Page 11 of Revert (The Royal Chronicles #4)
After a hesitant pause deliberating whether I should pursue this unknown clue, I crossed to the shelf he’d indicated.
The book sat tucked behind others, bound in age-cracked leather.
Its spine was too faded to read, save for the faint glint of a silver-threaded emblem barely visible in the dim, grey light.
My fingers hovered over it for a moment before I slowly eased the cover open.
Halfway through the worn pages, I found it—the spiral I’d discovered last night, nestled between lines of faded ink. I peered closer, comparing the shape to the image in my mind—same number of coils, same subtle tilt to the inner loop.
I traced the each spiral etched into the margin, heart tightening.
A symbol part of me suspected had marked my end…
and now, perhaps, the beginning of something I wasn’t ready to follow to its conclusion.
Something about it stirred something in my mind—not a memory from the first timeline, but something that almost felt further back, almost like a memory I shouldn’t have.
My breath caught. Does he know? I didn’t know what unsettled me more: the uncertainty of what it meant, or the fact that the prince had led me straight to it.
My gaze flicked towards the shelf he’d disappeared behind, his stillness too deliberate for me to believe he was unaware.
I kept my features composed, turning the pages with practiced disinterest, even as my pulse quickened.
Was this some new ploy, a trap dressed in false trust?
Or was he… helping me? But I knew better.
This was no chaperoned duty—it was a test, one I intended to pass.
“Something appears to have captured your attention.” His low, steady voice emerged from somewhere behind me. “Is the ink too faded for your liking?”
I flinched but didn’t turn. “Merely admiring the calligraphy. It’s a lost art, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Some things are best left lost.” His voice came from the direction of a different shelf this time, closer. I stiffened, but I kept my eyes on the page, feigning focus while my thoughts twisted into knots.
I turned the page. More sigils, interspersed through the text like annotations.
Some spiraled clockwise, others counterclockwise, interwoven like a puzzle.
Words in a tongue I didn’t recognize thrummed beneath the parchment like the whisper I’d heard in the mural chamber, indiscernible sounds I couldn’t translate, except for one phrase that seemed to rise above the page.
One path unmade …
What could it mean? I traced the spiral again, as if touch alone might help me decipher the strange magic pulsing faintly against my fingertips—unfamiliar, yet not entirely new, a clue that hadn’t surfaced in the original timeline.
As in my first life, I could only gather fragments, pieces I hadn’t yet learned how to fit together into something coherent.
Prince Castiel suddenly emerged from the shadows. I startled and snapped the book shut, as though I’d been caught looking at something I wasn’t supposed to. “Have you discovered anything useful?”
“Fascinating information about trade agreements and tax law,” I said dryly. “Riveting insight into Thorndale’s soul.”
One corner of his mouth almost quirked as he looked pointedly to the book I still held. “Then you missed the subtext entirely.”
What did that mean? Did he know about the strange sigil that adorned these pages? “Then perhaps you should include footnotes. Next time, label your riddles.”
“And ruin the fun of watching you struggle?” he said. “No, I much prefer this sharp-tongued version of you—the one who is both suspicious and potentially dangerous.”
Dangerous? “His Highness excels at the art of flattery.” But perhaps, coming from someone who had once killed me, he considered that a compliment.
His phantom smirk faded and the air shifted, charged now with something quieter, heavier. The thrill of the verbal sparring ebbed, leaving behind a silence that settled between us like dust on the forgotten tomes.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he murmured. “Strange for someone with so many opinions that always seem to require great effort for you to suppress.”
If he could already see the biting retorts I fought to keep contained, perhaps there was no point in keeping them restrained.
His gaze held mine, sharp and searching, as if I were a cipher he was desperate to solve—certain the answer would appear if he only looked long enough. “I think you want to believe you’re still playing the game.”
“I’m surviving it,” I said coldly.
His mouth twitched—not quite a smile, yet something different from the threatening smirk I’d grown to fear. “Survival requires knowing the rules, as well as who’s actually moving the pieces.”
“Is that advice...or another test?” Or perhaps a warning in disguise.
“What does it matter, so long as you pass?” A thread of regret wound through his casual tone, so subtle it barely reached the surface…yet enough to make me wonder if he didn’t want me to fail.
Every word between us was a knife’s edge, yet there was something oddly exhilarating in the exchange. For all its subtext of peril, it awakened something in me different from the usual monotony of the court, the thrill of dancing with death itself.
As if sensing this new invigoration, he looked at me—not as a decorative fixture in the court or a pawn to be manipulated, not quite like a fiancée, but rather like a variable he couldn’t predict—almost as if he might look at someone worthy of his notice.
“You weren’t always this feisty,” he murmured after a moment of pensive silence.
Perhaps being murdered had made me bolder.
The girl I’d been before had carried her strength quietly, tucked beneath obedience and smiles, but that was no longer enough for the dangers I now navigated.
Dying had changed me, and this new Bernice had no interest in remaining in the shadows.
Whether that change would prove an ally or a hindrance moving forward remained to be seen.
We stared at one another, tension suspended. He moved first, reaching for his sword. I jerked back instinctively, my spine colliding with the shelves, causing a cascade of books to fall to the ground.
“There’s no need to look so startled,” he said, his voice uncannily calm.
“I’m the one who brought you here. Curiosity is a strength, not a weakness.
Thorndale has its secrets, but none worth more than a life.
” He reached up and deliberately set his sword atop a high shelf out of reach, then stepped back.
I stared at him, stunned. Everything in this timeline was unfolding—his behavior, his restraint, even these strange invitations—in stark contrast to the man who had once killed me.
Navigating the shifting dynamics was proving far more difficult than the mission I still had to carry out under his frustrating surveillance, like walking a tightrope in the dark.
I needed control, answers, and I would find neither if I let myself be drawn into whatever new game he was playing. If I lost focus now, my mission wouldn’t stand a chance.
I would begin by refusing to let him dictate my movements. I started to return the book he had guided me to, but his hand suddenly reached out, catching my wrist…and my breath.
It was the first time he had ever touched me and I was unprepared for the warm steadiness of his fingers as they curled gently around mine, coaxing rather than commanding, nothing like the night they had stained my gown in blood.
I inhaled sharply as a jolt of warmth sparked beneath my skin, rising straight to the heart I mustn’t forget he had once stopped.
I yanked away. The book slipped from my grasp, falling between us with a soft thud and a cloud of dust, blooming like smoke from a fire he had just kindled.
He slowly bent down to retrieve it, his movements deliberate. As he straightened, his eyes met mine. “Are you truly finished with this?” The pointed question pulsed with subtext, as if he was trying to guide me towards something he couldn’t speak of directly.
His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist as he handed the book back. A flicker passed between us—fleeting, but undeniable. It vanished so quickly it might’ve been imagined…except I knew it wasn’t, a thought that unsettled me more than his sword ever had.
My body reacted before reason could intervene and cast the moment in its proper light. This isn’t affection—it’s strategy. A calculated move in his endless game designed to disarm me, to soften me before the next strike .
A flash of the memory of what it felt like to die at his hands eclipsed his current gentleness. My hand remembered his grip in another context—when it had crushed, not steadied, pinning me for the killing blow. That memory overlapped this one, until I could think of nothing else.
He didn’t speak. Just stared down at the book still held between us, looking as though there was something he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
He made no move to step back. And as I gazed into his face, I came to the startling realization that I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to… and that terrified me most of all.