Page 51 of Anchor

She had this big shelf to the far right of her office, with two paintings at its side—one of a feather dripping red ink, which could have been blood, the other a man reading a letter under candlelight, while the corners of the painting were dipped in darkness.

The whole thing came together wonderfully, and I found myself touching the spines, running my fingers over the expensive-looking leather of the covers, and eventually, I even picked one up and began to read.

Strategy Analysisthe title said, and it was written twenty years ago by someD.D Harris,who’d signed this copy for Madeline.To Madam Rogan, the strongest woman I know. May your mind continue to sharpen forever.

“Somebody was trying to lickMadam Rogan’sass,” I muttered to myself, then laughed almost completely silently.

A lot of the books she kept on this shelf, even a few fiction novels, were sent to her by the authors, all of them signed and with messages like the first.Strong,most called her, and one even said she wasa kind soul,which made me laugh even harder.

I did read some paragraphs here and there, mostly non-fiction, and it did wonders in taking Taland and the Iris Roe and Taylor Maddison away from my mind completely.

Good call,I thought to myself as I put the sixth book in place, and I planned to go back to my room now, certain that I would fall asleep. My phone said it was almost midnight, anyway—Madeline and Poppy were probably almost home.

But then just as I put the fantasy novel about talking trees in its place, the title on the spine right next to it caught my eye—The Delaetus Army. I doubted I’d seen that book anywhere else, but something about that wordarmythat made me curious. One more book wasn’t going to hurt, so I picked it up and it was heavier than I expected so it almost slipped from my fingers. The covers were to blame, thick and sturdy and looking like they were made a long time ago, but also brand new, perfectly preserved.

The pages were thicker than normal, their surface rough against my fingertips. The ink was thicker somehow, too, raised so that I could have traced each letter easily if it was too dark to see properly. And the color of it, a shimmering gold, was mesmerizing.

It was obviously a novel, and this one wasn’t signed. This one didn’t have a name of the author, either, which struck me as odd, but still. Maybe it was an old story. Maybe the name of the author was lost.

What mattered were those words on the thick pages and the drawings, too. I didn’t go through every word because the colors of those figures held my attention, but the story was about a man who’d created a curse he called ablessing,and how he used that curse to control living beings, to infuse their minds with his own thoughts, to make them obey his every word without regard for their own lives. The man then gathered these men he called histrata,which was an Iridian word that meantbelongings,but it was used for objects, not people. With histratahe created this incredible army, more powerful than any other in history, past or present, and with it he planned to conquer the world.

Very basic, standard story stuff, but the drawing of the man wearing a hood and a cape that covered him completely kept my eyes glued to the pages. I only saw the bones hanging by these almost invisible strings around his fingers when the artist had portrayed him holding up his hand, doing magic.

Whitefire. “Figures,”I whispered to myself because Whitefire and Blackfire were the most powerful out there, no matter what the rest of the Iridians thought or how hard they insisted that all colors were equal.

Then I turned the page, and it was like the whole story came to life right before my eyes with a drawing so detailed, so lively that goose bumps spread all over my skin. The man with the hood and the bones hanging from his fingers and two thick bracelets around his wrists was atop a mountain, looking down at the people he called histratawhere they stood in formation with their heads up and their eyes on him. Nothing around them but more mountains and a sky, blue and orange and purple while the sun set behind them.

Fuck, I had to know who the illustrator of this book was because his work wasincredible.

I turned another page and was fascinated all over again to find a close-up drawing of the army as they started up themountain to where I assume the man was, with stars in their eyes like he was their god. They all wore helmets so they all sort of looked the same, and they all had brown leathers on them, and the same expression on their faces. They all had those bracelets around their wrists, too, and leather pants and leather boots that went all the way up to their knees.

I’d give my life in those moments to swear that they were real or they had been at one point, and if I could just reach out my hand inside those pages, I could actually touch them.

Then I heard a sound coming from outside, and my paranoia insisted that it was a car driving nearby. Madeline and Poppy must be coming back.

I’d never moved faster than when I put the book in its place, turned the record player off, and got the hell out of that office. I didn’t even breathe until I was in the hallway, running on my tiptoes back where I came from.

Before three minutes were over, I closed the door to my room without making a single sound, and I tiptoed my way to my bed like someone was right outside in the hallway, listening.

Fuck, that was close.There was no telling what Madeline would have done if she’d found me sneaking around her office. I really didn’t want to know how creative she could get.

But only when I closed my eyes and got my breathing under control did the images I’d seen on that book come back to me.

And only when my heartbeat calmed down did it hit me that the bracelet I’d seen in the Vault that day was theexact sameas the ones around the wrists of the soldiers in those drawings.

Chapter 10

Rosabel La Rouge

The Delaetus Army—a hundred percent sure I remembered right. Except I kept asking Google to find the story for me and it came up empty-handed. Nothing with that name existed on the Internet, which was absurd. It was 2024. Everything was on the Internet, and if a book existed in physical format, it sure as hell would be available for purchase or download online. Someone would have taken pictures of it and posted about it, at the very least. Or the name would have rung Google’s bell in some way—but no. Nothing. The search gave me nothing the fortieth time, just like it hadn’t the first.

Sweat on my brow.

“Ready?” Poppy whispered.

I blinked and the sun was still in my eyes, but that wasn’t why I was having trouble focusing or why I was sweating the way I was.

It was the cars that had already been let in. And the vans. And the people who would be in them.

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