Page 61 of Threaded
She’d never been particularly scared of the dark. She’d spent enough nights in the depths of the Ivory Forest on hunting trips with her father and brother to be fearful of things she couldn’t see with her eyes. The only threats that dwelled in the places absent of light were figments of imagination, and Mariah didn’t like to afford hers much leeway. It was hardly productive.
Her fingers finally found what they sought: thelunestairpanel on the wall, the smooth stone cool against her fingertips. She tapped it once, and the room filled with the brilliant light ofallume. Turning around, she finally got a good look around the forgotten space she’d stumbled upon, hidden in the depths of the palace.
It was a gallery.
Mariah eased her way inside, her eyes going wide as she took in the dusty artwork hanging on the walls and statues that stood on stone pedestals around the room. She turned and followed along the right wall, allowing herself a moment of awe at the paintings that filled it. Despite the layer of dust, the paintings were still in excellent condition, and most were landscapes of the wonders of Onita: the palace nestled against the Attlehon Mountains, the looming darkness of the northern Everheim Mountains, the great, winding Ashtara River that carved its path so close to Andburgh. As she moved, the paintings increased in detail—a delicate sketch of a snowdrop blossom, the supernatural brilliance of the Emerald River, the waves of the Mirrored Sea crashing along the rocky beaches of Ettervan.
She rounded a corner and the artwork again shifted to historical depictions of the great events of the continent. One depicted the signing of the treaty between Vatha and what then became known as Idrix, a deal brokered by the third Onitan Queen, Iyana. Next, there was the coronation of Xara, Qhohena’s first Chosen resplendent in a gilded gown, the snowdrop crown shown in marvelous detail atop her head, her hair made of spun gold.
It was the third painting, though, that had Mariah pausing.
It once again featured Xara, but in a vastly contrasting setting. The first queen stood on a dark battlefield, dressed in worn and bloodied armor, that same yellow hair stained with black and red ichor. Behind her stood the human forces, their faces turned skyward to what hovered in the air above them. Mariah followed their gazes and sucked in a breath.
Everyone knew the dragons had aided Xara, that without their help the human forces would’ve been quickly exterminated from the earth. And, if that journal Andrian had discovered was to be believed, they still hadn’t been enough, merely serving to even the scales as opposed to swinging the tides of the war. There’d been simple drawings all Onitan’s were familiar with, the basic form of the dragons shown in black and white in most history books—two powerful hind legs, massive wings, whip-like tails, and long necks ending in a reptilian head filled with razor-sharp teeth.
However, Mariah had never once seen a painting of those great beasts in detail, andespeciallyportrayed in color.
The sky in the painting was filled with seven of the winged creatures, and somehow the artist had managed to capture the raw power and strength of each. The first was a rich brown, the color of fresh-tilled earth; the second a stunning sea green with its extremities tipped in white, like the frothy caps of a tumultuous ocean. The third and fourth were both shades of blue, but vastly different: one was as light as the summer sky, the other a rich indigo, shades of perfectly blended blues and purples and blacks. The fifth was perhaps the most unique, most of its scales a deep midnight blue, but for the silver painted along its belly and the membranes of its wings.
The last two, however, had something deep in Mariah’s belly, something hidden even beneath the vast well where her magic resided, stirring awake.
They were both slightly larger than the others, but it wasn’t just their size that set Mariah’s pulse racing.
One was a brilliant silver, the other untarnished gold.
A shiver chased up Mariah’s spine as she wrenched her eyes away from the paintings of the dragons, looking back instead to the bloodied queen on that battlefield.
Where had those dragons come from? And how had Xara awoken them?
Mariah forced herself to step forward, away from the painting, before she could dwell too long on that question. She could stand there all day, but that would be a poor use of her temporary freedom. The dragons were gone; there was no point wasting her time trying to solve an impossible puzzle.
She continued towards the back of the lost gallery, the paintings again shifting from the historical depictions and becoming more … vague. Abstract.Interesting.
It was the final painting along the back wall, hidden in the shadows of the room, that had her freezing up once again.
The painting wasn’t an image at all. It was, truly, just a canvas, a blank template painted a single color, catching the weak light of theallumethat managed to filter its way to this dark corner of the gallery.
Mariah stepped closer to the solid-silver canvas, her skin prickling with a feeling she couldn’t place. When she stood directly before it, she noticed it wasn’t as solid as she’d initially believed; upon closer inspection, she could just barely make out small flecks of darkness spread throughout the mass of silver.
The more she looked at the painting, the more that feeling lingered, and the more she felt like she was missing something.
That wasn’t a new feeling. Ever since she’d acted on her terrible idea to flip through the pages of theGinnelevébook gifted to her by her mother, she couldn’t shake there was something glaringly obvious she was missing. Something her mother had wanted her to know, but she’d so far utterly failed to puzzle out. Mariah had kept the book hidden beneath her mattress, not wanting to remind herself of its unnerving words, but as she stood there in front of that painting a few flashed unbidden through her mind:
I dreamed of that which was feared, saving us all.
And I dreamed that without darkness, we can never appreciate the light.
The longer Mariah stared at the silver canvas, those words swimming in her head, the more frustrated she became.
“Mom, I just don’t understand …” Her voice was an exasperated whisper into the abandoned gallery, the soft whine she released at the end an attempt to claw down the mental barrier in her head, the words meant only for her.
And because of that, thelastthing she expected was for someone to answer her.
Not justanyone.
A low, irreverent voice sounded behind her, a voice that instantly had her back going rigid, her blood heating, her magic unspooling through her veins.
“Unless your mother lives in that painting, I doubt you’ll get an answer from her here, princess.”