Page 88 of Threaded
She should’ve known it would lead to another dead end. Should’ve known there would be no easy answers or automatic assurances. And Mariah wouldn’t admit to any others beyond those who sat in that room that she was still plagued by nightmares of the Uroboros, fully unsettled by what the attack had truly been.
Anassassinationattempt.
She didn’t do well when stagnating, stuck in place. She was tired of feeling so trapped. She had to know. Had to know why the queen’s magic, why Qhohena’s magic, was only semi-physical light, nothing more than a conduit for the Solstice, yet had still been used by Xara to somehow bring the world to heel. How it was so weak and believed to be harmless now, but it’d been used to face the Scourge on the battlefield and eventually establish the Onitan throne. Mariah had to believe there wasmoreto it, more she should know, something that had been forgotten by thousands of years of peace and gentler times.
Her golden threads certainly felt like more as they crawled through her veins, unspooling and twining themselves with the silver magic that dwelt with them.
The more the weeks passed, the less Mariah was able to differentiate between the two. They kept winding closer and closer together, what used to be two massive balls of twine deep inside her slowly merging to become one.
A problem she didn’t have the capacity to deal with at the moment.
“But … dragons are extinct,” Delaynie’s soft voice chimed in from where she sat, alone at the third table, pouring over a wide collection of texts.
“No shit,” quipped Quentin, his attention drawn from his debate with Ciana to the auburn-haired young woman. Ciana pierced him with a stare he refused to acknowledge.
Those two are far too similar, Mariah thought. Full of raging fire. Never a great mix when put too close together.
It was Sebastian, as always, who interceded. Ever the peacekeeper.
“Alright, enough. I’m sure there is something we missed. Quentin, why don’t you and Ciana …”
A movement from the shadowy depths of the library stacks drew Mariah’s attention away from Sebastian’s words, letting him continue his reprimand and give directions to her court. Her gaze snagged on a figure emerging from the darkness, her eyes drawn immediately to embers of burning blue flame.
Andrian stalked out from the stacks, halting while still partly concealed in shadow, his arms crossing over his chest as his gaze held hers.
Mariah felt her skin begin to heat under the intensity of his stare. She wondered, briefly, if she would ever not have this reaction to him; this magnetic draw, this visceral response that was becoming harder and harder to fight with each night they spent tangled together, escaping from the chaos of the world around them.
Suddenly, she realized the current scene before her—the heat in Andrian’s wild blue eyes, the way her court was preoccupied with reading or bickering—presented a unique opportunity she couldn’t pass up.
As they locked gazes with each other, she lifted her chin, almost imperceptibly, to Andrian. He watched her movement, quirking an infuriating eyebrow in response, and she saw something in his gaze that twisted her belly into knots.
The walls he usually kept built high seemed to have crumbled, the carefully maintained control he normally gripped to tightly slipping. A subtle manic energy coiled in the way he held himself in the shadows. She knew him—his eyes, his expressions,him—enough to know that to be true.
Perfect.
She also couldn’t stop the heat from rising to her own skin, sinking low and heavy into her core.
Silently, Mariah rose from her seat at the table. Everyone was too engrossed in their other conversations and arguments to notice her.
Everyone … except Sebastian. His eyes darted briefly to hers, his hallmark concern evident in his handsome, hazel gaze.
“Everything okay, Mariah?” Sebastian’s voice was quiet, non-assuming, cautiously guarded.
She nodded to him once, quickly. “I’m fine. I’ll just … I’ll be right back.”
He stared at her for a long moment before dipping his head, a question in his eyes he didn’t ask, and returned his attention to the book open in front of him.
On quiet feet, Mariah walked towards the darker corners of the library, vanishing into the same shadows where Andrian stood a moment before.
* * *
It only took a few minutes of walking through the stacks, the darkness increasing the farther she moved from the bright sunlight streaming from the glass roof of the domed library atrium, before she felt Andrian’s presence at her back, permeating through the thick and heady air of the tunnels that wound into the depths of the Attlehon mountains themselves.
Mariah whirled on her feet, her eyes searching the darkness for his shape. When she saw nothing, the shadows around her far too thick to be natural, she remembered why she’d followed him into those stacks in the first place.
“Andrian,” she whispered into the writhing darkness. “Cut it out. I can’t see.”
A quiet, deadly chuckle came from the shadows. “That’s the point,nio.”