Chapter 65. My Life Is a Mystery Novel, and Even the Walls Are Spoiling It

Chapter 65: 65. My Life Is a Mystery Novel, and Even the Walls Are Spoiling It

Sylvara found the glyphs about an hour later.

I was sitting on the edge of the pool, with my boots off and my feet in the cool water, trying very hard not to think about numbers.

The others had drifted away to explore the hall, and Sylvara was walking slowly along the curved wall with her fingers trailing over the glass.

"Leon," she said. "Come here."

I got up, wincing, and padded over in my socks.

She was crouching at the base of the wall, brushing away a film of frost. The glass there was different, rougher, and ever older... with a faint greenish tint.

And carved into it, half buried beneath the polished surface of the wall, was a ring of symbols surrounding a handprint.

"This is... far older than the palace," she said quietly. "Look at the weathering..."

"The Lunhare did not build this chamber... looks to me that they found it and they built around it." She traced the ring with her fingertip. "Whoever carved this was here long before the first queen."

I crouched down beside her. As I leaned closer, something chimed at the corner of my vision.

[Unknown interface detected.]

[Lunar Script.]

[Compatibility: Partial.]

I went completely still.

Around us, the glyphs on the wall began to glow. Not all of them... only a few, faint threads of pale green light flickering along the lines.

They pulsed in time with something. My heartbeat, maybe, or the strange vibration I’d felt in my chest for days.

Sylvara’s eyes widened. She leaned closer and began to read in a low whisper.

"Offered," she said slowly. "Hand."

"And this one... I think... is... asked." She looked up. "These are the same marks that I saw around the thread in your wrist."

I didn’t say anything after hearing that. I couldn’t, especially since it made the puzzle even more complicated with those three words.

Yeah, I had no idea what any of it meant.

I only knew that I’d been dumped in this world by something that had a face made of cold blue text, and that now I was staring at a wall that said offered, hand, asked in a language older than any queen.

It felt like finding my own handwriting in a book that was ten thousand years old.

Sylvara looked at me for a long time. She didn’t say what she was thinking, and I could tell from the tight, careful line of her mouth that she was holding back a dozen conclusions.

Was it the Lunhare who had made the thing that lived in my head?

Or was it something older... something the Lunhare had only found?

"I do not know what you are," she said softly. "But I begin to think the question is much larger than either of us..."

"That’s... very comforting," I said.

"It was not meant to be."

She turned back to the wall.

After a moment, she let out a quiet breath.

"There is more," she said. "This pool is not merely decoration..."

"According to this inscription, the Moon Font can purify any crystal that binds a will against its owner’s wishes."

’But only if the heir sings and the afflicted are brought here in person." Her voice quickened. "For the Oathglass... there is a further condition, but the text is worn away."

"I think it concerns a word... Yes, and no."

My head came up.

"The sixteen," I said. "And the five..."

"Yes... If we can bring them here in time."

I thought of the five sleeping women in the hidden cave, curled up in their blankets, with their gold crystals ticking away against their throats.

I thought about the clock I’d started by smashing that staff, and a cold sweat broke out along my spine.

A faint noise from across the chamber made us both turn.

Corra had been laid on a pallet near the Moon Font, bound hand and foot, still deeply asleep.

But now... she stirred. Her lips parted, and her brow creased, and the crystal at her throat flickered with a thin hairline crack.

"No," she whispered.

She said it in her sleep, in a small, uncertain voice, like a child refusing something she didn’t understand.

Then she sank back into stillness.

Sylvara and I looked at each other.

"Did you... hear that?" I murmured.

"Yes." Her eyes were shining. "I believe it is the first thing she has chosen in a very long time..."

And just because of that... I couldn’t sleep. Great.

...

It was well past midnight, and the keep had finally gone quiet.

I sat on a stone stair outside the Moon Shrine, wrapped in my cloak, and staring into the dark with my hands pressed between my knees to stop them shaking.

Ding!

[Lust Energy: 47/100]

I didn’t even flinch... I’d gotten used to the sound.

Someone sat down beside me. I didn’t have to look to know who it was.

I could smell the usual night jasmine, and hear the faint whisper of silk.

"You should be resting," Sylvara said.

"So should you..."

"You see... Deerkins are a very poor sleeper." She smiled faintly. "And that came from the three hundred years of practice."

For a while we just sat there. I watched a few of her little lights drift across the dark, tracing slow circles in the air.

They looked tired too.

"I have been thinking," she said at last.

"Uh-oh..." I said with a concerned look.

"Do not make that face." She laughed softly, and then her smile faded. "I want to be honest with you, Leon..."

"I came on this journey because you were a puzzle to me..."

"A beautiful, impossible puzzle, and I have been searching for the answer to a question for so long that I forgot what it felt like to be curious." She paused. "But that... has changed."

"Changed...? Like how?"

"I find that I am becoming interested in the man... and not just the mystery."

"... ...!!!" I gulped instantly.

That was out of the blue! She just said that without having to think through it probably.

And here... I didn’t know where to look other than staring at my hands.

"Well... I’m not going to be good at this," I said. "I should warn you..."

"My track record is terrible... I used to be a really shitty person, and I’m still working on it."

"And right now I’m kind of..." I gestured vaguely. "Falling apart... just by a little."

’Not in a way I can explain."

"I have noticed."

"I’m just... scared of running out of time." I took a breath. "I don’t want anyone to be a... a means to something for me."

"Not you, and not anybody... If I ever started treating a person like that, god... I’d never forgive myself and best way for it was to kill myself."

She was quiet for a very long time.

"I... do not entirely understand what you mean," she said at last. "But I believe that I understand the shape of it."

She turned her head and looked at me, and her eyes were very soft. "Then we shall not hurry... Hurry is a poor foundation for anything."

"Thank you."

"Do not thank me... It costs me nothing."

She reached out and took my hand. It was the shaking one.

She held it between both of hers, warm and steady, and I felt the tremor ease just slightly under her fingers.

We sat like that for a long time.

There was no kiss, and no declaration.

Just two people holding hands on a cold stair at the bottom of a mountain.

The system, I noticed, didn’t say a word about this moment. Well, that’s good... let me just enjoy this wholesome moment.