Her smile quickly faded as she was about to round a corner and heard people talking. She pressed herself against the wall and waited a moment, her ears straining as two women complained about a womanizing palace guard. Her breath caught in her throat when their footsteps came closer, and closer. She scrambled down the hall and hid behind an ornate pillar.
Sweat dampened her hands, armpits, and below her breasts. She stopped breathing and waited as the women passed by. They didn’t notice her, just continued to grumble about the man’s straying eyes, and how he wasn’t pleased with one partner, and such, which normally would have made Biyu curious who they were talking about, but this time only annoyed her and made her wish they would hurry along.
Biyu briskly continued her trek to the library, her gaze skittering over the halls in search of guards. She did a good job avoiding the guarded corridors by hugging the walls and taking short detours, but the closer she drew to her destination, the more guards were present, and she couldn’t bypass them without using magic.
Without even meaning to, her forefinger brushed against the ring nestled on her thumb for reassurance. The crystal hummedwith power and the band warmed her skin, almost like it was calling forth her own magic, and she released a shaky breath at the feel of renewed energy surging through her. She could do this. She was capable.
Biyu poked her head around the bend of the hall that would eventually lead to the library, and immediately noticed three guards walking toward the direction of the library. Knowing what she knew about patrol schedules, they would reach the doors and loop back here, and keep doing that until their duty was done for the night.
Inhaling deeply and quietly, she quickly trailed them, keeping herself close to the walls. If they turned around, if they even glanced over their shoulders, they would spot her. She wasn’t sure if she could cloak herself in invisibility quickly enough. But she had no choice here.
Biyu barely breathed as she stalked behind them.Please don’t notice. Please don’t notice. Please don’t notice.
“—doesn’t seem to like me very much,” one of the guards said with a long sigh.
The one in the middle chuckled. “She doesn’t like anyone.”
“Commendable for you totry, at least. I wouldn’t have even tried talking to one of them,” the third said.
They were drawing closer to the double doors; sweat dripped down her spine and she held her hand over the ring for reassurance that it wouldn’t fail her. The worst possibilities raked through her mind—that the ring would deplete of magic, even though Yat-sen said it would probably last six months, that she would flub the spell and alert them of her presence. That … that something would gowrongand that she would be discovered, tossed in the towers, and would ultimately doom her brother as well.
The guards were oblivious to her as they poked at one another and chortled at their ventures with women—particularly the middle one.
“I really thought women from Sanguis fucked pretty much anything, you know?” he said with a throaty, crude sound. “The bitch could have at leastlookedat me.”
“Looked at you as she rejected your sorry ass?” The one on the right bit back his laugh. “Vita is a warrior, isn’t she? A spy or assassin or some special kind of warrior? You think she’d want to waste time with a palace guard?”
Biyu inched closer. They were only half a dozen feet away now.
“Well, I thought maybe I had a chance?—”
“Why? You’re only good for palace maids.”
“I wouldn’t touch one of them Peccata bitches even if all the hellhounds in the world dragged me by the balls. There’s something vile about those half-breeds. They’re soulless, I’m telling you, and the men are even worse. Remember what that red-haired bastard said a few nights ago?”
One of them chuckled. “Ey now. They’re not half-breeds, they’re full-blooded outlanders.”
Now.
Biyu pulled her magic to her, the spell coming easily despite her apprehension. Right on time, the guards spun on their heels. Biyu pressed herself flatly against the wall, her breath catching as the men walked past her. A few seconds must have passed, but it felt like an eternity; she held onto the spell, her legs leaden as she inched closer to the doors.
She couldn’t hold onto it any longer. Her head was going to split open; she was going to get caught. She had to get to the door?—
Just as she grasped the handle, the spell flickered, her hold slipping. She yanked it open, the spell coming undone with awhoosh. She didn’t have time to see if the guards saw her. She slipped inside and closed the door as quietly as she could. It clicked shut.
She gasped, her hand slapping to her mouth.
She had been too loud; surely the guards had heard her entering. Surely they were going to shove this door open and take her away. Surely …
But seconds turned to minutes and nobody barged inside.
Releasing a shaky breath, she turned to face the room and nearly choked on another gasp. She had, for some reason, thought it would look like she had remembered it—with old bookshelves thickly lined with dust and scrolls and tomes, with banners pinned on the ceilings and drifting toward the tops of the shelves, and the smell of musty pages pervading the air. Instead, she was shocked to find that new, sturdy, extremely tall bookshelves lined the room, with sliding ladders built onto them. It was too clean, pristine, and it smelledfloraland like incense instead of like dusty old parchment. Even in the dim lighting she could make out the impressive outlines of the shelves bursting with books, scrolls, and literature.
Biyu’s steps faltered as she neared one of the shelves, her fingers skimming along the cracked, aged spines. Drakkon Muyang had put much more effort into research than her father had done—she actually wasn’t even sure if her father had cared for research or the library; it was largely something he’d ignored.
Although she would have loved to explore every square inch of the room and all its changes, she knew that the deadlier and more important spells wouldn’t be in the front for anyone to stumble upon. She trudged deeper into the room; there were different sections of the expansive library, and thankfully, no one was present in any of them—at least, not from what she could make out from the moonlight streaming into the dark room. The further inside she went, the more the smell of oldparchment returned, woody and vanilla-scented, and she felt a wave of nostalgia overcome her.
When she reached a good enough distance for a lethal spell to potentially be waiting around, she paused and plucked out a random book, flipped it open, scanned the contents and shoved it back in place. She repeated the process, her eyes straining in the dark. She didn’t really know what to look out for. Was there supposed to be a sign that there was a deadly spell inside that could kill someone well versed with magic? Or would she have to parse through dense, confusing writing to come across anything helpful?
