For every truth, an heir must drown.
“Drown?” snarled Garin.
“This is an age-old inscription. You mortals and once-mortals take everything with such weight.Relax. Let the tide guide you, as you’ve allowed it to guide you here.”
“Yousummonedus.”
“All the same. The ancient waters brought you here. Your truths await.”
Lilac finally found her voice, hand still on the Dawnshard. Nothing arcane ever came for free—the Fair Folk taught her that. “What do you want in exchange?” The Bugul Noz’s eyes sparkled. “What must we offer?”
“Smart girl.” The creature tilted its head. “Well, nothing much. Just… the weight of your blood, the very thread of your line. The memories that root you, deeper than the ones you hold in your conscience, but ones bound to your soul.” He chuckled when they exchanged another alarmed glance. “Each tome you take shall cost you one ancestral remembrance. One loss, one forgetting. You’ll keep these memories for yourself, of course… maybe even learn something new of yourselves, and each other? This is as much of a gift to you as it is to me, wouldn’t you say?”
Lilac stared at the altar, then at the creature, instantly thinking of Freya. Piper’s gaunt face at the Mine’s vestibule. “Why would you demand that?”
Solid as it was, the library creaked.
“Because this place remembers too much, Your Majesty,” the Bugul Noz replied. There was a grief, a contorted heaviness to his words. “And you mortals remember far too little.”
“What are you playing at?” Garin stepped forward. “What’s your ruse?”
“Nothing. I am the guardian of memories scorned. Lost. I find—and do not lose—what is precious. I keep it safe here.” His eyes narrowed at Garin. “Even from you. I’ve been trapped here for a couple centuries, you see, and am prisoner to the archive. I simply enjoy seeing the world for what it is today, andtake great pleasure in the visceralhumanexperience. Or inhuman. I can’t afford to be picky.”
“Fine,” said Lilac, silencing Garin’s glare of protest. “And as soon as it’s done, we’re leaving.”
“Withthe books,” the Bugul Noz said. “When you’re ready, step up to the statue and introduce yourselves. One at a time.”
The chill in her lungs felt ancestral. Bracing herself, Lilac stepped forward—but Garin made an unsettled sound.
“I’ll go first. Get Myrddin if anything happens.”
“I will.” She pulled her blade from its sheath, and the Bugul Noz’s breath hitched.
But then, Garin began speaking. “I’m Garin Austol Trevelyan, of—” He gestured vaguely—“no house worth mentioning. Born to lines of botanists, physicians, and lavender farmers. Brother of nettles, and dragged reluctantly into immortality. Cornwall forged the roots of my blood, the battlefields of Brittany saw it spilled, and the forest fermented it. I’m now Doyen of the Coven Brocéliande, heir of the Sanguine Mine, north of the High Forest… which sounds impressive, until you meet the vampires who reside there.” Nothing happened. He glanced back at Lilac, then at the Bugul Noz, who waited patiently beside the statue. “What I lack in pedigree, I make up for in persistence, poor decisions, and a working knowledge of the blade, tavern tap, and arcane soil.”
The shelves shivered. Every root, every branch upon the statue creaked in ancient fervor. A sound like wind rushing through dead canopies passed overhead, but there was no breeze. From the farthest shelves, something gave a slow, longing groan.
And then the room went dark, the only source of light were the white-blue spheres that floated to the outlying shelves.
Lilac could still feel herself—bite her lip, grip her dagger—and sensed the room and Garin and the Bugul Noz near. But everything was entirely dark… until a scene began to play before their very eyes.
There was a man before them,sitting across the way beside a stone mantel and oakwood floors illuminated by a dim hearth, which cast menacing shadows upon his sharp profile.
He was tall, Lilac could tell even as he sat rigidly in a chair she recognized—faded green leather, though it was a touch more vibrant here. He scrawled in a book, cross-checking the parchment splayed out onto a small table next to him. The floor was covered in bits of soil and freshly potted plants, some of them glowing—some moving about in their pots.
A sharp rap came at the door. He sighed laboriously, folded the page, placed his book and quill down, and went to the door down the familiar hallway. The scene moved to follow him, like the perspective of a lone spectre in the night.
He opened the door to a hazel-eyed woman with black hair that fell in waves around her plump face. She stuck a finger in his face, and he moved out of the way, merely turned back down the hall as she began to speak, low and harsh, not bothering to shut the door to the snow outside.
“You didn’t do it,” she said, trailing him. “Tell me you didn’t do it.”
The man sighed and turned. “Calm down, Aimee.”
An echoing slap sounded throughout the room. He put a hand to his cheek.
“Tell me you didn’t write that letter to Madame Toranaga.”
Toranaga.
