Page 25 of A Court of Ash and Midnight
Abruptly, I get off the bed, startling Trix. I’m across the room and out the door before having made a conscious effort to move. The guard outside my door looks alarmed and steps toward me. I murmur something about going to the bathroom and stride off down the hall. I don’t know where I’m going yet, just that I need tomove. To be unstuck, to have some sort of agency, even for only a short time.
When I reach the end of the long third-floor hallway, I take the stone steps leading down. My footsteps echo in whispers, I don’t even have shoes on, only a long nightgown. The castle is dark, though it doesn’t feel still, not with the constant noise of the rain. Sconces on the walls spill rosy light across the floor at intervals, deepening the shadows beyond their illumination.
On the first floor, I pause, looking down the main hall. I’m alone. Not far from the stairwell, the doors to the sparring fields beckon. I know I shouldn’t be wandering around here at night. I’m a guest, and it seems… well, impolite. Not to mention dangerous. Guilt worms through my gut. The guard upstairs will be missing me soon, wondering if something terrible has happened to me. But I can’t stay inside this place another minute or my heart will pound its way through my chest.
I shove the doors open before I can second guess myself further. The thrum of the rain, which had seemed loud from inside, becomes a tempest in my ears. I’m standing under the ornate eves of the castle entrance, but the cold and the wet press against me, icy droplets splattering up from the stone beneath my feet. The smell of the storm hits me, and I close my eyes and suck in lungfuls of it for several long moments. It smells fresh and violent, sky and earth colliding in a million different places.
It’s not enough.
Sucking in a breath to steel myself, I run, as fast as I can, across the twenty feet to the sparring quarters. I am drenched in a moment, and the rain is piercingly cold, but I don’t care. Myheart is racing when I crash through the doors on the other side, but this time it’s in a good way. I feel exhilarated. Free. I stand there in the darkness for nearly a minute, catching my breath and shivering in the cold, and then I keep moving.
When I reach the entrance on the other side of the building, I pull open the doors and stare across to the next building. I have learned, in my fortnight here, that it’s a study hall of sorts. For the Guardians and thesolaris, the trainees in their final year. Full of maps and libraries and historical archives and storage rooms for the apothecaries. I can’t imagine that any of them are working at this time of night. And no one else would want to risk catching cold like me just to get out of the castle. Not that the fae likely catch colds.
It’s the last place I should venture, but my restlessness tugs at me again, and then I am dashing through the deluge a second time.
I half expect the doors to be locked, but they open easily before me. After all, this place sits inside the walls of a nearly unbreachable compound guarded by the literal Guardians of the realm. I suppose security isn’t something they usually worry about, and the trainees all have too much to lose to risk getting caught here. A rash, rebellious part of me wants to get caught, wants to get banished from this place.
Slowly, I close the door behind me with acreak,which echoes down the dark hall. Then, just as slowly, I tiptoe forward across the stone floors, dripping water like a sea siren. Somehow, the sound of rain is much softer here, more muffled. I can feel some of the tension leave my shoulders, my chest. It only took a little breaking and entering to relax me. I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then suppress a shiver as I begin to walk down the hall.
The entire right side of the building seems to be one big, interconnected library broken up across four rooms. Polishedmahogany paneling lines the walls. Though the scent of rain still lingers in the air, I can smell paper and leather and ink also. The strange thing about books is that I can read, and had been able to from the moment I woke up all those years ago. Some ingrained knowledge from my previous life. I don’t remember learning to read, or any memories of reading, but clearly I had. The sensation itself is incredibly nostalgic…how the pages feel beneath my finger, the instinctual wetting of my thumb if a page sticks. My body remembers, even if my mind doesn’t.
I wander through the library for a long while, then cross the hall and start on the other side. This side of the building holds historical artifacts from all over Aureon. Pottery and scrolls and weapons and tools. Paintings and statues and maps. I wonder what the Guardians study here. What power do these items hold, to be reserved in such an exclusive place? I wonder if—
Voices carry through the space around me.
At first, I can’t tell where they’re coming from. I freeze, cocking my head to the side to listen. It sounds as if they’re coming from… below me.
I’m at the back of one of the rooms at about the midpoint of the building, so I’m not close to either of the exits. The voices drift closer, definitely coming from below. There must be a floor below ground. Perhaps that’s where the potions and apothecary rooms are located. In the dark, I must have overlooked a stairwell leading down—I’d seen one leading up to the second floor near the opposite end of the main hall.
I realize, far too late, that the stairwell entrance must be in the room next to me. I can see a glimpse of it through an open doorway, and then I catch a flash of movement behind a giant suit of armor against the wall. It must be hiding the entrance to the lower floor. Cursing, I scramble backward into the corner of the room I’m in. Trying to leave now will put me in their lineof sight. I just need to hide for a couple of minutes, and when they’re gone, I can sneak out.
Except the voices cometowardme, not away.
I walk backward, trying to tuck myself somewhere out of sight, but there isn’t anywhere to hide. My heart thrums in my chest and I can hear their footsteps drawing closer. Any moment now they’re going to step through the doorway and find me…
There’s a sound behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see a panel in the wall slide open. A hand claps over my mouth, and I’m yanked backward into the darkness.
Chapter Twelve
Amuffled squeal escapesmy throat as I’m dragged through the panel in the wall. I flail, striking out, but my arms are quickly pinned to my sides by arms much stronger than my own.
“Quiet, unless you want to be caught!”
I go instantly still. I recognize the voice.
“Daemon?”
He makes a shushing sound and then lets me go. I turn around slowly. It’s almost pitch black in here—some secret passage between the walls—but there’s a faint glow coming from something Daemon is holding in one hand. A small, round disc that must be charmed to emit light. In the near-complete darkness, the light makes his green eyes glow eerily.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“That’s quite the question coming from a human trespassing in the Guardian’s House,” he responds, his tone blade-edged.
“And you’renottrespassing?”
This earns a deepening of the dark scowl he’s already wearing. “I live here.”
“Here? In this building?”
