Chapter 2: Dreams in Godblood
Da-hye did not sleep. She sat on the edge of her narrow bed until the small hours, staring at her hands. The skin where his touch had burned felt normal. Looked normal. But the sensation lingered beneath, a phantom brand. Kae-lynvar. The name thrummed in her skull with her heartbeat.
She had scrubbed the drop of blood-writing from her hand until the skin was raw, but the whisper was in her mind now. It wouldn’t leave.
When exhaustion finally pulled her under, her dreams were not of sleep. They were of falling through a sky of shifting, golden eyes, each one his, watching her tumble. A voice that was stone and storm said, You know. You know. You know. She woke gasping, the thin blanket tangled around her legs, her nightdress damp with cold sweat.
The first grey light of dawn filtered through the black-veined cracks in her window, painting her desk in jagged silver stripes. And there, lying across a pile of ordinary translation notes, was the godskin folio.
Her breath hitched. She hadn’t brought it. She’d watched him take it, tuck it into his tunic, and walk away.
Yet here it was.
She pushed herself up, the wooden floor cold under her bare feet. The chamber was silent except for the distant, waking sounds of the palace—a muffled clang from the kitchens, the faint call of a watchman. Her space, usually a comforting cocoon of knowledge, felt violated. Exposed. The velvet-draped shelves seemed to loom, the shifting symbols on the spines of her ordinary books now feeling like mockery.
She approached the desk as if it were a trap. The folio looked just as it had in the archives: pale, membranous, unsettlingly warm even from a pace away. It was closed. A part of her screamed to throw it into the fireplace, to watch that impossible skin blacken and curl.
But she was the Librarian. Knowledge, even terrible knowledge, was her charge. Her curse.
Her hand trembled as she reached out. She flipped the cover open.
The pages were different.
The previous text—the accusations, the history—was gone. The deep black parchment was now covered in a new, intricate script of that same living crimson. It wasn’t prose. It was diagrams. Anatomical renderings, breathtakingly detailed, of human and… something else. Figures intertwined in complex, ritualistic poses. The red lines flowed with a disturbing vitality, suggesting movement, breath, exchange.
Her scholarly mind automatically began to parse the symbols annotating the margins. They were notes on confluence, on channeling, on vessels. Words surfaced from her studies of heretical theurgy: Transference. Symbiosis. Mortal Anchor.
One diagram showed a glowing, divine form pouring like liquid starlight into the open mouth of a mortal figure. Another depicted a more intimate, physical joining, their outlines fused, with lines of power arcing between their hearts. The blood-ink seemed to pulse as she stared, the images imprinting themselves behind her eyes with shocking clarity. It was a manual. A grimoire. For what?
A wave of nausea, hot and sour, rose in her throat. This was no ancient history. This was an instruction. And he had put it here, in her private space, while she slept. The implication was a violation that went beyond the pages.
She slammed the book shut. The sound was damp, final. A faint, acrid scent tickled her nostrils—ozone, the sharp smell of a storm. She looked at her bedsheets. The scent was there, too, lingering on her pillow.
He had been here. In her chambers. Watching her sleep.
The cold fear that had gripped her since the archives crystallized into something harder: a sharp, bright anger. She was not a page in one of his cursed books. She was not a vessel.
A firm knock rattled her door. Da-hye jumped, a small sound escaping her lips. She scrambled, throwing a heavy translation cloth over the folio just as the door swung open.
Ellin, the head cook’s daughter and her only real friend in the palace, bustled in with a tray. “You look like death warmed over. Didn’t you sleep?” she said, her voice a cheerful intrusion against the silence. She set down a steaming bowl of oat porridge and a mug of weak herbal tea.
“Bad dreams,” Da-hye managed, her voice rough. She subtly adjusted the cloth, ensuring it covered every inch of the book.
“Probably all that dust in the lower stacks. Rotting your brain.” Ellin plopped onto the stool by the desk, eyeing the shrouded lump. “More of your creepy books? You know, normal people dream about flying or handsome stable boys.”
“I’m not normal people,” Da-hye said, forcing a weak smile. Her eyes darted to the cloth. Was the godskin warmth seeping through?
“Truer words.” Ellin leaned forward, her playful demeanor shifting to something more concerned. “Seriously, Da-hye. You’re white as a sheet. Was it the Prince again?”
Da-hye’s heart stuttered. “What?”
“Prince Kaelan. You nearly jumped out of your skin yesterday when he came down for that ‘inspection.’” Ellin made air quotes. “As if he’s ever cared about the archives before. Did he give you trouble? He has that way of looking at you like you’re a smudge on the floor.”
He looked at me like he was seeing a key. Da-hye shook her head. “No trouble. Just… his presence is… intense.”
“Ugh, tell me about it. All that perfection gives me the shivers.” Ellin shuddered theatrically. “Like a statue that might blink. Anyway, eat. You need your strength. The Festival of the Dawn’s End is next week, and you know the Chancellor will be demanding every historical precedent on rainfall during the equinox, or some other nonsense.”
Da-hye nodded absently, the mundane worry a strange lifeline. “Right. The rainfall precedents.”
After Ellin left with a final worried glance, the chamber felt hollow again. Da-hye stared at the covered folio. The Festival. The palace would be swarming with nobles, entertainers, guards. Distractions. Opportunities.
He had left this for her. A message. A temptation. A threat. He was testing her, dangling his nature before her not just as a secret, but as a… a possibility. The diagrams suggested a union, a way for a god to walk more fully in the world. Did he think she would be intrigued? Horrified? Willing?
She was just a librarian. But she had seen his true face. She had spoken his name.
With a sudden, decisive movement, she pulled the cloth away. She opened the folio again, not to the bloody diagrams, but to the very back cover. There, on the inner binding, where no writing had been before, a single line of crisp, fresh blood-ink had appeared.
The lock is aware of the key.
Her blood went cold. Then, a rustle at her window. A scrap of parchment, folded and sealed with plain wax, had been slipped between the cracked panes. She yanked it free, her fingers fumbling.
The handwriting inside was elegant, precise, utterly ordinary. A prince’s hand.
Librarian Da-hye,
My father requests your expertise. A scroll from the Sunken Tombs of Lor’Amun has been acquired for the Royal Collection. It requires translation prior to the festival. You will attend me in the South Solar at the third bell this afternoon to receive it.
– Kaelan
No title. Just his name. A command disguised as an invitation. The official summons she had expected, yet it felt like the next move in a game she never agreed to play. He was drawing her out of her archives, into the light of day, under the gaze of the court.
She looked from the princely note to the pulsating godskin manual, and finally to her own reflection in the warped, silver-veined glass of her window. The woman who looked back was pale, dark circles under wide, frightened eyes. But her jaw was set.
He thought she was a key. Perhaps she was. But a key could lock as well as unlock.
She tucked the folio into a hidden compartment beneath a loose floorboard, the one where she kept the few personally dangerous texts she’d never catalogued. She washed her face, braided her hair with sharp, efficient tugs, and dressed in her plainest, most professional robes.
At the third bell, she would go to the South Solar. She would receive the scroll. She would be the perfect, unassuming librarian.
But as she left her chambers, locking the door carefully behind her, the faint, electric scent of ozone followed her into the corridor.