Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(16)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

The sorceresses had their powers, the Cunningfolk their Talents, but I had always had my memory. Once I saw something, or read something, I never forgot it. I had read nearly every tome in the guild’s library at least once, and once was all I usually needed to commit a book to memory.

 

Usually. I had seen that phrase—the Servant’s Prize—somewhere, and it was both startling and infuriating to have to search for it again. Even Librarian couldn’t locate it within his vast stores of obscure knowledge.

 

I flipped my phone over to glance at the screen. No messages. No response at all to any of the hundred calls or texts I’d sent to Cabell to check on him.

 

The Servant’s Prize . . . The Servant’s Prize . . .

 

A “prize” could be anything—something won, or merely an object granted as a token or reward. A weapon, a garment, a piece of jewelry, an object of power, even a lock of hair.

 

“Botheration,” I muttered.

 

I rubbed at my dry eyes and drew in a long, steadying breath. The sweet, musky smell of old books and leather filled my lungs, smoothing the sharper edges of my frustration. The stained-glass window behind me exhaled in turn, letting cold tendrils of autumn air slip around me to toy with the candles on the long, ink-stained worktable.

 

I liked our guild’s library better than anywhere else in the world. The consistency of it, the thousands of escapes each book provided, the unfailing presence of Librarian clomping through his day’s work. It was a star that was visible in every season, undimmed by clouds and distance, and the one promise in my life that had been kept.

 

A library was a home to those who dreamt of better places, and this one was no exception.

 

I rolled my thermos of instant coffee against the table, letting my thoughts drift.

 

At the sound, a few of the library cats poked their heads out from the gaps between the books. Others napped in puddles of candlelight, tails swishing as they dreamed. More hunted along the baseboards for hidden curses and tasty little mice.

 

The working cats were as much a part of the library as the books. The building, once a sorceress’s vault, had been riddled with hidden curses even before the guild members started bringing in sealed Immortalities and spellbound relics. Generations of cats had roamed its halls in the years since, and their preternatural ability to suss out the presence of subtle magic had frequently been the last line of defense between Hollowers and certain, hideous death.

 

At a faint squeak-squeak, I glanced over to the bookshelves near the fireplace, only to find one of the cats, Pumpkin, batting at the rolling ladder, moving it out of the way to rub herself against a familiar ridge of leather book spines.

 

While the upper shelves, tucked just beneath the ceiling, were a graveyard of damaged or outdated books, the bottom ones were reserved for the works that formed the foundation of what Hollowers did: the collections of folklore, fairy tales, and myths.

 

Even Nash, that paragon of neglectful guardianship, had made it a point to teach Cabell and me about them—how to categorize the tales and, more importantly, how to use them to gauge if a relic might be real.

 

Maybe I’d been thinking about this all wrong. I’d assumed there might be another, more common name for the prize, but I hadn’t even thought to wonder about the “Servant” it belonged to.

 

I glanced at the stack of encyclopedias, journals, and Immortalities beside me, then back at the shelf.

 

I made my way over to the shelf, aware of the eyes tracking me.

 

I pulled out a random selection of tales—German, Russian, Norwegian—in addition to the ones I knew I’d really need, then returned to my table. Almost immediately, Pumpkin leapt up onto the stack, meowing in irritation at being ignored.

 

“Shoo, you adorable menace,” I said, pushing her off the books to thumb through the collection of German tales. The Grimm Brothers never let me down.

 

With a cry born from the depths of hell, Pumpkin streaked across the table, pouncing on the books with enough force to send them shooting across the table and onto the floor.

 

“You incorrigible beast,” I whispered. “And after all the treats I’ve snuck you!”

 

Pumpkin only curled up on a book of Japanese legends, licking her paw in satisfaction. I glared at her, then leaned over my chair to retrieve the scattered volumes. Most were fine, but the back cover of Legends of the Moors now bore a fresh scar courtesy of an unhinged cat, and Tales of Camelot had landed facedown.

 

I winced as I picked it up. The pages, delicate as dried bones, were bent at tortured angles or partially ripped at their edges.

 

I smoothed the deep wrinkles in the pages, my fingers easing over a wood-block print of a woman in an elegant gown, her long hair flowing around her shoulders like streams of sunlight. A knight crouched before her, one hand extended. Beneath it, in minuscule font, was the caption:

 

 

The Lady of the Lake, known as La Dame du Lac in French manuscripts, bestows the favor of a magical ring upon Lancelot in Avalon.

 

Someone, with a dark stroke of ink, had added an apostrophe between the L and a of Lancelot. L’ancelot. One small mark that revealed the origin of the name and whispered its meaning.

 

I knew so little French, but it was just enough for a hunch. I pulled out my phone, schooling my expression to stay as even as possible, and searched to confirm my suspicion.

 

Ancelot. Servant. L’ancelot. The servant.

 

My lips compressed with the effort it took not to react. This was a story I knew. It had been one of the last Nash had told us before he left in the night and never returned.

 

The High Priestess of that age had fostered Lancelot as a child and raised him in Avalon. When he was old enough to face the dangers of King Arthur’s court, she had given him a ring on behalf of her goddess, known as the Ring of Dispel, or the Dispelling Ring.

 

It was a relic capable of breaking any curse or enchantment, but the catch—and there was always a catch—was that to wield the ring, you had to claim it by deadly force.

 

In other words, kill the current owner, and spend the rest of your life anticipating the same fate.

 

Damn him, I thought, pinching the bridge of my nose.

 

I’d brought up the Ring of Dispel as a potential cure for Cabell’s curse years ago, but Nash, treasure-obsessed Nash, had insisted that it had been destroyed before Avalon was separated from our world.

 

But if Emrys Dye was searching for Lancelot’s ring on behalf of Madrigal, not only had it not been destroyed, Madrigal believed it could be found.

 

Which meant I had a chance—a real chance—to break Cabell’s curse and end this.