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“Wise,” Anrid agreed as she headed toward her own room. She didn’t even bother returning the bowl to the kitchen.

Hopefully Cook wouldn’t mind. Her bed called to her with sweet, compelling tones.

But when she entered the chamber, a hollowness bloomed inside her. The emptiness of the room, usually so crowded, filled her with sadness. She missed her children.

Her children.

She’d gotten so attached to them, to each one of them, although Rig and Medda in particular had wormed their way deepest into her heart. And Gorge and Ember and big but huggable Crag and his ferocious little monkey. They were so naughty and so sweet and so needing of love and attention…she couldn’t imagine ever leaving them. A stone sank into the pit of her stomach as she acknowledged she would indeed be leaving them one day. She couldn’t be in two places at once.

No magic in the world did that. At least, no magic she had ever heard about.

No, she decided as she slipped off her apron and dress and into her nightgown that she would have to prepare the children to continue on without her. She slid beneath the thick blankets on her bed. They felt cold against her exposed skin, the narrow bunk too spacious without Medda taking up more than her fair share. The little ones like Medda would be the hardest to leave behind, and equally hard to prepare for the days to come. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about her empty bed, but it made her think all the more fervently about the children, and Jael, and her sister so very far away.

And those weren’t the only thoughts plaguing her as she tried to let sleep take. The stone in her stomach seemed to roll over and fill her with a nauseated uneasiness. What if she dreamed again when she fell asleep? Would the children be safe in the other room? What if Jael didn’t come for her if she needed him? They’d left things on very bad terms, and he hadn’t been to see her since. Maybe he would expect her to handle her nightmares alone.

How was it that she could be surrounded by so many people, most of them sleeping only one or two rooms away, and yet feel so inexplicably lonely?

She didn’t even know when she stepped from uneasy tossing and turning into an imaginary tunnel somewhere in her dreams. Waking and sleeping blurred together in a way that made neither true, yet the anxiety twisting her stomach was all too real.

She was dreaming.

She glanced up and down the empty tunnel. The silence cut against her skin like the sharp blade of a knife, pricking her just hard enough to remind her that danger approached, that the dark and terrible thing lurked right around the bend. She backed away to escape it, but unyielding stone met her back. There was no escape.

The shadows shifted, gently at first, like threadbare curtains in a stale breeze. Soon they rolled closer to her, whispering words just low enough she couldn’t make them out, even though she strained with all her might to decipher the words.

They were coming.

For her. They were coming for her.

A choked cry escaped her mouth, and she spun to race in the opposite direction, but the shadows were there too. They pressed in on her from all sides, narrowing the circle of light around her. She didn’t see where the light came from, but something inside her knew that when the light was gone, she would be gone too. It was the only thing keeping her safe.

At least she was alone.

So, so alone.

It was a bitter sort of comfort, but she clung to the knowledge the children would be safe. That Jael wouldn’t come to harm. If he hadn’t fallen asleep, he wouldn’t be here to get caught up in the danger she faced by herself.

Wake up, she whispered, but the dream clung to her like a second skin.

Icy fingers wrapped around her hand. She screamed as a small body solidified next to hers, messy white hair tickling her arm. “Uh-NEE,” Rig whispered with tears in his voice, “I think there is something bad hiding in the dark.”

Chapter 26

Jael’s hands shook as he rummaged through Math’s desk in the workroom, searching for the missing tome. He’d looked everywhere else. Perhaps Math had taken it to study and forgotten to return it before he left. It wasn’t like him to take something so important without asking, but who else knew about the book? Besides Anrid?

As he dug through piles of books and loose-leaf pages of parchment, darkness pricked the edges of his vision. He paused in his frantic search and closed his eyes, breathing past the wave of dizziness. In a lifetime of long days and even longer nights…he’d never known exhaustion like this.

He braced himself and ground his teeth together as he finished searching the desk.

Nothing.

No sign of the nameless book.

Frustrated, he swept a pile of restacked papers off the table. They fluttered to the floor, some of them landing in a box of runestones waiting to be cleaned. Where else could he possibly look?

A gentle popping noise erupted from the other side of the room. Jael twisted but saw only the empty chamber, tables strewn with books and runestones, with chisels and brushes and rags. Even the darkened doorway stood vacant.

Just when he thought he might have imagined it, something rustled. He studied the far recesses of the room. The rustling escalated, except it wasn’t quite the sound of rodents gnawing through paper or scavenging for crumbs in debris. This more resembled the faintest of whispers.