Page 51

The codex shifted against my side, and the little book was now vibrating so hard I wondered if Aster would notice. My hand tightened over it.

His gaze dropped to where my hand pressed beneath the cloak. “It’s reacting?”

“It’s fine. There must be a lot of energy in these walls. That’s all.” I pressed my palm over the little book, which was now humming in frantic joy.

We reached the end of the corridor, where it opened into a wide chamber. The ceiling vanished into shadow. Long stone tables ran in rows, worn smooth with use and covered in more dust. Glass boxes were stacked along one end, and wooden tool cupboards, which resembled the ones back in the Grand Library, ran along one wall. Inside would be ink pots, blades, threads finer than hair, scalpels, and clamps.

I stepped forward before I could stop myself.

“Don’t touch anything,” Aster said.

“I wasn’t going to.” A lie.

The magic pressed closer here and crawled under my skin and into my bones. A book inside a glass case drew my eye. There was no backboard or spine to the book, but the blank pages were sewn together and fanned open. I opened the lid and reached out, hovering just above the page. Heat rose, but not from fire—from magic. The hum of Skyworld magic was the same as from the Annatalian books I’d worked on, which meant that the book was written by the scribes.

“I’m not sure you should…” he said again, quieter.

I ignored him. The Grand Library had magic in its walls and between the pages of many of the books, but this place was different because it was here that the books had been written. It was a mythical place of creation.

Just for a second, I allowed my fingers to brush the page. And then the world snapped into a kaleidoscope of colours. Showing me trees that didn’t belong to this mountain. Voices layered over each other in a language I didn’t know but understood anyway. And the room we were in shifted and grew to what it once must have been. Men and women sat along the tables with brightly coloured quills; at one end three men sewed pages together, and on another table were the clamps for gluing the hardcovers on.

I ripped my hand back.

Aster was in front of me. “What happened?”

I shook my head once. “Nothing.”

His jaw tightened. “Wren—”

“We need to talk outside. This isn’t just some workshop. This is a publishing house like they used to be. The magic is old and volatile, and it’s Yule. We shouldn’t mend the book here.” I pulled away from him and moved toward the corridor. “I’ve no idea what the books in the cases will do if I bring the codex back.” And the little book? I was more worried about her than the codex.

“Is there somewhere else on this mountain?” I asked, because the books were listening. I could feel it now. Every one of them. Watching and waiting to see what I would do.

Aster exhaled, then nodded. “There are the scribe quarters at the back. Most of them have caved in, but there is one that I—”

“How long did you live here?”

He didn’t answer. Just turned and crossed the room, weaving between the tables as if he knew exactly where he was going. I followed, and we reached the far wall where a narrow staircase spiralled down into darkness.

“Down there?”

“Yes, and you’ll like it, I promise.” The lightness of his smile made me follow.

He glanced back, one brow lifting. “We’ll start cleaning the workshop in the morning. Tonight we’ll eat and rest. Clean up.” I opened my mouth to protest that we didn’t have that sort of time, but he tilted his head at me. “Those wounds need redressing. And you need some rest. If Riders weren’t here waiting for us, it means they’ve gone to the Tower. They won’t fly at night. We have some time.”

But we didn’t have time. “Morlan said that the curse could only be broken before the last night of Yule when the light returns… What if we don’t make that? What happens if the book does say how to break the curse? Because sometimes I wonder if breaking it and all those Riders getting their minds back as the phoenixes come back… Maybe that’s worse. Some of them were shot down for a reason. But then I think of getting Lex back… and…”

He reached for my hand and wove our fingers together. “You didn’t think we came all this way just to read it, did you?”

After all my research, I never believed that breaking the curse was possible. But if there was a way to mend the codex, and it did hold the answers like Bronwen and Torran believed, then I would get Lex back, and all the other Annatalian Riders, and that would be the army Thorn needed.

“You want to get Annatalia back,” he said as he descended a long tunnelled staircase and little Skyworld lanterns flickered to life.

“Yes.” More than anything.

“Then fix it.”

My grip tightened on the codex. “Books like this aren’t fixed. They’re talked to, encouraged, and cared for. I can mend the binding, but then we’ll have to see if the magic wants to awaken.”