Chapter 12: The Archive

We went back into Hollin Hall the same way I had left it, in the back of a linen van.

Eileen was driving.

She had come out to meet us at a gas station an hour from the estate, and she hugged me so hard I coughed.

"You're alive," she said into my hair. "You're alive, and you're skinnier, and you're alive."

"I'm pregnant. It's the nausea."

"I know. I'm still going to be mad about it later."

Bastian and Merrick rode in the back with the sheets.

The guards at the gate checked the manifest, laughed at the stains, and waved us through.

Eileen led us in through the laundry, down a service stair I had never known was there, and along a stone passage that smelled of damp and old paper.

The library lay under the great hall.

It was a long vaulted room with iron shelves that went up into the dark, and every shelf was crammed with books, scrolls and ledgers.

A single lamp burned at a desk in the middle.

Behind the desk sat the oldest man I had ever seen.

He was a vampire, and he was so old that the skin of his face was thin enough to show the bones.

His eyes were milky white.

"Majesty," he said, without turning. "You have come in by the laundry. How delightful."

"Archivist," Bastian said.

"And the bride. And three little hearts. Sit, child. You will want to sit."

I sat.

Bastian took the chair beside me.

Merrick and Eileen stayed by the door, and Eileen's hand was white on the doorframe.

"I keep the Court's records," the Archivist said. "Every one. Even the ones the Court has decided to forget."

"Tell us," Bastian said.

"I have waited a hundred years for someone to ask." He folded his hands. "A blood bond is not a collar, Majesty. It is a trade."

"A trade of what?"

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