Tyroth disappears from sight, and I release a shaken exhale, my body loosening in places I didn’t know had tightened. I spin, picking up the deceased lark and tucking it in my pocket, then move into the vast chambers, letting the doors click shut behind me.
Eyes squeezed shut, I rest my head against the ebony wood and pull my lungs so full they ache, trying to shift the tightness from my chest. I pass the duster from one hand to the other, shaking both out, dashing the last of the tingles away.
Get the diary.
Get out.
Wake Ayda up so she can rush up here and avoid getting her head lopped off.
I open my eyes, widening as I take in the stark-black sitting room with panoramic views of the glittering city far below, seeing his sleepsuite through an open door to the left. I move through, pausing at the foot of the huge obsidian four-poster pallet.
My eyes narrow on a large mirror on the far wall …
It has to be there.
I make for it, cast a quick glance over my shoulder, then set the duster on the pallet and slide the mirror sideways, expecting to see a hollow—
My heart drops.
Nothing. Just a flat wall.
I appraise the space …
There’s nothing else on the walls in this sterile room. Meaning she can’t possibly have hidden it here. But this is where she spent the last chapter of her life. I know that for a fact—that she was too unwell to even make it into the streets and see her folk. To celebrate the impending birth. Something that meant so much to all Arithians, since conceiving has never come easy to those who don the Aether Stone.
I look to the balcony, realization slapping me so hard my knees almost give way.
Half the room was crumbled when her Moonplume broke through the wall after Elluin passed away, scooping up her lifeless body she then carried into the sky where she curled around her and died.
Perhaps she tore up the diary, too?
“Shit,” I mutter, dropping to the pallet, dragging my hands down my—Ayda’s—face.
I should’ve thought of that before I flew all the way here.
A deep wash of failure sweeps over me, the weight of it shoving me back onto the thick, cushiony pallet, tossing my arms out as I stare at the black velvet canopy.
I’ve been compulsively chasing a truth that doesn’t belong to me. That never did. Guess this is what I get.
Sweet fuck all.
Creators, this room feels morbid. And cold. What a shitty place to be stuck—rise after rise—pitted with the knowledge that you’ll probably die giving birth. Probably too exhausted to even walk to the balcony and get a clear view of … the … moons …
I lift my head, looking toward the balcony door—panes of glass that frame the sky littered with balled-up gray, pearly and iridescent moons.
My heart skips a beat.
If she were pallet-ridden, she would’ve hidden it within reach. Surely.
Why make things harder on herself?
Frowning, I sit up, imagining my belly is laden with life. Imagining I have a diadem on my brow that’s draining me to death, making it almost impossible for me to draw enough energy to breathe, let alone nourish my youngling into existence. Imagining that I’d want to look out at those moons right there. Mostly—the one belonging to …
Haedeon.
I edge myself off the side of the mattress, dropping straight down onto my ass on the floor beside it, looking out the balcony door to a perfectly framed view of Hae’s Perch. A sad smile lifts the corner of my lips …
This feels right.
Devastatingly right.
I plunge my left arm under the risen pallet, eyes on that gimpy-winged moon spilling its silver luster upon Arithia as I feel around the back post.
Across the back wall.
My hand pushes into a jagged hollow, a lump forming in my throat as my fingers graze across the face of a leather-bound book.
There you are …
I pull it into my lap, tracing my finger over the black and silver depiction of Kaan’s málmr. Something she must’ve painted on the otherwise black front.
The backs of my eyes sting at the sight.
“Oh, Elluin,” I whisper, hand trembling. I nip a glance toward the door before I lift the front cover, flipping through the yellowed flaps of parchment, each so beautifully scrawled upon. Even when she was small, her handwriting was immaculate—all dainty curls and twirls.
Just looking at each entry makes me feel as though I’m tumbling through a veil into another world seen only through her eyes.
First the young her. Then the adolescent.
Then the mature.
Lacking the time to read the entire thing right here, right now, but also lacking a single shred of patience, I flip straight to the end—to the final three entries. Immediately regretting it, realizing I shouldn’t have read this here.