Page 44 of Cloak of Night
“I’ll cut the glass as close to the frame as I can to give you space,” she said. “Just hold me steady.”
They cast gecko spells this time and climbed. At the top of the windows, Daemon stuck one of his hands firmly to the wall and made sure his feet were also well attached. Then he looped his free arm around Fairy’s waist; this freed her up to work with both her hands.
She pulled a slim vial from her botanicals pouch and what looked like a thin paintbrush. She dipped the brush into the viscous pink liquid and began painting the edge of the closest windowpane. The glass sizzled, then dissolved. Daemon kept their bodies close yet carefully away from Fairy’s concoction. One errant drop and their flesh would be burned straight through to the bone.
As she finished the final edge of the window, Fairy adhered one of her sticky feet to the glass so it wouldn’t fall and shatter. Her potion completed its work, and the windowpane released itself from the frame. It clung to her foot as if held tightly by a suction cup.
“And now for the acrobatics portion of tonight’s entertainment,” Fairy said.
She slipped the foot holding the glass inside the study, latched both hands onto the top of the window frame, and swung herself through. Her body arced upward one hundredeighty degrees so she was upside down. She stuck one foot to the wall above her and kept the other one—with the glass pane—far enough away so she didn’t break it.
“Bravo,” Daemon whispered.
Now it was his turn. With Fairy out of the way, he could get through the window frame.
He didn’t move immediately, though. Something creeped along the back of his neck, like an army of baby spiders. He slapped at them, but there were no spiders, just little hairs standing on end.
Was someone watching them? He was still a little worried about that eighth person he swore had been in the study earlier. But he darted a glance back at the ground and the wall beneath him, and there was no one there. If it were Hana, surely she would have attacked them by now.
You’re getting paranoid, he chastised himself. Daemon faced the window frame once more.
As predicted, it was a tight squeeze. The fighting arts teacher at the Citadel had always told him there was no such thing as too much muscle, but as Daemon contorted his body to fit through the space, he started to doubt the wisdom of his extra weight-lifting sessions.
With a gasp and some raw skin, though, he made it through.
“Maybe I should rub you with oil before you try that again,” Fairy said.
Oh gods.Daemon fumbled for words, but all that came out was incoherent noise. It also felt very hot in the room all of a sudden. Had the fireplace been stoked again?
Fairy moved quickly on to business, though, and flipped herself down, landing her free foot on Daemon’s shoulderwhile holding the one with the glass out in front of her. She released her hands from the window frame and balanced like a circus performer as he climbed down the wall.
When they reached the floor, he took the glass pane away from her and set both Fairy and the window down gently. They would replace it again on their way out, welding it back into place with Daemon’s sparks.
Now he could really take in the soaring room, two and a half stories tall. The walls were the same red-streaked black stone as the rest of the castle, and one wall was a towering bookcase, each shelf packed full of hardback tomes. Across from the Dragon Prince’s desk was the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the ocean. Beyond that sea lay the mainland and the seven kingdoms he aimed to conquer. It was like a target set out before him so he would never lose sight of the bull’s-eye. Daemon’s stomach turned.
Ahead of him, there was nothing to see but the closed door to the hallway, decorated on either side by the long yellow-and-green, fork-tongued banners of the Dragon Prince. But on the fourth wall was the map the group of ryuu had been looking at. It was of Kichona and the mainland. There were ships and little soldiers, too—Prince Gin’s navy and army—with dotted lines marking possible routes of attack.
“Looks like we were spying on a war council,” Daemon said. “We were right to sabotage the shipyard last night.”
“I’m going to copy that map so we can study it in more detail later,” Fairy said.
“I’ll search the rest of the room,” Daemon said.
He started with Prince Gin’s desk. The bronze chair was severe yet luxurious, the metal like dragon’s scales but the seat a thick cushion upholstered in gray silk. It reeked ofviolent power, and even sitting on its edge made Daemon cringe. The desk was decorated with similar bronze scales.
There was only one long shallow drawer, where Fairy had gotten the paper to copy the map. He slid it open, but inside there was nothing more than parchment, pens, and wax for sealing documents. No wonder it hadn’t been locked. Still, considering what had been in the captain’s quarters of Prince Gin’s ship—detailed warrior profiles and a list of the ryuu’s targets—Daemon had expected something less mundane than stationery here.
The truly important things were probably concealed. But after checking the drawer for a false bottom—there wasn’t one—Daemon abandoned the desk to search the rest of the study.
He turned his attention to the bookcase, because Prince Gin had mentioned research when he spoke to Zomuri. This could take a while, and that was time Daemon didn’t have. He would have to flip through the books quickly, checking for hidden compartments inside them, as well as in the bookcase itself. He began on the lowest shelf.
The first book felt heavy in his hands, and he eagerly opened it, thinking there might be something inside. But it turned out to be rather ordinary, albeit with very thick pages, which accounted for its weight.
He moved on to the next one, which also proved to be nothing special. As did the next and the next and the next.
Three shelves later, Daemon rubbed at a cramp in his neck. He glanced over at Fairy, who was halfway through her sketch. They’d need to leave as soon as she finished. Taiga training had taught them to get in and out as fast as possible, because every minute increased the risk of beingcaught. Daemon and Fairy had already been in the study for half an hour. They were courting disaster.
He needed to go about the books in a different way. Daemon shifted into wolf form and drifted upward, peering at each level of shelves, scanning the spines for titles that sounded significant or books that looked particularly worn, and poking at the back wall of the bookshelf in case there were hidden panels. But he found none.
