Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts #1)(41)

‘The title says it’s about whether certain Greek myths are accounts or allegories of Skill,’ the boy said. ‘Sounded intriguing, but—’

He fanned open the book. There was nothing printed inside it. Every page was blank.

‘All these books,’ he said, frustration evident in his tone. ‘Lost to the world once, and now lost again, to me.’

What did he mean? Euterpe stood up and went to the table to examine the volume.

And that ache was back again. A compression at the base of her skull as if someone held her by the scruff of the neck, like a surplus kitten being hoicked from its indifferent mother. Euterpe rubbed her fingers there. She wished Silyen would leave; she needed some time alone, to rest.

But the boy showed no sign of leaving. He leaned back in his chair and watched her from under lowered eyelids, with those bright black eyes so like her own.

‘These aren’t the only books in here, are they?’ he said. ‘There are others, locked in a box. And you’ve looked through all of them, haven’t you? The journals of Cadmus Parva-Jardine.’

Despite herself, Euterpe’s hand flew to her throat. Her fingers closed around a slender velvet ribbon tied there. At the end of the ribbon, tucked into the front of her dress so it was hidden from sight, hung a little iron key.

‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘There are plenty of rumours about this library and what it contains. Commoners seem to believe that half the volumes in here are written in the blood of their kind, on parchment made of human skin. But no one outside my family – not even members of your family – knows about those notebooks. They are protected by a hereditary Quiet. We Parvas can only tell our children, and only the children of the heir can pass the secret on.’

Silyen looked at her for a long time before responding, as if weighing up what to say. When he spoke his tone was careful and his head tipped to one side, observing her.

‘My mother told me about them.’

Pain flared inside Euterpe’s head. It shot sparks across her vision like the Great Hall hearth when fire finally caught and sent kindling whooshing up the chimney breast. She swayed and pressed one hand to her temples, the other clutching the key. Her breathing came fast and shallow, and she struggled to get it back under control.

A question had come into her head. A mad, foolish question, but she couldn’t not ask it.

‘Am I your mother?’

Of course she wasn’t. How could she be? They were too close in age. She was twenty-four, and Silyen looked around fifteen. Except he had been ten when they first met, which would make her twenty-nine now – and she wasn’t, she knew she wasn’t. She was Euterpe Parva and she was twenty-four years old. Her sister was Thalia Parva. Her beloved was Winterbourne Zelston. Her Jack Russell, Puck, was the most rascally dog in the world, and she lived here at Orpen Mote with her darling parents.

And something awful had happened. Something too terrible to think about.

She staggered backwards and sat down on her favourite window seat.

Don’t think about it, then. Don’t think about it.

Euterpe closed her eyes. She heard Silyen’s chair being pushed back from the table, the creak of a floorboard as he came over to her. She felt the touch of a cool hand on her forehead – definitely not a child’s hand any more. Then an arm went around her shoulders and another scooped under her knees, and she was being lifted, carried. A door was kicked open, then another; one more. Then sunlight flooded over her skin. She heard the bees and smelled the flowers. Almost crying with relief, Euterpe Parva let sensation rinse away thought.

When she woke some time later, she was in her deckchair and she was alone.

The next time Silyen came, she led him straight to the library. There, in the middle of the table, stood the cedarwood box. She had fetched it in readiness for his visit. That wasn’t a decision she had made lightly. But for some reason she didn’t fully understand, it now felt terribly important that another pair of eyes should see the notebooks.

Silyen paused in the doorway. The expression on his face as he looked at the box reminded her of the boy he’d been when they’d first met. He’d gazed at Orpen Mote as if it had been conjured from a storybook. Was he feeling as Euterpe had, when Winterbourne handed her the champagne that day in the garden and she had found a diamond ring sparkling at the bottom of her glass? Silyen appeared rapt, as if gazing on the perfect fulfilment of his most secret hopes and dreams.

Euterpe suddenly missed Zelston so much it hurt.

‘I wish Winter was here,’ she said, unable to help herself. ‘Or my sister. I feel like I haven’t seen them for ever such a long time. I don’t even remember the last time I saw my parents. You come and visit, but where are they?’

Silyen’s expression was hard to read. It looked like concern, but oddly dispassionate. Like a doctor hearing a patient declare that she feels much improved, when he knows her condition is terminal.

Was she ill? The thought had crossed her mind. It would explain why she was so often confused, why she spent so much time sitting in the fresh air, left in peace and quiet. Had she been ill, and was now convalescing? Perhaps Silyen was some sort of doctor.

But no, he was a boy of fifteen, and plainly the relative he said he was. And she had something to show him. Yes.

She led him over to the box on the table, fished out the little key around her neck and fitted it to the lock. She heard the complicated four-tongued mechanism click and slide. Lifting the lid, she carefully took them out, one by one. Eleven slim volumes bound in pale vellum, each spine thickly ridged and incised with a number filled in black. They smelled faintly of old leather, musty ink made from who knew what, and the lingering scent of cedarwood. The covers had been worn to an ivory sheen through centuries of handling.