Total pages in book: 295
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
“So we’re looking for a book older than four hundred years.” Rhiannon drums her fingers on her knee as she thinks. “One that hasn’t been through a set of hands to translate or change.”
“Exactly. And Jesinia has already given me the oldest book she has access to on ward-weaving curricula, and it only covers expansion, not creation.” My shoulders fall as I sigh. “What we really need is a primary source, and I doubt the First Six sat around writing books after they founded Basgiath. They were a little busy.”
“Not too busy to keep personal journals.” Ridoc sets the dagger’s hilt in the center of his palm and tries to balance it.
Our heads turn in his direction, and my heart threatens to stop.
“What?” Rhiannon asks.
“They kept journals,” he says with a shrug, moving as he tries to keep the blade upright. “At least two of them. War—” He catches us staring and quickly grabs the dagger by the handle. “Wait. Do I actually know something about the Archives that you don’t?” A grin flashes across his face. “I do, don’t I?”
“Ridoc…” Rhiannon warns, leveling a look on him I want nothing to do with. “Right. Sorry.” He sets the dagger on the desk and then sits beside it. “Lyra’s and Warrick’s journals are here. At least according to a classified ledger in your mom’s office, they are.”
“My mom’s office?” My jaw hangs.
“The ledger, not the journals.” He shrugs. “I thumbed through it when we were looking for something to steal during the Squad Battle, but it listed them in a sublevel vault, and you’d already said the Archives were closed, and then you suggested the map—”
“There aren’t any sublevel vaults.” I shake my head.
“That you know of,” he counters.
I blink. “Jesinia would know if we had those books, let alone a sublevel vault.” My father would have told me…wouldn’t he?
Ridoc scoffs. “Right. Because the scribes have kept the biggest secret in Navarre’s history safe all these years by granting access to second-years.”
“He makes a good point,” Sawyer notes.
He does. “I’ll ask her to look.” And it hits me that I would have known this ages ago if I’d just trusted my friends. “But if I don’t even know about the vault, then they’re beyond classified. Retrieving them could definitely get us killed.”
Ridoc rolls his eyes. “Oh, good. I was wondering when it was going to start getting dangerous around here again.”
Jesinia knows nothing about a sublevel vault, so while she hunts, the rest of us pore over every book about ward-weaving and the First Six she can give us.
Research goes a lot faster when four people are doing it. And I have to admit, it’s nice to look across my room during the hours we study and see my friends again.
But we don’t find answers. And Andarna remains suspiciously asleep. And Tairn kindly telling me not to worry feels like a giant trigger to do exactly that, so I do.
I never get a chance to tell Xaden about our discovery—or lack thereof. That next Saturday, our squad is pulled into another session of land nav with the infantry, this time with First Wing, and I spend two days wandering the steep terrain of the mountains near Basgiath, avoiding Jack Barlowe—who is weirdly nice to everyone—at all costs.
“It’s like he met Malek and decided to come back a decent guy,” Rhiannon observes when we catch him tutoring first-years on the mat. “But I still don’t trust him.”
“Me, either.” The professors all seem to love him now, too.
The next week, Andarna is still sleeping, and Sawyer stumbles onto a three-hundred-year-old passage that confirms more than one wardstone was created.
On Saturday, not only is Xaden on duty in the ops room, but Mira is on patrol for the majority of my visit, and the weekend after, our squad is dropped into the Parchille Forest amid the changing leaves without supplies and told to walk our way out.
Message received. Tairn and Sgaeyl won’t be denied, but Xaden and I only get to see each other when we play by the rules—Varrish has determined that we’ve broken too many.
The next weekend, I have to choose between my squad receiving a zero if I don’t participate in a cat-and-mouse evasion operation against Third Wing in the Shedrick Woods and flying to Samara for Xaden.
It’s the very scenario Mira predicted last year when she learned I’d bonded Tairn—being forced to choose between my education, my squad, and Xaden and Sgaeyl. Tairn makes the choice before I can bludgeon myself about it.
We stay, but he’s fucking miserable the next day when Threshing comes, and I can’t blame him. I might not have a mating bond, but I’d chew my own arm off if it meant I had five minutes to talk to Xaden. Nothing I need to tell him can be written in a letter.