Lucian laughed harder as she struggled to catch her balance.
“That’s an interesting um . . . what do you call that thing?”
“A shower.”
“Right. So, are you going to find me a towel or just stand there luxuriating in my misery?” she asked, taking another careful step forward.
Without looking, Lucian reached over to a shelf she hadn’t noticed on the other side of the door and held up a plush towel between two fingers. “You’re going to have to come and get it.”
“You can be a real bastard; you know that?” Effie grumbled, slipping once more.
Lucian grinned. “Only seems fair to make you suffer a little for being nosey.”
She couldn’t even argue the point. In his place, she’d do the same. “You could try to be the bigger person and just help me out.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” he said, throwing her earlier words back at her.
Effie glared at him. “You’re evil.”
“I’m not the one who needs the towel.”
After two more steps, which were more accurately graceless slides across the tiled floor, Effie looked over at him. “Lucian?”
“Yes, Effie?” he replied, his eyes crinkling with silent laughter.
“You might not want to be still standing there by the time I make it over. There’s a good chance I’m going to kick you.”
Shaking his head, Lucian pushed off the wall and strode forward. “Don’t ever say I didn’t do something for you,” he muttered, using the edge of the towel to wipe some of the water drops from her cheek.
She blinked, looking up into his face, feeling a little breathless at the warmth in his eyes. If he kept looking at her like that she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. Snatching the towel from his hand, Effie started to run it over her hair to hide what the tender gesture was doing to her.
“I think I’ve got it from here. You can go now.”
“And miss you try to figure out how to get out of this? Not on your life.”
“The Triumvirate are waiting for you,” she reminded him.
Lucian sighed loudly, and Effie risked peeking out at him from behind her towel.
“That is quite possibly the only thing you could have said to get me to leave.”
“I know,” she replied, throwing him a cheeky grin.
He shook his head, his smile still warm. “If I have to miss the aftermath of your little transgression then it just means I’ll have to think up another way to repay you.”
“You’re welcome to use my bathing chamber whenever you want, but you might give the other ladies a heart attack.”
“That’s not quite what I had in mind.”
“Oh no?” she asked, running the towel along her arms, trying to soak up as much of the water as she could. “What do you have in mind?”
Lucian gave her one of his enigmatic half-smiles. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
Chapter 12
Kieran slammed another heavy tome onto the table, his fury thrumming through him like a second heartbeat. Teeth clenched, he frantically flipped through the pages searching for the annotation he’d found a few days earlier.
Nothing about these records was straightforward. Few, if any of them, were dated or labeled in a way that made logical sense. Instead, they seemed to be grouped by topic, sometimes with footnotes indicating that a prophecy might also appear elsewhere as it could be inferred in another manner.
He’d still yet to find a single volume that was comprised of prophecies explicitly about the Shadow Years, but he had discovered a reference to a marker. It would have to suffice.
“Where is it?” he growled, practically tearing the pages out in his haste.
Sucking in a frustrated breath, Kieran forced himself to slow down. He couldn’t afford for anyone to know he’d been in here. Thankfully, the Triumvirate likely thought he was still traipsing around with that band of fools. He wouldn’t be missed for at least another hour or two. He had time.
Running a finger down another page, Kieran let out a triumphant whoop. “There it is.”
‘And beasts will fall, the docile becoming fiends in their quest for blood.
Peaceful no more, the prey become the hunters;
upon the threshold of day, where life and death meet, converging into one.
Let it be a mark of the end, a herald of destruction.
None will be safe when the gentlest amongst us are lost.’
Kieran would have missed it initially, if not for the bold lines beneath the reference to the mark. Scrawled in the margin, was another note:
Connection to TMJ prophecy? Ref. 274-00249
He had no clue what the numbers meant, or the letters TMJ. His best guess was that the numbers were associated with another book, which contained the prophecy in question. He needed to find that prophecy, but in the meantime, this passage would serve. It was certainly vague enough that it gave him room to maneuver, and after what he’d seen in Bael, he knew exactly what he needed to do.
Lifting his knapsack from the ground where he’d dropped it, Kieran pulled out the glittering purple stone.
Now to bait the trap.
Chapter 13
Effie walked beside Lucian, hoping she at least looked mostly put together. Her curls were still damp, but she’d managed to pull on a fresh pair of pants and a light blue tunic before the summons came.
Lucian had been oddly reserved since coming to fetch her. Well, not odd for the old Lucian, the one whose dark scowls and brooding silences had filled many of their first interactions. But it was a far cry from the playful banter they’d shared less than an hour earlier.
His meeting must not have gone well. The thought sobered her; it didn’t bode well for her own.
They came to a halt outside the door to the Triumvirate’s sanctum.
“Here?” she asked.
Lucian nodded, and Effie frowned, wondering if their use of their formal chamber held any significance. Previously, whenever she’d met with the Triumvirate alone, it had always happened somewhere in the archives. Or the healing wing.
“They’re waiting for you,” Lucian said when she made no move to go inside.
“You’re not coming?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I need to go back and collect the others. Besides, I was not the one who was summoned. No one invites themselves to one of the Triumvirates meetings. Protocol, remember?”
Effie made a face. It wasn’t that she feared the Triumvirate. Not really. Her conversations with Smoke had shown her that they could be kind, but she’d gotten used to Lucian’s steady presence beside her.
“Something wrong?” Lucian asked, picking up on her unease.
Feigning a breeziness she didn’t feel, Effie smiled. “No, nothing. I’ll see you when you get back?”
“You’re bound to eventually,” he said.
Effie’s eyes narrowed at the non-committal answer. “You’re as good at giving vague non-answers as they are.”
“Guess it was bound to rub off on me after centuries of being amongst them,” he said, a small smirk ghosting his lips.