Page 19 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

If I am very, very lucky, I will survive this night and I will come to collect you myself, so that you can grow up here in Valaron, and know the truth of who you are. But my enemy is powerful, and I likely go to my death. Avonia killed our family—your father, your brother, everyone else who came to celebrate your birth. I only barely escaped, so that I could save the one chance of a future. You.

Your life, if lived where I hid you, will have been a hard one. But you, my dearest, possess a great strength and the deepest of magic. Trust in Zyren—he will find you, and he will bring you back, if I do not. If you are reading this, it means you are on the path to reclaiming your throne. I know, because you are my daughter, and we share the same blood, that I do not have to tell you to end Avonia if she is not already ended. Valaron can have no peace while she lives.

I hope you will forgive me for leaving you, and for what I aim to do tonight. I cannot risk her finding you, even if that means forfeiting my own life. If I do not succeed, and this is the last entry in the Book, that means I failed. It is up to you now.

Do not fear your magic, darling—your magic will always protect you and those you love. Read the rest ofthe book. Once you know the truth of our family, you will understand.

And know always that I love you.

Renarys Otreyas

The last of my breath leaves my chest as I stare at the words my mother had written on the night of her death. I can’t imagine the strength it had taken her to endure the death of her husband and son, then take me, just days after giving birth, and create a rift to another realm so she could hide me. And then, after all that, to come back here, write her final farewell, and head off to battle Avonia.

A teardrop spills from the corner of my eye and splashes on the page, blurring one of the words. I jerk back, hastily and furiously wiping tears from my face. I notice another spot where the words blurred higher up on the page, this one already dried, and realize that my mother had shed her own tear onto these pages.

I suck in a breath to calm my racing heart. I have to keep reading. In these pages lies the key to my family’s magic, and the truth I’ve sought my whole life. I’m tempted to flip right to the beginning, but I know I can’t skip sections. I begin to read each journal entry in reverse order, starting with the one right before my mother’s last entry. There are several entries written by her over her lifetime. As I read backward into my timeline, I realize that each of the entries is written by a woman in the Otreyas bloodline. I realize, with a ripple of surprise, that my line is matriarchal, the women heading the house.Oh, what my mother would have thought of the High Priest who raised me.

As I read, I begin to come across entries about the same dark magic I possess. Magic so black it seems a nightmare lives inside the bearer. I read back centuries upon centuries while I myselflose all sense of time. It feels as if I’ve fallen through a broken clock, a clock which has stopped as I spin into the past. At last, I come to the very first entry in the book. An entry dated over two thousand years before. My heart climbs into my chest and my fingers tremble as they hover over the words. When I finally finish reading it, exhaustion takes me and I sink to the cold stone floor, leaning back against one of the thick legs of the table.

It all makes sense now.

The reason part of Aureon was sucked into the realm of nightmares. The cause of the great war, and the spell wrought by House Otreyas and House Lyonian to seal the nightmares back where they belonged, and to keep them from taking over the rest of Aureon. The magic running inside me, the magic running inside Zyren. Why we’re so drawn to each other.

The words in this book connect me to the family I’d lost so long ago. It feels as if each of the women before me reached from the pages and brushed their fingers across my cheek.

But the words of the book have also broken my heart.

I place my face in my hands, and my whole body shudders as a sob breaks free.

“Sarielle?” Zyren’s voice, coming down the tunnel. “Sarielle!”

His boots thunder into the small room, sword drawn, a look so deadly on his face that if there had been an enemy in the room with me, that look alone would strike them down. But when he sees I am alone, he crouches down beside me and lifts my chin with one rough finger.

“Are you okay?”

I nod and then shake my head and burst into tears.

Slowly, he pulls me to my feet and into the curve of his chest. I bury my face there for several minutes as the tears flow freely, listening to his heartbeat. Eventually, the tears cease. I sniffle and look up at him.

“What is this book?” he asks, reaching for it.

“It’s not for you,” I say with more heat than intended.

The cover of the book slams shut, and when Zyren looks down at my outstretched hand, a deep wrinkle across his brow, I realize I closed the book with an involuntary wave of magic. A shiver runs over me, and I place my hand back down by my side.

“Is that what you were doing down here? Reading?” His tone is incredulous.

“Why is that so surprising?”

“Because it’s nearly midnight,” he responds.

I blink several times in the dim light. “Midnight? But I was only reading for… surely it’s been only an hour or two…” But when my eyes take in the thickness of the huge book before me, two thousand years’ worth of entries by the matriarchs of my family, I realize he might be right. I look back up at him. “It took you that long to find me?”

Zyren stiffens, lips pursing. “We knew quickly where you had gone. But the passage wouldn’t open. Not until just a few minutes ago. Then, suddenly, it just revealed itself, like it wanted me to come in.”

I shiver again. “It’s because I’d finished reading.”

Zyren’s gaze wanders over the cover of the book, though he’s careful not to make any physical move toward it. “What is it?”

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