Skore steepled his fingers beneath his pointed chin.
"You were born on this continent. Your father is Calandran. The magic in this land has been a part of you since your conception. The ancient texts say that the original Starling left when they became trapped in their shifted forms. When the monsters they became took control. I believe you are more like your distant Starling ancestors than you are your mother or relatives from Nelfinex."
"And if I shift?"
"Let us pray that you do not."
My stomach knotted. "When I was a girl, I was poisoned with fenek tusk powder. It should have killed me but didn't. And everywhere I go, it seems that monsters follow. That they're drawn to me."
"The Starling have always had a special bond with beasts."
It was a confirmation I didn't really want to hear, but it was not unexpected. "Ransom's gifts are similar to my mother's."
"Similar." He nodded. "But not the same."
"Will the Lyssa ever cause him to shift?" I didn't have the strength to do what my father had done. I wouldn't have the courage to kill Ransom if he became a monster.
"No. He is not Starling."
So the Lyssa would kill him instead.
Not an option.
"Why is King Ramsey burning books in Turah? Was he looking for this?" I touched the black journal.
"It's unlikely he knows any of those exist. Neither does the High Priest. But Ramsey is likely doing the High Priest's bidding. There might be something else he's trying to hide. It wouldn't be the first time the High Priest has obscured our history."
The history from before the Voster's time. The history of magic.
Maybe the High Priest and Ramsey were trying to hide the truth of Lyssa, too.
"Mother came here with a cousin. Xandra. She shifted into a bariwolf and never shifted back. Ransom was bitten by a bariwolf. I think it was Xandra."
Luella believed that Lyssa was created from the combination of her elixir and a monster's saliva. But Ransom hadn't been bitten by just any monster. This was the reason Alore's experiments with Faze's saliva hadn't reproduced Lyssa.
He'd been bitten by a Starling. By Xandra. And with the elixir, together, they'd created Lyssa. The magic in Calandra that had trapped Xandra as a monster, that had driven my mother to bloodlust, was the same magic taking its toll on Ransom.
The High Priest had told Ransom there was no cure for Lyssa. Was that a lie? Or was ridding Calandra of magic the cure? A cure that meant eliminating the priests' power and the demise of the brotherhood.
The Voster would sacrifice Ransom to save themselves.
"I tasked my father's head healer with trying to find a cure for Lyssa. Is it possible, even if the magic remains?"
"It's unlikely."
Damn. I was hoping for a yes.
"This infection is different than the Starling. It spreads through the blood, but it is not a bloodline," Skore said. "Yet they are linked. Magic fuels Lyssa while it poisons the Starling."
"So even if we destroy the orbits, it might not cure Lyssa?"
Skore hesitated. "I cannot say for certain."
I had to believe it was possible to save Ransom. That where there was poison, there was a cure. Magic or not, I wasn't giving up. I wasn't losing him. While Alore worked on her part, I'd do mine by destroying the orbits.
If only I had a godsdamn clue of where to start. "How do you destroy a god?"
"There is only one god."
"You're asking me to turn my back on everything I've been taught to believe."
"No, I'm asking you to believe your mother."
That, I could do. I stared at the books on the desk. "You told me to find a warrior. You meant her."
"No, girl." Skore stood. "I meant you."