Page 102 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

The armory was well-lit by two torches on either side.

Lining the wall were racks and racks of swords, iron shields of various sizes.

On another wall, armor, and the next, bows and buckets of arrows and spears.

Several were missing, but not all. They’d taken more than enough to supply the men that had departed, but there were still plenty for the remaining guard.

It didn’t look like boxes and boxes of anything were moved, like her handmaidens had overheard.

Heart hammering, she eased the door shut, when Ciel twisted free from her grasp and made a run for it. His screams weren’t screams, so much as muffled retching noises as he scuttled down the hall, tripping and falling once.

Tremendous strength in her calves coiled and sprung, catching her off guard as she jolted forward, too clumsy with her uncanny speed.

“Ciel! Ciel, stop!” Horrified, Lilac watched the guard careen around the corner to the left, causing him to slow a bit.

She’d catch him there. Lilac rushed him and managed a tighter turn, ready to leap onto him, and?—

There was nothing. No one was in the foyer. It was silent save for the crackle of the hearth. Lilac straightened and kept to the shadows of the hall, sticking close to the wall to her left.

“Ciel,” she whispered. “Come ou?—”

A hand wrapped around her mouth and waist, tugging her into the darkness. The closet door shut quietly in her face, the hand over her mouth slipping off before she could bite it. Lilac whirled with her fist in the air.

Her captor caught it.

“Your reflexes are increasingly impressive.” Garin pressed his lips to her closed fist before she wrenched it from him.

“What are you doing here?” Lilac demanded, nauseous with rib-pounding adrenaline. She couldn’t see a thing, turning around and banging her elbow onto some protruding fixture on the inside of the door—probably a low coat hook—beneath the garment hanging over it. “Ow!”

“ Shh ,” Garin hissed. “Could you be any louder?”

“What are you doing in here?”

Garin stopped to listen; whatever he was hearing, she couldn’t make any of it out.

The castle was still silent, probably nursing their hangovers in their private quarters.

“The better question is, how did you know this closet was here? The door blends in so well with the walls, I almost didn’t see it before this bloke turned the corner. ”

The room reeked of sweat and ale. “Gross.”

“You’re the one who crushed his windpipe. He wouldn’t have been able to speak. Or breathe. Or enjoy any of Madame Hedwig’s delicious confections ever again.”

“You could’ve eaten him.”

“I’d rather not chance it. I don’t know what it would do to my eyes.”

“If it’s from a dead body, wouldn’t it be the same as drinking bottled blood from a donor?” Lilac blinked, willing her vision to adjust. As it did, she could make out Ciel’s wide form slumped against the wall on the corner of the bench that lined the closet.

“From a limb, yes. From a corpse, I’m not so sure.”

Lilac looked around; the old stone room had been mostly emptied since the last time she’d hid in it.

There was a box there, a stack of parchment on the upper shelves.

A long garment hanging beside her on the back of the door.

It was narrow, barely wider than a chimney, though it soaked none of the heat from the hearth on the other side of the hall.

“This is my family’s old coat closet,” she explained.

“It was part of the original keep, built four centuries earlier. My grandfather had since fashioned a newer coat room for guests closer to the servants’ quarters near the scullery.

When I was younger, this was one of my hiding spots for whenever Piper was tasked with putting gowns on me. And when we played hide-and-seek.”

“It seems that hasn’t changed.” Garin’s smile was audible. “You must’ve given her hell. I’ll bet she never found you in here.”

“A better hiding place,” she continued, side-eyeing him, “was my father’s study.”

Garin’s smile slowly faded, his brows knitting together. “That’s ludicrous. This door is basically hidden.”

“You’ve been there, haven’t you?” Lilac crossed her arms, rubbing them for warmth. “I saw it in a vision.”

He gaped, looking shocked but not the least bit guilty. “I thought you saw yourself stab Albrecht.”

“I did in the brothel. But when I bit your hand in your room, at the inn…” she trailed off as she watched it click in his eyes. “I recognized my father’s desk anywhere. What were you looking for? Was it the vampire manuscript you left near my balcony?”

He laughed nervously, like a boy caught in a lie.

“Piper discovered it and showed me.”

Garin sighed. “Edith Menard.”

“Who?”

“Lady Edith, Emma’s mother, brought me here.

Don’t look so shocked; I heard every word of you and Emma chatting her mother’s business up in front of poor Rupert.

” Garin looked around, as if deciding whether to seat himself on the bench.

He remained standing. “She and her uncle were part of the group of nobles who came to help Paimpont in the week after the Raid. They had come to claim Emma’s father’s body. ”

As told in her books, there had been a committee of her grandparents’ court and adjacent circles who went to provide aid in the days after. “You were there.”

“Someone had to come wash the blood from the streets.” He stared past her. “After a few days, I joined one of their evening efforts hoping to see Adelaide again, listening for any news of planned consequence. I met Edith as she exited The Jaunty Hog.”

Lilac’s look of wonder quickly churned into disgust. “Edith’s husband was just killed in the Raid, and you fucked her?”

“We were both grieving,” Garin said, scowling.

“And no, at least not right away. While her uncle brought his brother’s corpse back to their town, she was ordered to spend the next evening in attendance at the Ermengarde trial.

I would’ve entranced her, but I didn’t need to.

Told her I was the cousin of a shop owner in Rennes and offered to accompany her.

She was glad to have me. By her extension, I was invited in. ”

He’d entered the keep after Lilac’s accession ceremony, but she’d assumed her father had invited him in with the rest of the clergy.

He’d been searching her grandfather Francis’s desk—not Henri’s. “ You attended the Ermengarde trial?”

“As a guest, and I didn’t stay long enough to learn much of it at all.” He rubbed at his chin, and she could tell it wasn’t exactly a fond memory. “In truth, I wasn’t there for the trial, nor for Edith.” He stepped closer. “No one can know this. Laurent promised me not to tell.”

“I won’t.”

“The night of the Raid, I was more than cross with Laurent. He was a self-assured leader, level-headed, ruthless only when required. He was a father, friend, and brother to many of us, in a way my own never demonstrated, nor even Alor. I admired this in him, and so to order an attack like this even at the faeries’ suggestion was entirely uncharacteristic. ”

“Did you ever suspect it was more than a suggestion from Kestrel? Faerie ether, maybe?”

“It crossed our minds, but no one ever asked. We were taught to obey. I went to Laurent the morning after the Raid with many questions, still covered in Adelaide’s family’s blood.

I and several others in our coven were concerned about the retribution that would surely rain down on Brocéliande from your grandfather and his men.

It was silent at the castle, and they hadn’t yet sent a legion of guards to burn our forest to the ground. ”

“My grandfather never did, did he?”

“We were spared. It turned out they’d been busy dealing privately with Vivien’s parents and France’s presence when the Raid transpired.

When I went to Laurent, Kestrel was there in our meeting room.

They already had answers for me, vague as they were.

” He absentmindedly reached above Ciel’s corpse’s head, trailing his fingers along the bricks.

Lilac gasped. “He went back to Kestrel for help?”

“He had no other option. Kestrel cannot lie, and in good faith he pulled up a map and unraveled it upon our table. He performed a tracking spell in front of our very eyes—a red leather-bound book details the fate of the arcane kingdoms. Of Brocéliande, Huelgoat, and beyond. According to him, it was, and perhaps still is, located in this very castle. He said he didn’t know where, that the map couldn’t give us specifics. I figured it wouldn’t be difficult.”

It sounded awfully vague. Most of the shelves in her library were filled with earth tones and bound stacks of parchment. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“I doubt you have. In the week after your ceremony, I searched your room. Your chapel. Your library at night. Every shelf. Every loose brick.”

Lilac frowned. Her Accord notes and other paperwork were kept there. “I’ve kept it locked.”

“I got your guards to unlock it for me. I didn’t pry much.” But his brows rose. “ Increased taxation for nobility to fund schools, infirmaries, inns, and orphanages, to include Daemon-run establishments ,” Garin quoted. “I was impressed.”

“Could Kestrel tell us more?” Her mind raced. “And has anyone heard from him yet?”

“Myrddin said he’d deal with it today. I’ll likely need to delegate its delivery to Bastion. I made it clear before I left that I wasn’t comfortable with any of us bringing it straight to Cinderfell. I’d love to ask Kestrel about it, if he ever answers us.” He scoffed. “Ungrateful prick.”

“Okay.” She didn’t know what to say, stunned into silence. “So? Have you found it? The book, I mean.”

“No,” he answered curtly.

“And so…” She waited, expecting there to be more to his story. Garin sa id nothing. “So you searched my grandfather’s office on the night of the Ermengarde trial. You didn’t look in our library or anywhere else back then? That’s it?”

“No. I left that night, though Edith and I kept in contact for a short while after that.”