Spider webs gathered in every corner of the drawing room. The settee in the corner was faded, and one of its arms was broken. The plush rugs were faded in strange shapes from the light of the windows. For all the other rooms they had been in looked clean and lived in, this one did not.
"We haven't gotten to it yet," Alice said. A tray of tea and snacks was in her hands, her eyes scanning the room for a place to put them down. "We don't have much call for it, since we don't ever get visitors."
Takayoshi nodded his understanding, and moved to the wall closest to the door to begin his search.
"I brought you all some afternoon snacks. I thought you might be working up an appetite." She held the tray aloft a little more, the tea set on it rattling.
"Thank you, but I do not snack. Feel free to offer them to the others." Another one of Uncle's rules that he may have laughed in the face of if he were actually hungry. He wondered how many of them he would begin to see as ridiculous and controlling the longer he spent away from Uncle. He had already thrown so many of them away when confronted with the vibrantly loud Yue Cricket.
Alice stood awkwardly in the doorway, her eyes following Takayoshi as he knocked on the wall looking for hollow places. The blueprints had no indications that there would be a hidden safe anywhere on the premises. But Claudia had presumed that if it were to really be a secret they would not put it in the blueprints, or that it may have been added after the fact. This seemed a reasonable assumption to Takayoshi.
"Is there something else?" Takayoshi asked when Alice continued to stand in the door, watching him. He did not like the way her eyes settled like a chill on the back of his neck. He could feel the short hairs at the base of his head standing on end, small bumps rising along his collar.
"I already took a tray out to them." Alice's tone was lifeless, flat. If Takayoshi did not know better he would think the sound had not come from a person at all. He turned to look at her, his head tilted in question. "Maybe just some tea?"
Takayoshi let out a soft breath, forcing his shoulders to relax. "Maybe just some tea."
Alice's face split into a smile.
"Set it on the table." Takayoshi turned back to the wall he was examining. It looked solid, and thus far he had noticed no signs of it being otherwise. But they would not know until he tried. He heard the soft clatter of the tray being set on the table. "Thank you."
"Of course, Your Highness," Alice said just before she floated out of the room.
Takayoshi turned back to the tea, and stopped, his brows creasing. He did not remember telling Alice and Jasper that he was royalty. In fact, he and Estia had decided before they had even set off that it would be best to keep their identities a secret, even just vaguely. Their lineage would draw too much attention to their search. Takayoshi had even forgone wearing the crest of Helio when he had packed his clothes before leaving for Cytherea months ago. So how did Alice know?
His stomach twisted. He moved to the tea tray, to pour himself a cup, hoping it might settle the strange feeling writhing in his belly. Something was not right, and he needed to calm down if he was going to find out what it was.
He reached for a teacup.
The faint outline of a hand struck out and knocked the cup to the floor, shattering it.
Takayoshi stopped, his hand shaking where he held it mid-air. He was seeing things. He had knocked it himself, in a rare fit of clumsiness. It had to be. But... The hand had bitten fingernails, and a smooth ring around one finger that looked to be made of jade.
"Cricket?" He asked, sure he would get no answer. It was just the house. It was just the way the shadows twisted here. It was just the stress of the mission, and the need to do it to save the first person in his life who had looked at him and really seen him. Not the dutiful nephew. Not the guiding older brother. Not the stalwart prince. But a young man, who desperately needed someone to teach him to smile again.
No answer came.
Takayoshi looked at the shattered remains of the teacup. The tea he had poured into it was seeping into the lush carpeting of the drawing room, turning the sun-washed color into something darker. He did not know what color the rug was, but he could see where the tea would stain it.
He shook himself. It was foolish. Cricket was not there with him. Cricket was in Lunette, tending to his still recovering father, and kingdom. What had happened the previous night was nothing more than a dream. A wish that would never come true for when this was all over, when he had found the library, he would sever their connection and Cricket would not want him any longer.
With a deep inhale, Takayoshi took up the pot and poured tea into the second cup Alice had provided on the tray. He did not know why she had bothered with a second cup. Perhaps she had thought she would be invited to join him. Had he been remiss in not inviting her? Had he been rude? He shook his head. Takayoshi did not have time for wool-gathering, and gossipy chatter, he had a mission to complete. A library to find. A soulmate to save.
He had just lifted the cup to his lips when he felt a rush of energy. The brush of cold fingers on the back of his hand. It knocked the cup from his hand, and this one too clattered to the floor to join its broken sibling. Out of the corner of Takayoshi's eye he could see something. A face, maybe. Kind dark eyes, set into a serious expression. He turned to get a better look, but there was nothing.
"My Prince?" Takayoshi stood, his hands falling to his sides to keep them from shaking. Something shifted just in the corner of his vision, just out of sight. The flutter of a cloak. The soft sound of laughter pressed quiet behind someone's lips. "My Prince, if you are here..."
Takayoshi felt the brush of fingers against the back of his hand. There was a voice, just loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to be understood.
"Yoshi," Claudia said.
Whatever spell there had been was broken, and the presence faded away with it. Takayoshi's fingers twitched to follow it, but he kept them firmly at his sides. Whatever that had been... it had not been real. It could not be real. It was a hallucination conjured up by the strange emptiness that this—
"Yoshi," Claudia said again.
"Yes?" Takayoshi turned his attention away from the lingering tingle on the back of his hand to Claudia who was standing in the doorway with her glasses askew. Her eyes were wide and wild.
"We found it." She panted, fingernails scraping against the doorframe as she clung to it, her weight on the tips of her toes.
"Show me."
Claudia nodded quickly, spinning on her heel and hurrying through the house. Takayoshi's eyes flicked around the room, looking for any shimmer of the presence that had been there but a moment ago, and shook himself. Now was not the time. Before following after her at a more appropriate pace. One did not run indoors.
Estia stood by a tree in the courtyard, zir hand pressed into the rough bark.
"What have you found?" Takayoshi asked, eyes sweeping over the tree. It looked like an ordinary tree. Grown instead of planted, as so many things were in the middle of the forest. It was fairly young, stretching only to the second floor of the manor house, and not beyond as its siblings had.
"Come around this way." Estia moved around the trunk, which was not very thick, and rapped softly on it a couple of times. Takayoshi followed, watching over zir shoulder as the trunk opened up to reveal a small compartment. A small, empty compartment. Estia stepped away to let Takayoshi get a better look.
"How did you find this?" Takayoshi pressed forward, his fingers brushing over the edges of the little hollow. It had been magically sealed to only respond to whatever Estia had done to it. The perfect hiding place for something as valuable as a piece of the map to an ancient library.
"Estia was knocking around the tree, and it just opened." Claudia peered over his shoulder.
"Just got lucky, I guess," Estia said. Takayoshi glanced at zir, and ze shrugged. "It was empty when it opened."
"So the piece has been retrieved already." Takayoshi felt his shoulders sink a little. He was not slouching. He did not slouch.
"Looks like." Claudia frowned, her fingers tapping on her thighs.
"What do you suggest we do?"
"Whoever took it is likely going to go after the second piece as well. If we get there first, we might be able to head them off and get the piece back from them."
"There are no guarantees." The weight was back, the mismatched armor, heavy on his shoulders and doing nothing at all to protect the soft parts of him where a dagger could slice through. This could be the end already. It felt as if the quest had not even properly started, and already it could all be over. If someone had taken this piece, they had taken the second, and the third. How long ago had it been? Maybe the library itself was already gone.
"I don't think they took it far," Estia said, drawing Takayoshi out of the downward spiral.
"Why not?" Claudia peered over Takayoshi's shoulder as if she could see what Estia was seeing. There was nothing there, just the empty recesses of a carved out tree. The space was not even large enough to fit a family of squirrels. Which made Takayoshi wonder, how large could this map be? It was only in three pieces, and clearly the first was no bigger than his palm.
"The emptiness." Estia's hand gave a little flourish as if this made sense of everything.
"The what?" Claudia huffed. Takayoshi turned to look at Estia, brows raised slightly.
"The emptiness in the walls, and even the earth here. It's being caused by something magical. And whatever that something is, it's still here."
"But how do you know it's the map piece?"
"I guess I don't." Estia shrugged, zir hands braced behind zir back as ze leaned zir weight onto zir heels. "But it would make sense wouldn't it? A piece of a map to an ancient archive would have magic in its own right. Maybe not originally but..."
"But it's been around so long. The ambient magical forces would have seeped into it." Claudia nodded eagerly, following along with this new theory like a child with a story. "No. No. That makes perfect sense. It shouldn't absorb magic like this though. Not to this extent. It shouldn't bleed the place dry."
"That would be caused by something else," Takayoshi said, his lips pressing together. They were right, it did make sense. It also explained the illusions of Cricket. "Something drawn to the magic of the map piece."
"Something probably feeding off it." Estia frowned, zir eyes looking around, lips pursed. "There are some weird shadows to this place."
"Supper time!" Jasper called from the door into the kitchen.
"We should leave," Claudia said when Jasper had headed back inside. "We should leave, and come back in the morning."
Takayoshi shook his head. There was desperation clawing at his throat. He could not leave. Not before he found that map piece. He could not return to Lunette a failure. "One more night. I know we can find it if we have one more night."
"Then we had better be careful."
"Yes." Takayoshi nodded.
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