Wake of Darkness [1]

Chapter Thirty

♕ Twilight ♕

Time passed in a blur. Aubrette could not keep track of the days as they all started to blend together in a seemingly endless nightmare. The only time where she seemed to be able to get some peace of mind had tuned into the few minutes at night were she could lock herself inside her room and ignore the chaos that waited for her beyond the wooden door. It had now become and unspoken agreement that Asher would come into her room for the majority of the night, and the two of them would read to each other until one could find sleep for a few minutes. On the days that they were lucky, which were few and in between maybe even a few hours.

He had tried to use most of his blessing to help accelerate the healing process from Izabella, but her body did not seem to be responding well to anything but darkness and cold. So they had her moved from her room to Vereena's, and Izabella thankfully had not screamed ever since. At least that was something. Although Aubrette wasn't exactly sure if it was a good or a bad thing that the lack of screaming had made all of them less desperate to find Deirdre. Like they could pretend it had all been a bad dream.

Most days, Aubrette found herself sitting beside her, holding her hair when the blood starts pouring from her mouth, and washing her skin when she tried to scratch her scars until they started bleeding too.

At night, when Izabella slept, they all tried to spend their time trying to find a way to get stardust without having to involve the king, but Aubrette knew it was now matter of time before they were desperate enough and had to tell him the truth, about everything. Maybe including her.

It's not until Taj received a note from Westbrook that things started going bad really quickly.

"Jay found out about the book" He said one afternoon. "She says I need to return it immediately"

Vereena sighed. "Well that what happens when you take things that don't belong to you"

"We can't give it back, there still might be something in it that could help us" he said and Aubrette felt so tired she barely could keep track of the conversation.

"Do you not honestly have it memorized by now?" Nova asked him and Taj shrugged.

"We can copy Elliana's story" Aubrette suggested. "Between all of us it shouldn't take us more than a couple of days"

"What if the answer is not on Elliana?" Asher asked. "We need the whole book"

"If I don't take it back to Westbrook and someone finds out, Jay might be get kicked out."

"By whom?" Asher asked. "I'll vow for her if needed be, we can't let this book out of our sight"

"Not even you could avoid that Ash. The librarians have rules of their own"

"I'm..."

"They know who you are. They won't listen to you. The books they keep there are too sacred to let the monarchy get involved in who they choose to protect them"

"Fine" He said. "We'll take it back"

And that had been that. Asher and Taj had gone back to Westbrook and stayed there for a couple of days, trying to find other books that could maybe tell them how exactly stardust had disappeared from Goldcrest.

There had not been any signs of Deirdre in the city, but Vereena and Raven and the rest still left every night to patrol the streets. Even though these days Goldcrest seemed empty. People walked out the street, and inside the castle but even Aubrette could notice the way all of them seemed scared, almost eager for afternoon to fall to return to their houses.