Nicholas Stormholden's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The book told Nicholas one more thing before it went quiet. The caster had left a portrait somewhere, and the portrait held a clue. But the pages showed only a row of painted faces with no names. Nicholas did not know which ancestor to trust. He took the book to the old academy, where the records of families were kept. Someone there might read the faces he could not. He found a young woman waiting outside the records hall. She wore worn leather armor. A crossbow hung on her back, and she pressed one hand flat against the wall, as if listening through the stone. She did not look up when he approached. "They won't show you what you came for," she said. "They hide the pages that matter." "You've tried," Nicholas said. "I'm bound to a thing they want dead. They keep its name locked away." She turned. Her eyes met his and held. Nicholas braced for the pull, the sudden bending of a heart. It did not come. She only studied his book. "Two hearts. Old binding curse. My kind of trouble." Nicholas stared. No man had ever looked at him without falling. He had forgotten a woman could simply look. His relief came so fast it startled him. He opened the book and showed her the painted faces. "I need to know which one cast this," he said. "A portrait somewhere holds the answer. I can't tell the faces apart." Evren leaned close. She traced the row with one finger, then stopped. "This one's wrong. Look at the frame. The others match. This frame is fresh paint over old wood." She tapped a bearded man near the edge. "Somebody wanted him hidden in plain sight." Nicholas saw it now. The man's frame was newer, the corners too clean. The painter had disguised him among the rest. "How did you see that?" "I read tracks," Evren said. "Paint's a track. So is a lie." Below the hidden face, in a corner the fresh paint had missed, ran a line of small script. Nicholas read it aloud. "The one who bound them last still guards the villa on the hill." His hands went cold. The villa on the hill was his home. The caster's heir was not some stranger in a distant grave. The clue pointed back to where he lived. "Your trouble sleeps under your own roof," Evren said. Nicholas closed the book. For years he had searched outward. Now the search turned toward his own halls. Someone in the mist-wrapped villa carried the same cursed blood, awake and living, close enough to touch. "I have to go back," he said. Evren shouldered her crossbow. "When you find your locked page, I'll want mine." She left him with the book and the face, and the certain knowledge that his answer waited at home.