Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,117

fear. The weight. The chill. So much, Goddess, she’d not felt this in an age. Not since he’d first found her coiled inside that barrel, gifting her the knife that save her life. But what Tric had said outside the Mountain was right: in leaning on the shadowcat for so long, she’d forgotten how to deal with this herself. Her legs were shaking. Her belly full of oily ice. She closed her eyes, willing herself calm. The fear pushed back, laughing. Too big. Too much.

He’d left her. For the first time in as long as she could remember.

I’m alone …

“O, Goddess,” she whispered. “O, Goddess, help me…”

She hung there in the dark. Unable to stumble on. Too frightened to stand still. The image of those accursed suns swimming behind her eyelids every time she blinked. She could still feel it. That impossible hatred. The three eyes of the Everseeing, burning her blind. What had she done to deserve it? What was wrong with her? And what was she going to do if he didn’t come back?

And then she felt it. Strong arms enveloping her. Holding her tight. Tric pressed her to his chest, wrapping her up. Smoothing her hair. Holding her close.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’ll be all right.”

She concentrated on the warmth of his bare skin. The beat of his heart. Eyes closed. Just breathing. Warm and safe and not so alone. She beat it back. The fear. Slowly. Every inch a mile. But she pushed it away, down into the bottom of her feet, stamping it hard as she could. Trying to figure out what all of this meant. Why those suns burned her. What she’d done to invoke the hatred of a god. What had so badly frightened a creature who fed on fear itself.

“Too many questions,” she whispered. “Not enough answers.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Mia sniffed, swallowed thickly. Placed both hands against Tric’s chest and, mustering all the strength she could, pushed herself away. She looked up into his eyes, heart still thumping in her chest. Lips just a few inches from his.

“… Mia?”

The girl breathed deep. Looking down to her shadow on the stone and finding it only as dark as the boy’s beside her. Not dark enough for two anymore. And there, in the black, finally seizing on the answer to her puzzle.

“I think it’s time to recruit the most dangerous man in these halls,” she said.

Tric looked back up to the Hall of Songs, the Shahiid they’d just fled from. “I thought we just ran away from the most dangerous man in these halls.”

Mia tried to smile.

Settled for shaking her head.

“You’ve obviously not spent enough time with librarians, Don Tric.”

1. One of the most feared swordsmen of his age, Antony Caravaggio was a duelist in the court of King Francisco III. An infamous rake with a fondness for young donas of quality, Caravaggio fought no less than forty-three duels over the course of his life, and reportedly sired fourteen bastards. Caravaggio fought with twin blades—one in each hand—pioneering the art of dual-wielding that eventually bore his name.

Ironically, his fondness for twins also proved his downfall: He was killed in a duel by Don Lentilus Varus after spending a night of drunken passion with Varus’s twin daughters, Lucilla and Lucia. Reportedly still intoxicated and too exhausted to heft his rapier, he was skewered by his opponent quite easily—an inglorious end for such an artisan of the blade.

His last words were reportedly “Worth it…”

2. Though Marielle did a splendid job weaving the boy’s face, whenever she studied him, Mia realized she still found Diamo only a touch shy of repulsive. There was something about the Itreyan boy’s stare, something cold and cruel that Mia found altogether ugly.

If it’s truth that the eyes are the window to the soul, Diamo’s opened into a lightless, straw-lined cell.

CHAPTER 21

WORDS

The pair stopped off long enough to get Tric another shirt and check in Mia’s room for any sign of the shadowcat. She’d searched the black beneath the bed, the corners and closets, but finding nothing, they hurried off through the spiraling dark. The evemeal bells were ringing, but Mia and Tric headed away from the Sky Altar, deeper into the blackness, until they arrived at the athenaeum. The doors loomed above them, twelve feet high and a foot thick, opening silently with the touch of Mia’s smallest finger.

A familiar scent picked her up and carried her back to happier turns—curled up in her room above Mercurio’s