Page 42 of A Crown of Tears and Treason (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #1)

Chapter

Forty-Two

EVIE

I dropped into a tumble, bones rattling.

The vines hissed closed behind me a breath later.

My hands and feet dug into something soft. Sand?

No. The sphere illuminated enough to make out a layer of dust thick enough that it swallowed my boots up to my ankles.

All the humidity from up above was replaced with stale and dry air that scratched my throat. I looked up. The vines must have been acting like a natural moisture magnet to protect the oldest texts.

The underside of the vines was almost desiccated, small pieces raining down like dandruff as they shifted.

“Disgusting,” I whispered and instantly regretted it.

All the dry particles in the air rushed into my lungs. I covered my mouth and nose with the collar of my armor, tensing my ribs to swallow my cough.

A small flutter of pride beat in my chest. I’d done it. If I’d gotten this far, maybe I could–

I picked up the sphere and turned, deflating.

The shelves before me…there were no books here.

Only clay tablets and scrolls, carefully positioned inside the niches carved inside the stone. Thousands of scrolls, rolled up and bound with red twine, edges frayed and sandy. Where to even begin sifting through all of them?

My first instinct was to reach for the tablets. The Quoriliths carved their spells on stones, right? But my fingers froze a breath away from them.

The Quoriliths were too suspicious for anyone to see their writings. They’d carved them inside the temples that had sunk eons ago and these tablets didn’t look like chipped remnants. Their edges were straight and precise. These hadn’t been damaged in travel. They had the reddish sheen of the dust in my front courtyard.

These were local.

I took a step back, mind whirling with possibilities.

What if…What if only secondhand accounts made it out of whatever swamp the Quoroliths had bloodied with sacrifices? Dara had guessed as much.

Whatever witnesses or historians survived delving into their territory would have written on something portable. Scrolls .

But which ones?

So many of them, all in similar shades of beige that didn’t help determine their age.

Think, Evie. Fucking think.

I hadn’t come here to just shrug and go back up empty-handed. I turned around, eyes hectic. No flecks of blood, no metallic stench, but…some of them, stuffed on the last shelf, had small blueish splotches on their edges, barely discernible in the sphere’s flickering light.

Swamp.

Dampness.

Mold.

Blue mold.

I allowed myself one small smile, hoping I wasn’t horrifyingly wrong. I doubted I could make the trip a second time if someone discovered these scrolls were missing.

Careful not to crumple the fragile parchment that looked one good breath away from disintegrating, I slid scroll after scroll from the stone niches and inserted them gently into the satchel, which quickly filled up.

By the eighth scroll, its leathery edges were already straining. But I could stuff one more inside, I knew it.

I bent down lower to get another scroll, lying close to the floor. The armor’s collar slipped from my nose as I inhaled.

A puff of foul dust went straight down my throat. I couldn’t stop my cough this time. I covered my mouth with my elbow, balancing the sphere and the scroll at the same time as a cloud of grime rose around me.

Eyes watering, I packed the last scroll and rose. I needed to get out of here.

I looked up.

My heart dropped.

The cloud of dust had risen all the way up toward the vines–which had swelled as if they’d fed on my fear.

Spikes, sharp and long, burst from their undersides as they lowered straight toward me.

There were no more gaps as the horrific tendrils continued to inflate my way.

A blaring noise vibrated through the walls, disturbing the dust further.

The library had sensed the intruder–and wanted to impale me for my recklessness.

The vines advanced so fast, I had to hunch my shoulders and kneel to avoid the spikes. But they’d reach me eventually. I had maybe a minute of life left.

No .

I wasn’t dying like this.

On instinct, the little pocket of power inside me burst open. I raised my hand as far as I dared, my blue tendrils swirling around it.

Protect me against the thorns. Help me burn the vines. Save me , I chanted in my mind.

My power listened.

Blue light erupted from my fingers, cleaving straight through the vines. They hissed and sizzled, retreating. Thick, rotten smoke choked me.

I pushed through it, climbing the walls like a spider fleeing a sudden flood. The top of my head burst above the scorched vines as if breaching the surface of the waves in a storm.

Cold, hard rain splashed from the dome above, not straying from the perimeter of the abyss. The columns and walls turned slicker. I held on with all my might, the water trying its best to extinguish whatever had caused the smoke–and to push me back into the darkness.

At least it washed away the crumbs of vines clinging to my braided hair, digging painfully into my scalp.

“Hurry!” Goose’s frantic voice resounded from somewhere above. “The exterior walls are closing!”

I looked above in time to see thick stone slabs rising along the perimeter of the dome, shadowing the windows.

Shit, shit, shit.

I couldn’t chisel my way out.

“Get out of here. Now!” I shouted, hoping Goose heard me over the rain.

I pushed my body to its limits, joints screeching as I hopped onto the eighth level. The gods must have been smiling down at me today, because the platform was just rising. I pulled myself up and squeezed on top of it.

I didn’t have time to catch my breath.

The stone slabs continued to slide down, covering the windows.

Goose’s hurried footsteps resounded near the exit.

At least he’d survive. But I wouldn’t make it out in time.

I grabbed one of the thick platform ropes with my right hand, flicking my switchblade open.

Gods help me.

Whatever blue tendrils of power I still had coiled around the blade as I slashed through the rope.

Without the counterweight holding it up, the platform fell and I was yanked upward. My fingers stung from the strain of holding on, but I wasn’t letting go of this rope for anything in this world.

The momentum carried me up, up, and up–past the ground level and the alcove I’d come through, and into the top of the tower.

I spied the last window in the tower, now half-covered by the slab.

I had one chance.

One chance to save myself or fall dozens of feet into the shaft and to my death.

All of this would have been for nothing.

Pure stubbornness guided my body as I let go of the rope just as I reached the window. My fingers barely grabbed onto the frame, feet twitching against the wall, hectic to find some point of leverage.

Adara’s training served me well.

With a strength I hadn’t had weeks ago, I pulled myself up and opened the window. I crouched onto the windowsill, the stone slab digging into my shoulders.

I was too high up to chance a jump–but a tall tree waited for me only feet away, draped in green vines, plump with life and sap, that didn’t dare wound around the tower.

As the slab dug into my spine, I leaped for my life. Gravity claimed my body for a moment. Then my hands wound around the closest vine.

I swung around the tree, ending up on the other side of it.

My feet hit the ground as the alarm behind me blared louder.

I didn’t care.

I ran faster than I knew was possible, the trees and shrubs whirling around me. Only when my knees wobbled and my lungs screamed did I stop.

I crumpled to the ground, twisting onto my back.

I was soaked to the bone, with a nasty cough at the back of my throat, and cuts on my arms and neck.

But I was staring at the clear sky slowly turning mauve in the sunset.

A startled laugh ripped from my chest. It went on and on, until my stomach hurt and my breaths came out short.

I’d survived–and I’d stolen the scrolls.