What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(87)

“What happened?” I asked.

“We were on a supply run to gather new books when we encountered a man who needed help. He was half-starved, so we offered him food and a place by our fire for the night. We didn’t realize that he had the flesh-eating fever until we’d already returned to the tunnels the next morning. We lost half our numbers over the course of the next week, my sister and the other historians among them.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. I’d seen the damage the fever had caused when it tore through my village when I’d been a girl. It was the one time that living on the outskirts of the town had worked to our advantage, sparing us from the nightmarish sickness that killed almost everyone it touched.

“This is far more valuable to us than another fighter or a harvester. Perhaps at some point I can choose someone for you to teach and we can rebuild our historian numbers. Knowledge is power, Estrella. What you can give us is a far better weapon than your hand on a sword,” she said, stepping back toward the doorway. “Think about it. Spend some time with the books. I’ll check on you in a little while.”

She retreated out, leaving the door pulled back so I could leave if I wanted to.

But I didn’t want to. I turned back to the shelves of books behind me, perusing the spines until I found one of the biggest volumes. It drew me to itself, compelling me to pull it out and gently set it on the table. The pages were worn at the edges, as if someone, sometime, had spent a great deal of energy leafing through them.

Libnor non Diathar.

The Book of the Gods.

Opening to the first page, I read the words aloud, translating them slowly as I went. It had been years since Byron had instructed my tutor that I would have no need of the Old Tongue anymore, and that it was a relic she should stop teaching. He was too late; deep down it lingered within me, the harsh sounds so different from the New Tongue that had been adopted as our official language centuries before.

Even before the war.

“In the beginning, there was nothing,” I murmured, the familiar words touching something inside me. They were the exact same words that Caelum had told me, the beginning of his story that night by the fire. The drawing on the first page was a swirling mass of shadows. An inky darkness so black that nothing seemed to exist within it.

There was no man, no face to the ancient Primordial, Khaos. He existed in nothing. He was nothing, and he’d been the very first thing to exist, until his loneliness drove him to create his wife. I flipped through the pages, every word confirming the story Caelum had told me.

The Primordials passed me by, each of the eighteen original Gods striking in their own way. As the generations continued, they became more human in form. These were not the Gods we’d worshiped. These were the Gods the Gods worshiped.

I continued through, uncertain what I was looking for until the moment I landed on her page. Mab’s drawing was stunning, with her long raven hair falling to her waist. Despite the lack of color on the page, her lips and eyes were shadowed in darkness. Upon her head, a bright crown gleamed, shadows seeming to drip from it and blend into her hair itself.

I shuddered, slowly reading aloud the words scrawled onto the page beneath her likeness.

“The Queen of Air and Darkness is the sister to the Seelie King, Rheaghan of the Summer Court. According to Faerie legends, when the two siblings were children, the dwarves of Elesfast brought a glittering dark gemstone to the castle as a peace offering during a time of war. Mab was immediately taken with the gem, requesting it be placed within the crown atop her head. Her mother would have done anything to please her daughter and arranged for it to be done. The gem had been fashioned by Edrus, the Primordial of Darkness himself, and it slowly corrupted the Seelie Princess until there was nothing but the cold, unfeeling shell of a girl who sought power above all else.”

Raising my eyes back to the sketch, I stared intently at the dark gem glittering at the center of her crown. Swallowing down the pit in my stomach, I moved on to the next page. I’d read enough of Mab already, not even daring to dive into the atrocities she’d committed.

I’d heard of the Fae horrors. For Mab to be the worst of them all, she must have been a truly vile creature.

The likeness on the next page stole the breath from my lungs. The God of the Dead’s hair was sketched a mottled light-gray, as if they couldn’t quite achieve the proper color of his rumored ashy silver waves that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were light, glowing from his severe face. His crown matched the same tone, except for the shadows that fell from it onto his head. His pointed ears were hidden beneath his hair, as were the swirling tattoos of white and black, of which only the tips crept up from the collar of his armor and leather tunic. They seemed to glow from the page with a pulse of magic.

My fingers traced the ends of his mark hesitantly, unable to turn my attention away from the drawing and focus in on his history and the atrocities he’d committed.

They were the same color as mine—and Caelum’s.

“I didn’t expect to find you with your head in a forbidden book, my star,” Caelum said, snapping me out of my trance as I stared down at Caldris, the God of the Dead. He glanced down at it as I shifted the cover closed, feeling somewhat guilty for reading about the very God that we’d discussed.

The one I’d seen a likeness of reclining casually with two women kneeling at his feet. I couldn’t look at anything to do with him without remembering that scene. His casual ease and comfort with himself, knowing that the women would have done anything to please him.