Quill of Thieves

Chapter 15

A glimmering light flickered out of the corner of Astrid's eye.

Ever since being banished to her rooms—a completely unjust punishment that had caused Astrid to claw in frustration at her cuff until her skin bled—she had flipped furiously through the books she kept stashed beneath her bed. They were ones she had taken from her mother's keep throughout the years: histories of the seven realms, collections from Soleitian priestesses, genealogies. Reading through them now in light of her mother's, not to mention Matthias's, betrayal felt vengefully soothing.

Yet nothing she had read so far that night had mentioned anything of the true origins of Sebastian d'Aximos.

Gods curse his false surname.

She threw the useless book across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud before landing, half-bent, on the floor.

Something shimmered again, this time from underneath her door.

Astrid sat up just as another heavy thump fell against her wall.

This time, she hadn't thrown a book.

Astrid tossed her legs off the edge of her bed and rushed to the door. Whatever had fallen outside of it had sounded suspiciously like a weight of a body.

"Matthias?"

Her instincts brought forth his name first. It was followed closely by an irrational fury that she even worried over him after the stunt he had pulled earlier with Sebastian. Besides, there could be any number of guards beyond the door; the queen should know it would take at least five to stop her from leaving her chambers, after all.

Grinning recklessly to herself, Astrid gripped the knob and threw it open.

The door came up short, catching on a prone, armored shoulder.

Matthias laid across the corridor in a slumbering position as if he had simply fallen asleep. His helmet sat askew over the side of his head.

"Thias?"

Astrid slipped through the gap of her door and peered in both directions. No one else appeared to be nearby. It seemed as if her mother had underestimated her yet again. She knelt at Matthias's side and placed two fingers to the side of his neck. His pulse beat steadily against her touch. No sign of injury or trauma was on him. He had simply fallen asleep. How odd.

Astrid sat back on her heels, glanced back into the darkness of the corridor, and then froze.

A shimmering beam of light hovered above the ground in an airy path that led from Matthias down to the far curve of the corridor.

Astrid stood. In response, her cuff twisted around her arm. "This is not of my making," she told it indignantly.

She swept her hand through the path's warm light. It reminded her of the leaf-strewn one she had created outside the fortress when she had searched for Sebastian, which told her that this path was also one bred from magic.

There was only one other person in this fortress, beside herself, who had the ability.

"What are you playing at, fisherboy?" 

The light beckoned her down the hall as if it had heard her. So, Astrid stepped over Matthias's sleeping body and followed it.

O O O

Sebastian lost count of how many stairs he had ascended. The moon's path glimmered higher still, up the spiraling iron-cast staircase that twisted within the tower. He followed the light in a trance, like a dream from which he hadn't yet awakened. Somewhere within the remaining rationality of his mind, he found it odd that he had met no resistance on his trek through the fortress. In fact, the guards who had been stationed outside his elaborate prison room had been slumped against the walls, blissfully sleeping.