Chapter 60

Chapter 60 Mysterious box

CA SSANDRA

“I got the test result, Ca ssy!” Becky exclaimed with excitement as she rushed into the lab the next day. I’d been half-asleep at my desk and close to nodding off when my a*sistant walked in, and I quickly regained my composure so she wouldn’t notice just how exhausted I was.

Between the encounter with Asher and the situation with the snake in the garden, I’d gotten very little sleep and was feeling a little ghostlike.

“Oh?” I managed to say, and I swept my long hair out of my face and pulled it up into a high bun. “What does it say?”

Becky glanced down at the stack of papers in her hand and quickly, her excitement turned to concern.

say?”

“Becky?” Lprompted her again when she didn’t say anything. “What does it

“It says it wasn’t Udosyn,” she said quietly, and her l*ps curled into a frown. “And it wasn’t the same venom that we’d extracted from the vipers that had bitten Prince

Marco and the Alpha King.”

This time, it was my turn to frown.

No matter what happened around here, it always seemed to be incredibly complicated and confusing.

I considered the information for a moment as Becky handed me the results. If the vipérs had been raised by someone, as I’d suspected, we would have found Udosyn in this one’s b*dy. But the results on the paper said otherwise. The facts simply didn’t line up with my hypothesis.

“Can you check to see if the venom matches with any possible venom in the

records?” I asked.

Becky nodded and I handed the papers back to her. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. A headache was beginning to build and all I wanted was to go back to sleep. But this was something that couldn’t wait. We had to uncover the mystery of this string of viper attacks before the next one struck.

We got to work right away, and as we threw ourselves into research, I found myself watching Becky. This job was grueling and required so much attention and patience. Becky had both, but she’d never been a healer before, which I found, curious.

Before I could stop the question from leaving my l*ps, I found myself blurting it.

aloud.

nose.

Becky looked up from her research and pushed her gla*ses up the bridge of her

“Well…” she trailed off. “I just never pa*sed the examination for royal healers. I suppose it just wasn’t in the cards for me.”

The moment the words hit my ears, I knew they were a lie. Becky was incredibly intelligent and hard-working. She often surprised me with just how much she knew about different subjects and she spoke about them so pa*sionately. Her heart and her mind were in it, so why wasn’t she in a higher position than a laboratory a*sistant?

When she went back to her books, a thought entered my mind. Becky wasn’t from a prestigious family. Anemond was nothing if not nepotistic and uppity when it came to those who were appointed to higher-up positions. Of course, a young woman like her wouldn’t be considered qualified in the eyes of the other royal

healers.

I remembered the way the chief royal healer had looked at Asher when he’d appointed me to the position. There had been so much contempt and confusion.

It wasn’t fair. Becky deserved to work in a position that suited her

qualifications. Hopefully one day, I’d be able to sway Asher into making her a royal

healer.

The hours pa*sed by quickly. I wasn’t making any sort of progress and I found my mind wandering. Between Asher and Kaleb, I had a lot on my mind and all I wanted was to sleep.

Becky cleared her throat and interrupted my daydream.

“Ca ssandra?” she called out and she gestured to the papers with the lab, results. “I have some bad news.”

“Oh no,” I murmured as I looked her way.

“The venom in the viper isn’t matching up with anything,” Becky said bleakly, and she let out a small sigh. “I don’t understand. How are none of these beasts. related to anything? Or even to each other? I don’t understand what’s going on here. In all of my time in Anemond, I’ve never encountered anything like this.”

“I hadn’t in Wild Crawler either,” I offered as my head throbbed. “Even though we were deep into the woods, we hardly ever encountered vipers like this.”

“It’s all so strange,” Becky remarked as she sat down in her chair. “I don’t get it. Where did these snakes come from?”

“I wish I knew,” I said, and I meant every word. I still had so much research to conduct about Asher’s illness and this snake hunt was taking my energy away from it. I only had so much allotted time to solve the mystery and I didn’t want to waste any time. Finnick and I needed to leave Anemond behind for good and the only way to do that was to cure the Alpha King.

Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind.

“The royal library,” I whispered to myself and then I turned to Becky. “I found an interesting book the last time I was in the library. I wonder if it would be of any help.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Becky said with a shrug. “We could take all of the help we could get.”

I stood up from my desk and gathered up a could of notebooks and some pens.

I

I stuffed them into my backpack and then turned to my a*sistant.

“Keep digging here and I’ll look in the library,” I said. Becky nodded and then I left the lab and headed toward the library.

Once I got there, the librarian greeted me warmly.

“Healer Ca ssandra,” she said as stood up from her desk. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “Would you mind letting me into the restricted room? | need to conduct some more research and pick up where I left off the other day.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

She led me back

to the room and unlocked the door for me. Once she left, I wasted no time and picked out an a*sortment of books.

I spent the rest of the day sorting through them, particularly the one I’d found last time. Though there were many poisons recorded in the book, there was nothing noteworthy about their features and traits that I could use to compare them to the poison of the snake.

After a while, I reached my limit and started to give up. I filed the books back to where I’d found them, and just as I was about to leave, I noticed a large wooden box where I’d found them, and just as I was ab in the corner. I approached it curiously. It was made of black wood and had some intricate carvings I couldn’t make out across the top. Most importantly, it was locked with an enormous gold lock.

When the librarian walked by, I pulled her aside.

“Are there any books in this box?” I wondered.

The librarian frowned at the box and slowly shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never opened it before and I don’t think my predecessor did either. He never mentioned anything about it in the many years he served as head librarian. I have always been curious about it though.”

As I stared at the box, I got a strange feeling. Something was suspicious about that box, I just knew it.