Ghostlight (The Reflected City Book 1) by Rabia Gale (i can read with my eyes shut TXT) 📗

Yes, this was certainly a lived-in room. Dozens of books crowded shelves free of dust. The tables were covered in volumes and papers. Chairs crowded invitingly around a fireplace.

Arabella examined the spines on a nearby shelf. The worn and battered books boasted names like The Cardinal Principles of Magic, The Septum Arcana, and Doyle’s Treatise on the Nature of the Aethereal.

All of them sounded thoroughly yawn-inducing. Arabella drifted past the shelves, her eyes picking out names at random (The Geometry of Wards, Runes for the Advanced Magician) until she came to a glass cabinet.

Arabella recoiled, not from the warning flare of wards surrounding the cabinet, but from the knife-edged chill that emanated from the single book within it.

It stood on frosted glass, padlocked shut and chained to columns of silver. Its cover was of tanned hide and its title a single word slashed in letters the color of void: Daemon.

The very name was a scream in her mind. Arabella clapped her hands to her ears and looked away. The memory of it—along with the tang of blood, the smear of rust, and the taste of despair—echoed.

At the edge of her vision, the book shuddered.

Arabella darted a sideways glance at it, unable to face it head on, yet unable to wrench her gaze away entirely.

The padlock rattled and the chains clinked. Was it just her imagination, or did the cover itself ripple as if alive? The title seemed to crawl over its surface. The muted rustling of pages came from within.

Pages? Or something else entirely?

The book jolted. Arabella froze. The world seemed to hold its breath.

Wards burned a steady blue, that terrible word washed away in the glow. The echoes in her head died. Arabella found she could move again, and move she did, hurrying to the opposite wall, almost plastering herself across the more ordinary books there.

That book’s dangerous! Why does he keep it?

No, it wasn’t merely dangerous.

It was alive—and evil. Even from across the room, its malice washed over her like acid.

What did it say about Trevelyan Shield that he kept such a thing in a room he spent so much time in? That he could bear to spend even an hour in its cruel, dark company?

Arabella had no answer to this. Every time she thought she knew what kind of a man he was, something changed and she had to figure him out again. The remote, haughty nobleman was also the informal young man who made jokes and lounged about in a loosened cravat. The warrior who had saved her last night was also the keeper of an evil whose emanations made her ill.

Images flashed through her mind, of a wry smile, relaxed posture, grey eyes cool or warm or laughing or gleaming with an excitement she could not share… Arabella shook them all away.

It’s only natural for a young girl to feel attachment towards her rescuer. But for Saints’ sake, don’t lose your head over him, Arabella!

No, she planned an ordinary life for herself. She’d enjoy a couple of Seasons before making a suitable match and settling down to the normal duties of a wife and mother.

Books like the one across the library had no place in that future, and neither did their owners.

So fierce was her determination that Arabella at first misread the warmth as rising from her rush of emotions. It took her a moment to realize that it emanated from an alcove in the wall next to her.

The feeling spread like honey, something between a laugh and a tickle. It covered her in a strong gladness. Arabella peered into the niche, wondering which saint a man like Trey claimed as patron, what form his devotions took.

The niche was sparse, containing only a leather-bound book of Scriptures, a medallion with a religious symbol, and a gold locket.

Arabella examined the symbol, a long-handled knife crossed with a hook. It belonged to no saint she was familiar with, though that didn’t mean much. Dismissing the medallion, she leaned over the locket with greater interest.

The locket was a pretty one, oval with pearl-set flowers and a delicate chain. It was decidedly feminine, and of the type that held a miniature and possibly a lock of hair. Arabella drew back, flushed with embarrassment. Trey was not the sentimental sort, but that keepsake must mean a great deal to him. It was all wrong to have intruded upon his privacy like this.

Arabella left the room by simply sinking through the floor. She drifted down from the ceiling of the sitting room, her mouth dry and woody. She was sure her hair was covered in cobwebs and the accumulated dust of decades.

With a shake, Arabella whisked herself into the kitchen, which seemed the safest place to lurk in. There, she discovered a stash of lurid gothic novels behind a jar of flour, presumably hidden there by Nat, who she was evincing a lively interest in. She swiped at the books with her hand, hardening her substance enough that one tumbled onto the wooden table.

Fortunately, it was the first volume of The Castle of Ormolo. Arabella pawed it for some time, finally managing to get it open and oriented the right way. She leaned over the fine gilt-edged pages, blowing on them to make them turn. It wasn’t the best solution, as she turned several at a time more often than not. She had to resign herself to not reading pages ten and eleven, but she was soon absorbed in the trials of the beautiful Belinda Beaufort. The heroine’s troubles kept her occupied until the handle of the back door rattled.

Arabella jumped, looking around guiltily, as if to ascertain that no one had caught her reading about Belinda meeting Count Ormolo at the top of a lonely tower in nothing but a night dress. She shoved the volume back behind the jar as the door eased open.

A child’s face, sharp with suspicion, peered around the edge. Wary eyes fell upon