FOR THE UNKNOWN KINGDOM | BOOK 1

CHAPTER 25

"I'm bored," Cloudien whispered, when we stopped searching inside ancient books we'd found in the tower's library for some kind of information about Hell's Leader and what kind of prophecy that was.

Denfer had told me everything he knew about Hell. About the constraints they put on everyone's magic, the creatures I was about to meet there, the animosities, the misery. He'd seen all of that when he'd gone there to demand a better future for the Gap World. And they'd kept him there long enough to learn some of its secrets.

Tonight, there was an unbreakable silence in the biggest library I'd ever been; a silence filled with the secrets its books held in their dusty pages. There was no one here at that time, so late in the night, almost two hours past midnight. The clock that hung between a towering window and an also towering bookcase was the only sound daring to disrupt the silence. My voice soon accompanied it.

"Let's stop for today."

His dark blond hair looked like an oasis of pure gold in the candlelit room while his eyes held more brown than green that time of the night. I bet mine looked the same way. We hadn't found anything useful. All these hours that we'd been here, on the third floor of the tower, had been for nothing.

"Shall we go to sleep?" I asked, thinking about the fact that tomorrow I would have to wake up before dawn.

For someone who was about to go to Hell, I certainly wasn't resting, relaxing and mentally preparing enough for what was about to come. But I couldn't sleep, not when everything and everyone now depended on me; when not only did I have to think about Hell, but my return to Lantra as well. Every night I counted the days until I found that thing in Hell that only I could see, and everything was over. Yet, I also wished for time to somehow freeze here, in this blissful state of calmness and anonymity, here where we were no one and no one spent their hours talking about the king and Hell's Leader.

Closing the paperback book with what looked like irritation, Cloudien placed his hands on the wooden desk and looked straight at me. "You seem like one of us now. With all those fine, sparkling jewelry. And the clothes."

So no sleep yet.

We'd been here for so long that I'd almost stopped caring about all the golden rings that were on my fingers and the necklaces that decorated the skin my dress left bare. When I'd first found out that a chamber on the first floor was actually a jewelry shop, I couldn't help but buy some of these with the silver coins Jersen had given me and everyone else who had worked after the blast to rebuild the mess. At first, I hadn't accepted them. I'd only helped Amanda decide who should do what and how much gold we should give to the families that had been left broken without having our kingdom been left in poverty. But Jersen had insisted on me taking them, telling me over and over again that it'd been the king's order.

I'd taken the coins, and then I'd taken the jewelry.

"You can thank Amanda for the clothes, and Jersen for bringing them here," I replied, putting aside all the books that still littered the desk.

His laugh echoed through the quiet of the room and I knew that if someone else was here reading, they would tell us to stop talking or go away.

"Never thank Amanda for anything," he said, after his dark chuckle had faded away.

Maybe it was too late in the night for research but not so late that I couldn't demand answers, I figured, and smiled thinly. "Do you know something I should know?" I asked.

He nodded. "I do."

"Would you like to enlighten me, please?"

He considered, as if he wanted to tell me everything, but at the same time he didn't. And I stood in silence, hoping that even though we only knew each other for a few days, even though he didn't trust me, he had felt it too. In his magic and in his heart as well, that primal connection, that tingle of warmth that surged in my body every time we met in a crowded hall.