Cursed: Briar Rose's Story - Kaylin Lee Page 0,6

months ago was fine enough, but it was missing a rooftop terrace like the old bakery. How was I supposed to survive the stifling walls of my daily life without an outdoor escape above my room?

I shook my head, feeling silly. The walls weren’t getting any closer. I had to stop complaining about the villa. Life here with Dad was far better than it had been back at the bakery. At least the Mage Division didn’t reek of rotting garbage in the streets like the Merchant Quarter, and I didn’t have to scrub the bakery’s downstairs with expurgo every week to hide the trace of Mom’s dangerous, absorbent magic.

But the most important thing was that Dad was here. That alone was enough of a reason to stop complaining.

I reached under my pillow and found the book I’d hidden there, my fingers grazing the embossed, foreign letters as I pulled it onto my lap.

The Legend of the Gold Hills. The Western letters that hovered over the etched mountains on the book’s cover were so faded, I’d had a hard time translating the title when I first stole it.

Um—found it.

Mom had sent Alba and me out into the city secretly as part of her plan to prepare us for life in the real world without her. Everything had worked out, thanks to Dad and Prince Estevan, but I secretly missed the thrill of exploring the city on my own each night.

If there was one thing I’d learned from sneaking through government buildings and Procus compounds during our final year hiding in the bakery, it was that the private libraries of wealthy Procus lords were full of illicit Western books.

The Western books were supposed to have been burned in the plague bonfires years ago, back when we thought the plague had come from the West and that we could vanquish it with the simple brush of flames. Some book collectors must have had a hard time sending their treasures into the fire. In hindsight, they were right to have kept them, because now we knew the truth—the whole, terrifying truth—and the bonfires had done nothing to keep us safe.

The plague hadn’t come from the West. It had come from our continent, intentionally sent to the West from Theros by evil, Kireth mages who lurked in the Badlands—the exact mages my parents were currently seeking on their mission in the Gold Hills.

The skin on my arms prickled. I couldn’t let myself think about that, or I’d never be able to sleep tonight. I shook my head to cut off that train of thought and refocused on the treasure before me.

I’d found this thin, gorgeously illustrated travel journal tucked behind a row of botany books in the Galanos family’s private library. Mom had sent me to explore their street, but I couldn’t resist entering the compound, and once I was inside the compound, I couldn’t resist finding the library.

That had been just days before the Crimson Blight kidnapped Alba and me. With the chaos of moving to the Mage Division—not to mention aurae nearly taking over and the Masters invading the city—I hadn’t had time to return it yet.

At least, that was what I told myself as I settled into yet another evening of neglecting my schoolwork and translating the precious Western book instead.

The Western tongue had nothing in common with our own. I could barely pronounce it. But it was simple, structured, and logical, and with the help of a reading primer and a thick dictionary I’d pilfered months earlier, I’d translated the first dozen pages in the travel journal all by myself.

The secret project made me feel a bit better about the fact that Mom and Dad hadn’t told me about the Masters and their attempt to kidnap Mom at the city gate not long ago.

My parents kept secrets from me, and I kept secrets from them.

Justice was a beautiful thing.

I flipped open the journal and removed my thin sheaf of translated notes. The dawn shines brightest on the mortally wounded man, read the epigraph. For it bestows on him yet one more day of beauty.

Mortally wounded. I chewed on the end of my pencil, the words I’d written a few weeks ago looking too precise, too confident. Had my parents been mortally wounded by the Masters? Or by some other foe in the Badlands? Perhaps that was why they hadn’t—

I couldn’t think about that.

I redirected my thoughts to the journal and continued through my notes, checking the spelling and grammar against the