Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes, #1)(48)

I slam the book closed and press my back into the balcony railing behind me. The early morning light casts yellow rays through the towering windows on my left. It’s almost time for more queen lessons, but days of being awake so early are catching up to me, and I just want to crawl back into bed and forget about trying to be a proper Cordellan lady. My fingers tighten on the book’s cover and I regret leaving the chakram in my room this morning. A few easy slices and this uncooperative tome would be nothing but confetti.

“Sustenance?”

I look to my right to see Theron peeking over the top of the staircase that leads to the third-floor balcony where I set up camp. A tray of steaming dishes sits in his hands, and my stomach answers with an unladylike gurgle. Theron is the only person who knows about my early-morning sessions—he comes here each morning himself to return books or get new ones, and running into him is an inevitability I don’t mind.

He continues up the stairs, dropping to sit beside me but facing the library below. “I figured you’d be hungry, since you didn’t come to breakfast again,” he says, and sets the tray between us. “My father is appeased that you’re attending those lessons, but your friends are—”

“Deserving of every speck of worry and stress I give them?” I fill in, reaching for a crusty slice of bread from a basket.

Theron laughs. “I was going to say that they’re scaring my court with how often they have whispered disputes behind potted trees, but ‘deserving of stress’ works too.”

“Someone should tell them potted plants don’t keep sound from carrying.” I stuff small bits of bread into my mouth but keep talking, reveling in this small act of impropriety. It’s all too easy to forget that Theron’s a prince, that his station is so far above mine I couldn’t reach it if I was standing on top of the Klaryns, that I should be proper and ladylike and curtsy when he approaches, all things I learned in yesterday’s etiquette lesson. It’s too easy to do a lot of things around him, and I’m still trying to figure out why that is.

Theron nods toward the book still pressed between my legs and chest. “Dare I ask how it’s going, or will you threaten to cut it apart again?”

I groan. “I don’t want to talk about it. This porridge is good. What’s in it, strawberries?”

“You’re still not going to tell me what you’re doing?”

“No,” I say to the food tray. There’s no scenario in which telling someone you’ve been having dreams about a dead queen ends with them not believing you’ve fallen into the dark abyss of insanity.

“I can be helpful,” Theron offers, his voice light. “I am, in fact, trained to help an entire kingdom, so I think I can channel some of that training into helping one beautiful woman.”

I look up at him, my eyes narrow despite the smile that crawls across my face. “That’s not fair, throwing out compliments like that. Do you know how dangerous those things can be?”

Theron shrugs, grinning, his cheeks tinged just the slightest bit pink. He’s embarrassed?

He drops his grin into a pout, puckering his lips and pulling his eyebrows tight over his nose.

I glare.

He pouts harder.

“You’re impossible,” I growl, and rip open the book.

Theron laughs and scoots a little closer to me. “Impossible, endearing. Synonyms, really.”

I mock-laugh and scan the indecipherable pages again, pain instantly pulsing through my head at the sight of all that black, swirling ink. “I’m trying to learn more about magic,” I start.

Theron gasps. “While reading a book called Magic in Primoria? No!”

“Impossible, endearing, hilarious. Also synonyms.”

“So you agree I’m endearing?”

I glare at him and open my mouth, only to find I have absolutely nothing to say. He smiles, waiting, and my gape becomes an incredulous snort.

“As I was saying,” I start again, and Theron waves a hand in surrender to tell me he won’t interrupt. “I’m trying to learn more about magic. The Royal Conduits and where they came from and”—I run my fingers down the swirls of black ink—“and everything. Anything I can learn. Maybe there’s some loophole, something that means we could defeat Angra without needing our locket.”

As I talk, the amusement on Theron’s face fades, and he eyes the pages under my hands. “What have you learned so far?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know. This book is unreadable.” I flip to one of the passages I can actually make out—but just because I can read the words doesn’t mean they make any sense. “Like this, for instance. ‘From the lights, there came a great Decay; and woe was it unto those who had no light. They did beg, thus the lights were formed. The four did create the lights; and the four did create the lights.’” I slam my head back against the railing. “What?”

Theron’s face stays serious. I recognize the expression as his “art” face, the same look he got when we were in his room and he was looking at the painting of Winter. Curious, focused, like the whole case of books behind him could fall over and he wouldn’t even flinch.

His lips move soundlessly, repeating the passage to himself. “Four? It said four twice?”

“Yeah.” I look back at the book. “The same thing twice too. ‘The four did create the lights; and the four did create the lights.’”