Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“Are we doing this or not?” Mira asks, clearly ignoring him.
I nod and sigh with resignation as I step out of Xaden’s arms. “Ridoc, Drake, Cat, please stay with the horses and be ready to run if this goes badly. Mira, Dain, and Xaden, you’re with me. Hopefully we’ll be out quickly.”
Ridoc dusts off his summer-weight uniform and gathers the reins. “I’ll be nearby.”
“I know,” I reply. The reassuring way he said it makes my brow furrow.
“What?” Mira asks, spotting my face.
“Just wondering if we did the right thing letting Halden go by himself to see the king.” My stomach sinks as I consider every way it could go wrong.
“Didn’t exactly give us a choice,” Ridoc says. “Courtlyn only allows aristocrats to enter.”
“Even if he did, we can’t be in two places at once.” Mira nods toward the bookshop.
Right.
None of us draws a blade, but our hands remain loose and ready as we walk the short cobblestone path to the staired entrance midway down the south side of the shop. Mira enters first, mainly because no one seems to want to argue with her, and Xaden follows me in last, mainly because I don’t think he’ll ever trust anyone without a rebellion relic to ever truly cover his back.
The scents of dust and parchment fill the thick air as soon as our boots hit the hardwood floor, and I immediately understand why there isn’t another shop on the side. Windows stretch from floor to ceiling, allowing natural light to pour in over the rows of bookshelves taller than I can possibly reach that jut out lengthwise from the wall on my right, matching their three-foot-long counterparts on our left, leaving a lengthy, clear aisle to a single counter. The titles are stacked haphazardly, but none touch the backs of the shelves, allowing for air to circulate. It’s beautiful…but hot as hell.
If I’d thought the heat outside the shop was stifling, then the temperature inside—without the breeze—is truly oppressive. Sweat immediately beads beneath my armor and along the side of my neck.
There are a few customers browsing toward the narrow staircase in the back and a woman who appears to be in her sixties with a pert nose and a slicked-back salt-and-pepper bun behind the counter, licking her umber fingers every few seconds as she flips through the pages of a ledger, but I don’t see anyone in the stacks to the right, so I nod toward the counter when Mira looks back at me.
We make our way down the aisle that opens into a small seating arrangement, and Dain keeps his eye on the customers in the back—a pair of men who have definitely taken notice of us. I glance over my shoulder as we approach the counter, finding Xaden has slipped behind the last shelf on the left and is currently leaned against the wall, wearing his usual expression of apathetic boredom.
Go figure, he’s found what seems to be one of the only patches of shadow in the place to wait while I sort out whatever my father sent me here to find.
Dain moves to the edge of the counter, earning the shopkeeper’s attention and placing himself between Mira and the customers, while Mira backs herself to the far edge of the seating group, setting a perimeter.
In a bookstore.
I manage to keep from rolling my eyes.
The shopkeeper’s gaze darts from Dain to Mira to me before she closes the ledger and places it under the counter.
“Dain, could you ask her—” I set one hand on the counter for balance.
“I speak the common tongue,” the woman says. “We are educated here in Deverelli.”
I blink. “Right. Well, I was just wondering if you happen to know anyone by the name of Narelle.”
Her eyes flare, and my stomach jumps into my throat when she glances over my right shoulder.
Mira.
“Fire-bringers!” someone shouts.
I draw two blades in the breath it takes to whip toward my sister.
Two assailants charge from the back shelves—the ones I’d previously, foolishly thought empty—and Mira sighs when one of them, a woman who looks to be my age, lifts a serrated dagger at her.
“If we have to,” Mira says, drawing her own as the older man, someone closer to Brennan’s build and age with spiky black hair and what seems to be a standard-issue white-and-gold tunic, runs down the aisle. Rage fills his eyes as he rushes toward me, two longer, serrated blades pointed in my direction.
I flip one of my daggers to the tip and prepare to throw, angling my body so the shopkeeper remains within sight.
The guy will be here in four seconds.
Three.
Two.
Xaden takes a single step, then kicks a large armchair straight into the man’s path. It hits him square in the stomach, and his breath gushes out, but he regroups quickly, turning a glare in Xaden’s direction with raised blades.