Page 81 of A Fate Everlasting

Maybe that was an attempt at an apology. I was impressed. It was almost clever how he’d managed to make it sound so self-centered. “My actions havenothingto do with you Dante, let me make that perfectly clear.”

“Good,” he said flatly. “Then listen carefully. If I give the Arcana to you, breaking the deck willkillyou. Eternally. I need you to understand that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

But the doubt had already begun to bloom wild in my chest. What if Dante was right about this? I thought I knew who the villains were, but I had missed things before. With Hugo. With the executor. With this place. Even with myself. I couldn’tafford to be wrong again. Maybe in all of this the one thing I’d learned was not to trust…myself.

“Fine.” Dante’s smirk fell away. Fury took its place. “Don’t take my word for it. You think you are finally ready for the truth? All of it? The Sanctum library is next door.” The warmth of his hands disappeared too quickly, leaving behind only the aching cold. “It holds all of the books that can’t be kept upstairs. The ones that speak for themselves. I’m sure they’ll have a lot to chatter with you about.”

Before I could speak, he snapped his fingers, and the far door swung open.

Dante straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “I’m tired of your ignorance.” He turned without another word, and the door slammed shut behind him.

38

The Sanctum library was not just a place of secrets. It was something ancient, a beast with breath and hunger.

I slipped between the towering shelves, their spines vanishing into the abyss above. They were woven with black-veined ivy, tendrils curling around shelves and hanging low over the books. The dark moved with me, a mirror, expanding and contracting with every step.

The ladders drifted like specters, gliding noiselessly along their rails. They did not carry people, but secrets. Books lifted themselves, whispering as they vanished out of sight.

I felt a jab at my side. The Fool card thrummed in warning. I wasn’t meant to linger here.

Air rushed out before my body remembered how to breathe, fingers trailing over the spines of the books. They were warm. Some leaned into my touch, pressing against my palm like something seeking comfort. Others flinched away.

And then, a book convulsed beneath my fingertips, its spine arching, pages thrashing like the frantic wings of a dying thing. I recoiled, but too late. The tome wrenched itself free from theshelf, shuddering as ink bled from its seams, thick and dark as spilled blood.

The words did not stay bound to the parchment. They rose, letters twisting, unfurling into something alive. They slithered through the air in a feverish dance.

I had no time to reason before they poured into me. The library buckled, warping at the edges, then…vanished. It was ripped away in an instant, leaving me suspended in a chasm of sightless void.

Light bled into it and suddenly, I was somewhere else entirely.

I knew this place, sulfur stinging my nose. The shadows recognized me, too. I was in Evermore’s alchemy laboratory, but Professor Esmerelda was nowhere to be found.

Instead I saw my mother, younger, her eyes wide with desperation, her breath ragged as though she had been runningbut there was nowhere left to go.

“The portalling tonic will not hold for long,” my mother whispered. “If they catch you here?—”

“Then let them,” a cloaked figure said smoothly. “They will not understand what they are seeing.”

For a moment I wondered who this shadowy figure was, but then the information came to me effortlessly. The High King of Elsewhere.Aurelius Darkblood.

The Dowager made it sound like he had just returned, but here he was, twenty years ago or more. More information filtered through my mind at will. The Archangels weren’t his only game. He had been preparing his return for alongtime. But here, this night the book showed, he was weak.

Even the wisest witch in Elsewhere had got it wrong. He’d been rising like smoke through the cracks, the burn of his return so slow no one had questioned that the house was on fire. Dante said it himself. He’d been garnering support for years.

“You know I have a soft spot for you. Your work has been instrumental in helping my court rise again,” he was saying. A smile traced his lips, all cruel indulgence. “But Evangeline, my dear, you know the rules. I cannot grant you something like this without cost. Leaving Evermore once marked is quite an ask.”

My mother leaned forward. “I won’t let this place take me now. I won’t—” She faltered.

The High King tilted his head, face still hidden by the hood of his robes. “Oh,” he purred, “I see why. How curious. And what, exactly, are you willing to offer?”

She did not hesitate. “Anything.”

“I can see you truly mean that,” he mused, reaching into his cloak to pull out a necklace. Her necklace.My necklace.“This is a Lumen,” the High King said. “As long as you wear it, you will remain safe in the Common World, visibly mortal and untouchable. It is a tether between your mortal body and your soul.”

“A tether?” my mother asked, her fingers drifting to the delicate chain.

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