Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,118

store, surrounded by mountains of her dearest friends. The ones that took her away from the hurt and the garish sunslight and the thought of her mother and brother locked away in some lightless cell.

Books.

Mia looked down to her feet, her shadow preceding her into the library. It was still no darker than Tric’s. No different. The emptiness inside her reared up and bared its teeth, and for a moment she found herself too scared to take another step. But finally, balling her hands into fists, she walked into the athenaeum, inhaled the scent of ink and dust and leather and parchment. Tric stood beside her, overlooking the sea of shelves. Mia breathed in the words. Hundreds, thousands, millions of words.

“Chronicler Aelius?” she called.

No answer. Stillness reigned in this kingdom of ink and dust.

“Chronicler?” she called again. “Hello?”

She stole down the stairs, out onto the main floor and into the forest of shelves. That same sourceless luminance lit the room, but among the books, the light seemed dimmer, the shadows deeper. Wandering into the stacks, the pair found themselves surrounded on all sides. Black shelves reaching up to the ceiling, filled with ornate scrolls and dusty tomes, great thick albums and carven codexes. The voices of scribes and queens. Warriors and saints. Heretics and gods. All of them now immortal.

The pair wandered deeper into the stacks, calling for the chronicler, getting lost amid the shadows. The shelves were a labyrinth, twisting off in every direction. Tric cleared his throat and spoke, his voice echoing in the gloom.

“Should we really be poking about in here alone?”

Mia’s eyes roamed the stacks, heart thumping in her chest. “Scared, my brave centurion?”

“I’m aware the razor-tongued princess of smart-arsery act is just your natural self-defense techniques kicking in, but I should point out I am in here helping you.”

Mia glanced at him sideways. “Aye. Apologies.”

“What are we looking for?”

Mia breathed deep. Shook her head.

“When Jessamine held up those suns … it was like someone had set me on fire. Like the light was burning me to cinders. I don’t understand any of it, and I’m sick of it. This is the biggest library I’ve ever seen. If there’s a tome on darkin anywhere in the world, it’ll be in here. I need to know what I am, Tric.”

“Did your Shahiid not teach you anything about yourself?”

“I’m guessing Mercurio knows as little about darkin as anyone else here. The Ministry talk about me being touched by the Mother, but none of them seem to actually know what that means. And Lord Cassius was as forthcoming as a pile of bricks when I asked him about it in Godsgrave.”

“Lord Cassius is darkin?”

“Lord Cassius is a bastard.”

Mia sucked her lip, gave a grudging shrug.

“… Nice cheekbones, though.”

The girl walked on, calling for the chronicler and getting no reply. Perusing the spines as she passed, she saw that many of the athenaeum’s books were written in tongues she couldn’t speak. Alphabets she’d never seen. Frowning, she stopped before a shelf full of particularly dusty tomes, squinted hard at their titles. She gazed at one in particular, a huge codex bound in black leather, silver letters tracing its spine.

“But that’s impossible,” she breathed.

She pulled the book off the shelf, struggling with the weight. Shuffling over to a small mahogany reading plinth, she gently opened the pages.

“It can’t be…”

Tric peered over her shoulder. “Aye. It’s a book all right.”

“This is Ephaesus. The Book of Wonders.”

“Good read?”

“I wouldn’t know. Every copy in existence was incinerated in the Bright Light. This book … it shouldn’t exist.” Mia’s gaze roamed the stacks. “Look, there’s Bosconi’s Heresies. And Lantimo the Elder’s treatise On Dark and Light.”

“Mia, I’m starting to get the feeling we shouldn’t be in here…”

Tric’s fear echoed her own, but she pushed back against it, hard as she could. “The truth of what I am must be in here somewhere. I’m not leaving ’til we find it.”

“Maybe we should start at the letter S?”

“S?”

“S for stubborn. S for stupid. S for smartarse.”

“S for shut it.”

“See, that’s the spirit.”

The laughter felt good. Helped shake the chill from her belly. But Tric fell silent, grin dying on his lips, frowning into the darkness.

“… Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

Mia tilted her head. And as she hung there in the dark, the faintest vibration rumbled through the floor, up through her boots, and settled at the base of her spine.

“I felt that,” she whispered.

It was subtle at first, the tomes shivering in their places. But soon, the