Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,210

had stared at one of the new tombs the entire while. Just another slab set in the wall, no different from the rest. Its face was unmarked and its innards were empty—his body was never recovered after all. But when the mass had ended and the remnants of the congregation shuffled off into the dark, she’d knelt by his stone and taken out her gravebone dagger and scratched four letters into the rock.

TRIC.

She pressed her fingers to her lips, then her fingers to the stone.

The speaker had been true to his word, returning to the Mountain once he knew it was safe. Adonai had resurfaced, Marielle beside him, the weaver’s broken fingers bound in splints. It took months for the digits to mend and Marielle to recover her skills. But when she did, her first task was to repay the debt she owed Mia for saving her and Adonai’s life.

She had given Naev her face back.

The woman was waiting outside the speaker’s chambers for Mia’s return from her visit with the Bara of the Threedrake clan. After the girl had washed away the red in the bathhouse, Naev embraced her warmly, kissed either cheek. And without a glance to the chamber or the speaker therein, the woman had escorted Mia back to her room. Naev still wore her veil—perhaps accustomed to it after years of hiding her face, perhaps knowing like Mia did that in the end, it hadn’t mattered what they’d looked like, but what they’d done that counted.

Perhaps because she simply liked veils.

The pair stopped outside Mia’s bedchamber, Naev opening the door with a smile. The rooms in the Blades’ corner of the Mountain were bigger, more private, shrouded in evernight. Mia’s bed was big enough for her to get lost in. She hated sleeping in it, truth be told. Too easy to feel alone. But she’d been anointed by Cassius before the entire Ministry—no matter Drusilla or Solis’s misgivings, she was a Blade now. Here was where she’d stay until the Ministry assigned her to a Chapel. She’d requested Godsgrave, of course, but where she might end up was anyone’s guess.

“Before I forget…”

Naev nodded to her bedside table. A tome wrapped in black leather sat on the wood, bound with a silver clasp.

“The chronicler sent it for you. He said you would know what it meant.”

Mia’s heart surged in her chest. She thanked Naev again, shut the door behind her and flopped onto her mattress. Mister Kindly faded into view on the bedhead, Eclipse at the bed’s foot. The two shadows stared at each other with their not-eyes, mistrust crackling in the air. Mister Kindly had counseled Mia long and hard that Eclipse had no place at her side. But the shadowwolf had seemed utterly bereft with Lord Cassius dead. She’d spent turns wandering the Mountain’s belly, howling her grief. Mia had finally hunted her down at Drusilla’s request, asked Eclipse to walk with her, since she had no other to walk with. The shadowwolf had stared at her long and mute, and Mia had thought she’d refuse. But as the girl had looked down at the darkness beneath her feet, it had grown darker still.

Dark enough for three.

Mia picked up the book from her nightstand, stared at the cover. Strange symbols were embossed in the leather, hurting her eyes to look at. Flipping open the clasp, she saw a note, written in the chronicler’s spidery hand. Seven words.

“Another girl with a story to tell.”

Mia thumbed through the pages, creaking and cracked with age, studying the beautiful illustrations within. Human forms, with the shadows of different beasts at their feet. Wolves and birds. Vipers and spiders. Other things, monstrous and obscene. She frowned at the strange sigils, twisting and shifting before her eyes.

“I don’t know this script.”

“… i doubt there are many in this world that can read it…”

“But you can?”

Mister Kindly nodded.

“… i do not know how. but the letters … speak to me…”

Eclipse climbed to her feet, prowled up the mattress to sit beside Mia. Mister Kindly spat and the wolf growled in return, peering at the pages in Mia’s hands.

“… I CAN READ IT ALSO…”

“What’s it called?”

The not-cat dropped onto Mia’s shoulder, peered at the strange, shifting symbols.

“… the hungry dark…”

Mia ran her fingers down the pages. The shadows inked in black, the shifting, crawling text. This might be it. The answer to all her questions. Who she was. What she was. Or it might be simple nonsense. A book that died because it