Her smile sharpened. “Then you’re lying to one of us.”
For a moment, he said nothing, then exhaled through his teeth. “Maybe I like having you here.”
He glanced away, muttering like it tasted bitter. “I should’ve locked you in the dungeons instead. There. Are you pleased?”
“Almost,” she said, sweet as Fae wine disguising the punch beneath. “Now say I am a guest.”
“You are a distraction.”
“Say it.”
He sighed like a man accepting defeat. “Fine. You’re a guest.”
“And?”
“And I am showing you around like a proper host,” he said. “Which brings us to a place no guest ever gets to see.”
Her gaze lifted as they entered, and wonder rose like a tide that could not be stopped.
The Dravaryn library was vast and reverent in its quiet. Rows of towering shelves climbed toward a high ceiling, ladders suspended between them like narrow bridges. The scent of old paper lay in the air, threaded with the same cedar scent from his office and a dust that was almost sacred.
She slowed, awe moving through her chest as she took in spines bound in rich hues and worn leather, gilded titles and hand-inked marks from long-dead scribes. These were not only archives on war and history. She saw tomes of ancient magic and of modern, earthbound craft, volumes on soil-derived powers, the land itself a source of strength. A shelf of romances surprised a laugh from her, quickly swallowed when she noticed an entire section given over to volumes long forbidden, their titles speaking plainly of the Fae.
Only a few weeks ago she would have doubted this. She would have sworn Dravaryn-hoarded weapons and erased anything that didn’t serve the blade. And yet, here stood a library that refused to forget. Where paintings hung between shelves, and spectacular pieces of art watched the aisles with oil-bright eyes.
The system, if there was one, eluded her. Subjects bled into each other, histories slept beside poems, maps wedged themselves between books. A ridiculous part of her longed to rearrange everything by color and gradient until the stacks glowed like a tapestry. She pushed the thought away with a faint huff and kept walking.
Jakobav moved at her side with his hands clasped behind his back. “Most of this was written before the sealing of the realms. We’ve tried to preserve it all. Dravaryn does not erase what it has been, no matter how dangerous it becomes.”
She turned sharply. “You think Orchid does?”
“Your kingdom doesn’t acknowledge the Claiming.”
“There are reasons,” she said, her temper rising.
Jakobav’s brow lifted, unimpressed. “Then tell me. What reasons?”
Ella opened her mouth—and felt her cheeks warm when nothing arrived. “It was decided long ago. And we do not erase history. We are a kingdom of fire magic. Sometimes history burns. A spark in a schoolroom, a lesson that flares too high, a careless moment in training, and shelves can become cinder. We try to avoid it. Most libraries now are fully fireproofed, the same way our garments have to be.”
He tipped his head. “It still sounds convenient.”
“It’s a miracle I haven’t set you on fire yet.”
“Only because you cannot,” he said, a taunt softened by the awareness in his eyes.
“But please, feel free to try. I’ll even stop and hold still…let you burn me however you like.”
She glared and rounded the corner of the upper gallery. The glare dissolved as the air thinned around her. There, framed in carved obsidian and gilded bronze, hung a portrait unlike any other in the room.
The man within the painting stood tall and poised between light and shadow, as if the painter had trapped a storm at rest. His skin held a pale gold like sun caught on water. His hair was the sheen of a raven wing. Beauty gathered itself in his features until it became something beyond mortal measure, and yet the chill of it came not from perfection but from the way his gaze seemed to know too much. High cheekbones and a strong jaw, eyes slightly slanted and bright even in oil, and an expression that sat calm and calculating, amused without warmth.
Her breath stalled when she saw the chain at his throat. The pendant had a center stone wrapped in dark metal vines and set on a gleaming length of links that looked almost thorn-spun. It was the same shape she had seen in her vision, the same stonethat had pulsed violet when he moved close, the same light that had called fire into her sigil like a strike of flint.
She stumbled nearer, heart pounding. “This is him,” she whispered. “The man from my dream.”
Fuck. She really hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.
Jakobav appeared beside her, his posture straightening. “You’ve seen him before?”
