Page 3 of The Unseen Hour (The Unseen Hour Duology #1)
I found my way to the Estates section in no time at all. After a glance around to make sure no one else was lurking in the stacks, I bent down and peered at the next-to-bottom shelf. Gently, I pulled out a set of four books; then I reached into the gap behind them.
Relief and a sense of triumph coursed through me when my hand closed around the well-worn journal I’d hidden in the space behind the other books. Each time I visited, it was the same—untouched except by me.
I had no idea why anyone else would bother with this section of the library, but I couldn’t be too careful.
Had I been less worried about potential prying eyes and probing questions, I’d have checked out the book.
And if I were just a bit less scrupulous, I’d have stolen it ages ago.
I’d have to, soon enough. My family was set to leave our estate at Fox Haven and return to the capital of Karith in a couple of months.
I had chosen not to take the journal before the last Unseen Hour for a silly, sentimental reason. I’d found it in the stacks, and this area felt like my spot. Once I removed the journal, that went away. But I would have to take it before we left for the capital.
We went there every spring, and for the past several years that trip had meant enduring ‘the season’—multiple months of hot weather, endless promenades, needlessly intricate balls, and other such events, all designed to throw the young people of Emrys together.
Romance wasn’t the goal, but a proposal was. The queen of Emrys herself hosted at least two events for the nobility each season, one at the onset and one at the season’s end, to celebrate all newly married and engaged couples.
I hated courting season, and it was a point of pride for me that I had so far escaped it without a betrothal since my entrance into society. This year in particular, it would serve as nothing but an unwelcome distraction from my research.
The diary would have to come along with me to Karith; there was no way around it.
“As if I could leave you behind, R. Holmes,” I whispered to the small book with the blue cover.
I put a hand to my cheek, certain I was blushing.
After my father’s disappearance a few Unseen Hours ago, I had taken refuge amidst the books.
Admittedly, the first time I’d come, it had been because I couldn’t bear the morose mood at the estate a moment longer.
Finneas had accompanied me into Fox Haven, and I had followed instinct to enter the library.
Books had always been an escape, and that time proved no exception, although not in the way I’d anticipated.
I had headed toward the emptiest section I could find, since tears had already started running down my cheeks. One simply did not sob in public, at least not if one didn’t want to become the focus of gossip.
Emrys had plenty of that, and partaking in it while avoiding becoming the one spoken about with derision was a popular pastime for the country’s population.
The Estates stacks beckoned on the day of that fateful visit, empty of a single soul aside from myself. I’d chosen an aisle at random, turned to make it appear I was examining the books, and started to cry.
After that, it had become something of a ritual. I held myself together for my family, and at public events, and I let myself grieve in the forgotten stacks of the library, Estates section, row ‘H’.
Those who say time lessens grief are wrong. Time creates space. It gives you more moments around the grief, to cushion you a bit. But the grief is always there, and anything can trigger it. For years, section ‘H’ had been my refuge when I needed somewhere to be alone.
Only the past fall, before the ninety-eighth hour, I had been in town and seen a man that looked just like Father.
Only a trick of the light, coupled with his distance down the road.
No one else had those pink eyes. But grief does funny things to the senses.
Less than a second of mistaken identity, and I sank into fresh grief.
I’d run into the library, desperate for my familiar stack. Most blessedly, thank both gods, that day a kindlier librarian had manned the desk.
October. My birthday. A day when everything changed for me, and probably why I’d been missing my father enough to see him in a stranger’s face.
Once I hit the stacks, I sank to my knees and began to cry. An act both absolutely unbecoming if someone had found me, and an impressive feat of maneuvering. Corsets and dresses aren’t made for sitting on the floor.
Even so, I managed. While trying to use the shelves to hoist myself back up to a standing position, I grabbed hold of some books.
A few tumbled out, including the blue diary I held in my hands at present.
The Estates section housed exactly what the name suggested: publicly available information pertaining to various estates.
It wasn’t often visited, because you could just as easily obtain the information, if you were a man, through business transactions, meetings, and your own familial records.
In my case, though, the library was my only means.
But the diary was not some boring set of ledgers on some nobleman’s finances.
Last October, I’d put the other books neatly back on the shelf, but the blue-bound journal caught my attention. I leafed through it on a whim.
Per the first page, it had belonged to an R. Holmes. It must have ended up in the library along with other estate papers upon his death.
And it was the death that intrigued me.
Everyone in my region of Emrys had heard of the Holmes family. They had been the most powerful dukes of Emrys, going back as far as anyone could remember. They were still one of the most prominent families in the realm, although a shadow had fallen over them nearly a hundred years prior.
During the first of the Unseen Hours, the heir of the dukedom had been Taken—a special name for a special death. Emrys recognized two gods: Day and Death. Day was depicted often in sunny repose, warm and welcoming; Death as the opposite.
Our clergy interpreted the frozen bodies as a sign of rejection, determining that victims of the hour would find no rest in the next life. Instead, an endless and horrible fate awaited them, taken not only from this world, but also from peace in the next .
All three Holmes brothers had died during the hour of that first year, some of the earliest victims of the horror.
At least that was the theory.
I had my doubts.
I’d sat in the library on that October day a few months prior utterly enthralled. I’d read the diary through many times since, and I’d come to the conclusion that perhaps the hour itself wasn’t what had been the downfall of R. and his siblings.
The diary made mention of what I found to be rather suspicious happenings surrounding the Holmes brothers in the months before their supposed deaths: Items disappearing from their manor with no explanation.
Sightings of dark figures outside the windows, but when staff were sent to look no one could be found.
And an illness that plagued all three brothers simultaneously, all the way up until their bitter ends.
What was even more compelling evidence was that all was not as it seemed pertaining to the matter of bodies, as odious as such a topic was.
All Unseen Hour victims were found in the streets the following morning.
That’s how it had been since that first night.
Souls were Taken, bodies remained. Only two Holmes brothers had been found.
For a while, some had thrown around the rumor that one brother had murdered the others and absconded, but no one had ever found motive or proof.
Why give up an estate you had every right to and go on the run as a murderer? It made no sense.
All that had piqued my interest, but the most compelling thing about the diary had nothing to do with Holmes.
In the margins was a second set of handwritten notations.
Holmes's own entries were swirling, stately, and easy to read. The notes in the margin were stilted and rushed but familiar to me. They were written in my father’s hand.
When and how he’d come into contact with the diary I couldn’t be certain, but he’d written all sorts of things in the open spaces.
Theories on Emrys, and the Unseen Hour, and how a live person might get Taken.
By the end of the diary, my father’s notes had even suggested the hour itself was just a problem that needed to be solved and not an unavoidable punishment by the gods.
He made mention of looking into his ideas, for himself and the crown. But three years ago he’d vanished during the Unseen Hour.
In the past few months, since discovering the diary and Father’s writing, I had become a woman possessed. I would pick up where he’d left off, and I would finish his mission. With any luck, I thought, and some help from both blessed gods, I could still save him.
Everyone else believed him dead, but after what I’d read I was no longer sure, because my father’s situation mirrored another to a curious degree.
With my father, there had been no frozen remains.
Just as with the elder Holmes, there had been no body, and no trace of him since.