Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,93
seconds later, we stepped out of the passageway and into a large chamber.
Unlike the rest of the palace, no paintings or tapestries adorned the walls. A few purple rugs featuring the Morricone royal crest done in gold thread were strewn across the floor, but they were the only bits of softness in here. Shelves filled with books, maps, and more hugged the walls, while large stone tables covered with glass tubes, jars, and beakers marched down the center of the room. Tools also littered many of the tables, along with swords, daggers, and shields. The air smelled sharp and clean, like orangey soap, although a faint coppery stench lingered under the other, stronger aroma, like rust hiding on the back of a shield.
To the left, an open archway led to a smaller area with a bed and several settees, and a door beyond that opened up into a bathroom done in black tile. Milo seemed to spend as much time in his workshop as Leonidas and Delmira did in their respective chambers.
I drifted forward, staring at the table closest to me, which was empty—except for the dried blood.
Dull brown stains covered much of the tabletop, and the surface was nicked and scratched, as though more than one sharp blade had scraped across it—or had been driven through someone’s body to pin them to the stone underneath.
A cold finger of dread slid down my spine. “This is Milo’s workshop?” I whispered.
Disgust filled Leonidas’s face. “Unfortunately.”
I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this—whatever this truly was, other than horrifying. “Have you been in here before?”
“Yes, although not for a few weeks,” Leonidas replied in a low, soft voice. “I’ve never found any tearstone in here, but I keep hoping that Milo will slip up and leave a clue behind about his plans. Let’s see what we can find.”
He went over to a table filled with tools. I started at one end of another table and walked down the length of it, scanning the contents.
At first glance, most of the items were ordinary, if a bit strange. A bronze sword with a bent, dented blade. A gold spear with a shattered tip. A silver shield that had been cleaved cleanly in two.
But the closer I got to the back of the workshop, the odder and more grotesque the items became. A jar filled with purple strix feathers spattered with what I assumed was strix blood. A lilac-colored strix egg that had been smashed to bits and left to rot inside another jar. Gray, brittle, withered liladorn vines with chopped off thorns that were curled up on a tray like a nest of dead coral vipers.
Milo seemed to enjoy experimenting on—torturing—creatures. I wondered if his experiments also included people. I shivered again. Part of me didn’t want to know.
But perhaps the most curious things were the rocks littering one of the tables. Chunks of limestone, slabs of granite, even a few diamonds, sapphires, and other gemstones. Some of the rocks were whole, smooth, and intact, while others had been cracked and dented, and a few had been shattered to shards.
Next to the rocks were open journals with worn, tattered purple covers, although the handwriting on the faded, yellowed pages was so tiny and cramped that I couldn’t make sense of the scribbled words and rows of numbers. The only thing I could see clearly was the large, bold signature at the bottoms of the pages—King Maximus.
Another shiver zipped down my spine. These were Maximus’s journals, although Milo seemed to be using the information to help with his own experiments. No matter how disturbing I found the notion, I could understand Milo tinkering with creatures and trying to take as much of their blood and magic as possible, just like his uncle had done. But what was he doing with the rocks? And how did his experiments tie in with the tearstone?
“Find anything?” Leonidas asked.
“Just your uncle’s journals and your brother’s experiments. You?”
“Nothing important. Just the tools Milo uses to inflict pain on others.”
I gestured at the jar with the smashed, rotten egg. “Does he only experiment on strixes? Or does he use other creatures too?”
Grief lined Leonidas’s face, and pain rippled off him. “Strixes, mostly. Some coral vipers too. No gargoyles or caladriuses, as far as I know, but not for lack of trying. Milo is always looking for new creatures to experiment on. We’ve had quite a few fights about it.”