CHAPTER 18
BRIONY’S PULSE WAS FLUTTERING, her muscles begging her to run.
Orion stepped into the kitchen, stalking toward her with his arms crossed.
She stepped backward, curling herself into the corner. He looked her up and down, then leaned in to view the Journal page. Every movement seemed exaggerated, as if he was playing with her.
“Ah, yes. Sammy Meers,” he said, tapping the page. “I’ve been looking for him. Any idea where he might be, Miss Rosewood?”
He tilted his head at her, and Briony pressed back, hoping to become as small as possible.
“No,” she said softly, when she finally realized he was waiting for an answer.
Orion turned and strolled around the counter, dragging his fingers over the knife block. A ring with a dark gemstone caught the light.
“And what might you be doing out of your room at this hour?” he asked.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she lied.
“And you found some reading,” he said, lifting his eyes to her. He faced her. “I’ve been away on a mission for several days now, Miss Rosewood, so imagine my surprise to see how your circumstances have changed in that time.”
Briony wondered what mission it had been, but before she could think
long on it, he continued.
“Was it my son or my wife that let you wander about my house
unchecked?”
Her knees were weak under his gaze.
“Neither. An unlocked door presented itself.”
His lips curled in a condescending grin. “What luck for you.” He rolled his shoulders. “Back to your room, Miss Rosewood. We wouldn’t want you wandering through the estate boundary again without Toven there to rescue you.”
He stepped aside and gestured for her to lead the way.
Briony squeezed past him and rushed into the corridor, through the entry hall, and up the stairs. She glanced down from the landing to see Orion Hearst following her slowly, like a predator ready to put on speed at the end.
She barricaded herself in her room, with panting breaths, putting the armchair
between herself and the door.
The lock clicked.
Briony pressed her eyes shut, trying to calm herself. Her chest pounded while her mind buzzed with everything she’d just learned. Her gaze slid to the windows.
There were Eversun rebels out there. Even now they may be on their way for her. The Journal page she’d read earlier today said that Sammy was “attacking” a village on the northwest side of the Fadyen Mountains. That was the mountain range hugging Hearst Hall.
Briony moved to her window, staring out. There was a spark in her heart, catching fire. She reached for her magic, and she wasn’t surprised when it didn’t respond. Touching the collar around her neck, Briony knew she needed to get into the Hearst library. The tattoo or the collar—either or both could be solved with the right book, she knew it.
She just needed one of the Hearsts to let her out again.
* * *
Briony stopped eating again. Only this time, she was hungry.
Every morning she salivated over the breakfast tray, every afternoon she
hid in the bathroom from the lunch tray, and every evening she stared at the dinner tray until she was faint.
It only took three days this time before there was a knock on her door, but now it was Toven.
He opened the door as she stiffly got out of bed, glad she’d at least been bathing and changing out of her nightgown this time around. His eyes raked over her and then cast to the lunch tray that had been calling her name for an hour. He wore a navy shirt with a light-blue waistcoat, and the combination made her stomach tumble, causing her to wonder what kind of hunger she truly felt.
When he glared at her and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, she leaned on the bedpost and matched his expression.
“Do you plan to wither away in here?” he asked.
“Well, there’s nothing else to do.”
Something sparked behind his eyes. He looked away from her and strolled farther into the bedroom, heading for the lunch tray near the window.
“You need to eat. You need to remain healthy as my heartspring.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have to say, that’s not the most compelling argument for me. Does my magic have a different flavor when I’m weak, Toven? Does it not taste the same? Is that golden heartspring magic not as succulent?”
“Sounds like someone’s hungry,” he muttered, picking up a tart and popping it between his lips.
She watched his mouth move, his jaw chewing, his tongue swiping out for the sugar on his lips. She glanced away.
“So, what’s the plan, Rosewood?” he asked, plucking up a honeyed pastry next—her favorite, the sticky buns with sugar crystals on top. He bit into it and stared at her. “Are you waiting for someone to take you to the kitchen again so you can read the Journal page?”
Her eyes lifted from the pastry. She didn’t bother looking innocent.
He sauntered toward her with all the swagger she remembered from school before he’d become cold and unreadable. Her gaze moved between his chewing jaw and the second half of the pastry in his hand.
“Are you waiting for someone to forget to lock the door again?” he asked slowly, coming to stand in front of her. She had to tilt her head back to meet
his eye.
“Well, if you’re offering,” she said.
His lips twitched. He brought the bun up between them, and she prepared to watch him finish it, to bite back a pained groan over how hungry she was.
But then the sweet pastry was extended to her lips.
And her mouth opened before she could stop herself.
Briony’s eyes fluttered shut as Toven softly pushed the bun into her mouth, his thumb tugging on her bottom lip as he pulled away. The sugar burst on her tongue, and her stomach was tight and loose all at the same time.
When her eyes opened, she realized she’d just let Toven Hearst feed her.
During her hunger strike.
He stared down at her triumphantly, sucking the sticky honey off his thumb before stepping back. She swallowed thickly.
“Do you need me to hand-feed you at every meal? Or do you think you
can manage now?”
Her cheeks burned and she straightened.
“If you want your heartspring healthy and happy, then I need more to do, Toven. More to read.” She breathed deep and said boldly, “I’d like access to the library.”
He laughed. And he was so handsome, it pained her.
“The library,” he repeated.
She stared at him, waiting for him to concede, knowing he wouldn’t.
“You can tell me what you’re eager to read, and I’ll bring it to you,” he
said.
“No.”
He scoffed. “No? You don’t want me knowing what books you’re reading, Rosewood?”
“No. I first plan on looking up ‘How to maim and torture Toven Hearst,’ and I’d hate to tip you off to my methods.”
He sauntered forward. “You—a prisoner—wish to have unlimited access to one of the world’s most expansive libraries,” he said. She swallowed and
kept his gaze. “And what do I get out of this bargain, Rosewood? You do plan to barter something, yes?”
Briony’s skin chilled, and her heart beat faster. There was nothing in his expression that led her to believe he was threatening her. Her pause, though, seemed to make him reevaluate his words. His playful expression dripped off
his face.
“What do you want?” she asked quietly.
Toven blinked. Then he sneered at her with a laugh, stepping back and turning to the windows.
“My, my. What would the royal family say. Bargaining with your body so soon into our arrangement. And all it took was a honey bun—”
“I wasn’t offering my body,” she said quickly. She lifted her chin. “I just meant, what do you want? To know what Mallow found in my head? To know where Sammy Meers might be?”
Toven’s eyes flickered over her. He pursed his lips and looked down.
“Don’t show your hand when you’re bartering with information, Rosewood,” he said wryly. “What’s in your mind can be taken from you.”
Her brows drew together. By Mallow? Was that what he meant? Before she could ask, he sighed and nodded at her tray.
“Eat, then I’ll give you five minutes in the library,” he said.
Her breath caught. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Ten.”
“Deal.”
She moved to the lunch tray on shaking legs, hoping she wouldn’t faint in the handful of steps she took to the side table. Briony devoured half a sandwich and a few vegetables before grabbing another honey bun and patting her mouth with the cloth napkin. She took a sip of tea to wash it
down.
“Ready,” she said, biting into the bun.
He tore his gaze from her mouth and walked out the door.
She followed him down the corridor and down the stairs, chewing thoughtfully. She had no idea what kind of books to look for. Magical brands, perhaps? Cross-reference tattoos and boundary lines?
Toven pushed open the double doors, and Briony stumbled at the sight again. She thought she’d imagined how large the library had been, but she hadn’t.
As she stepped inside, the smell of old books filled her senses. She wanted to zoom through the stacks and bleed the Hearst library dry of information.
There was a long table for spreading out research on the right, and comfortable couches and chairs in the middle.
Toven moved to an oversize book in the left corner. “This is the catalog.
You can ask for a subject or a specific title and the books will organize themselves, either by guiding you with a navigator light or bringing the books directly to you.”
Briony nodded but steered clear of it, not wanting any traces left of what she was researching. She climbed the six stairs to the upper landing and turned around a stack to find rows and rows of books. She gasped, loud in the quiet hum.
“Ten minutes,” Toven reminded her from near the door.
Briony moved to a section on magical protection, cracking open spines on boundary lines and estate magic. She was searching her fifth table of contents when a terrifying thought crossed her mind.
Her mind.
The images she saw...the things she read...
Mallow could see them all if she looked into Briony’s mind again.
And hadn’t Toven just said: “What’s in your mind can be taken from you.”
It wasn’t just her important memories that Mallow would have access to.
She could see anything Briony did, no matter how mundane. Pages and words and information. Her favorite things.
Briony put back the book with shaking fingers, knowing that researching the tattoos was enough to incriminate her. She’d never been afraid of her own mind before.
Staring at the shelves of a library so dark and powerful that it could defeat Mallow and all Bomard with only its pages wielded by the right person, Briony realized she couldn’t use any of it.
She stepped back, breathing hard. There was nothing she could research.
Nothing was safe. She blinked quickly at the stacks, focusing on her breath, feeling a sharp pain in her ribs.
Her mind wasn’t her own. She felt Mallow’s presence inside still, slick like oil. Perhaps she wouldn’t ravage Briony’s consciousness again, but could she count on it?
She leaned back on the shelves, closing her eyes. “How do I keep her from reading my mind?” she whispered to herself, scarcely more than air.
The sound of shuffling to her left snapped her eyes open. A book slithered from a shelf down an aisle and floated, as if it had been called. Blinking, she peered between the shelves to see if Toven was calling books from the catalog at the front.
He sat in the armchair with one leg crossed over the other. It wasn’t him.
But still the book hovered. Briony moved down the aisle, walking carefully toward the text. Close enough to grasp it, she read the spine.
Mind Barriers for Beginners
Her heart stuttered in her chest as she reached for the thin book. It fell into her hands like an apple from a tree. She stared at the cover blankly for a minute before she flipped to the table of contents, fingers trembling.
It was a book on shielding one’s thoughts. Briony frowned. Had the library heard her? Did the catalog provide help without prompting? Perhaps this was more of the magic of the stones in Hearst Hall.
Mind barricades would be the best protection from Mallow’s probing, but it was a magical ability. And she didn’t have magic.
She read the chapter titles:
Meditation
Clearing Your Mind
Walls and Doorways
From the little she knew of mind barricades from her own reading, it
required a focused mind. It was extremely advanced stuff. Year fives barely touched on it before leaving school, but these first chapters sounded simple enough, possibly non-magical.
Briony slid the thin book into the slipcase of a large text on agriculture and quickly glanced through the fiction shelves, grabbing two of her favorite books as decoys.
When she descended the stairs, Toven checked his timepiece in surprise.
“Would you like the last twelve seconds or are you done?”
She swallowed thickly and smiled. “I’m done.”
Briony felt like a child that had stolen from the marketplace, waiting to see if she’d be caught by the vendor. Toven looked at the spines in her arms, seeing only the agriculture slipcase and two novels.
He led her out of the library, and Briony sent one last loving glance over her shoulder. They walked upstairs in silence, and he opened her door for her.
She held the books to her chest like a shield.
“You’ll be eating from now on then?” Toven said, one hand on the doorknob.
“Until I run out of things to read,” she said lightly.
He frowned at her and shut the door. The lock turned.
Briony dashed to her bed, dropping the books and flipping open Mind Barriers for Beginners.
She still didn’t know how far she could get without magic. When Finola had taught her cloaking, there were weeks of only meditation. Finola had an entire room dedicated to meditation. Briony had been inside it once, but it was so blank that it had dizzied her. No windows, white walls, and the door disappeared once it was closed. She’d gotten claustrophobic and needed to leave.
Briony looked around her bedroom, grateful for the first time that there was no distracting decor or large pieces of furniture. She could perhaps create her own meditation space.
She read all night, devouring the techniques in the book. The next day, she put them into practice, finding familiarity in the same mediations from
her cloaking studies. So much of it reminded her of Finola that she burst into tears after an aggressive hour of concentration, feeling completely worn out.
Briony slipped into bed early and tried to focus on emptying her mind before sleeping, but dreams spun into her head like spiderwebs.
* * *
Her consciousness lifted from her dreams in slow waves, a weightless floating back to the surface. Every time she dipped back into dreaming, Rory was there. She wanted to stay there, in a place where her twin was still alive, but something tugged her relentlessly toward the surface.
Untwining her wishes and memories, Briony felt a pricking across her skin, her body dragging her back into her bed at Hearst Hall, where Rory was dead. Her arms prickled with goosebumps, and that familiar sensation of watchful eyes washed over her.
There was a soft tug at her hair, tickling at her neck.
Her lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes to her dark bedroom. She tilted her head to the door, certain for a moment that she hadn’t been alone.
That a hand had passed through her hair, a gaze steadily watching over her.
That maybe someone had come to check on her.
She blinked away her silly thoughts, twisting her legs in the sheets, and turning over to her other side to snuggle in.
A shadow in the darkness moved.
And a low growl breathed hot air across her face.
Briony screamed as the gray fox from the forest pushed a paw into her chest, holding her down. It stood for a moment above her, canines bared, hot meaty breath gusting over her frozen skin. Then it snapped its jaws, and its teeth sank deep into her neck.
