1
Vivienne bit the inside of her cheek as the maps before her whispered taunts of all the paths she would never be free to follow. A bead of sweat traced down her spine as the cool waters of the Phythean Sea beckoned her from the arched windows. She wrestled her long hair into a bun in a futile effort to keep cool. Her hands smoothed the edges of one of the dozens of maps on the thick, wooden tableWhy did I promise my parents I’d have the whole collection catalogued by the time they got back?
Vivienne sighed, the breath stirring the aged parchment as a pit formed in her stomach. She’d spent her life preparing to continue the Banner family legacy as an Antiquary discovering, assembling, and protecting knowledge. She glanced up at the painting the Crown commissioned in recognition of her parent’s forty years of service and resisted the urge to shiver. Her father, William Banner’s piercing blue eyes swept over her, cool and assessing, from behind the spectacles perched on his prominent nose. Even in his painted form, his presence filled the space with a weight Vivienne couldn’t shrug off. Liana Banner’s long black hair fell in a lustrous sheet down her willowy frame as her deep brown eyes carried a quiet authority.
She shifted in her seat, trying not to fidget under their combined scrutiny. She tucked a misbehaving strand of copper-red hair behind her ear, wishing she could shrink her soft curves to fit her parents’ vision of elegance and control.Too much. Never enough.The familiar melody lilted through her thoughts. She clenched her hands in her lap, the sting of her nails digging into her palms. Her heart pounded against the ache of always wanting something more, something warmer, from them. She knew they loved her. She had to believe it was love that inspired their high standards and pushed her to become everything she had the potential to be. Vivienne shut her blue eyes tight and assured herself that one day, her parents’ love would soften into pride and understanding. Until then, she made a silent vow to keep trying.
She shook her head, dispersing the haze of distraction creeping over her thoughts. She dragged another map closer, its brittle parchment threatening to crack beneath her fingers. The edges curled and frayed, its once bright ink faded to a sepia hue. Her gaze roamed over the blank stretches of land and sea where cartographers had surrendered to mystery, scrawlinghere be dragonsand other proclamations in sweeping, ominous script. These maps, relics of a time when myth and reality coexisted on the same page, fascinated her the most.
Her thumb traced a jagged tear near the map’s corner, the texture rough against her skin. The air in the library was heavy with the brine of the nearby sea, mingling with the musty scent of aging paper. It filled her lungs with a kind of peace she found nowhere else. Above her, the vaulted ceiling arched like the ribbed hull of a ship, as if the library itself might one day set sail into the unknown. She leaned forward and squinted at the faded symbols along the coastline, her mind wandering back to her parents. Their voices sounded sharp and clear in her memory.
“Focus, Vivienne. You’ll never accomplish anything if you keep giving in to distraction,” her father would say, his tone clipped and firm.
“Dreams can be motivating, but discipline matters more,” her mother would add as a pointed reminder.
The echo of their words tightened her chest, though she hadn’t heard from them in months. The zoological expedition had stretched far longer than anyone expected, leaving her to this solitude that was both freeing and invited a quiet longing.
Vivienne glanced around the cavernous library, its silence broken only by the creak of a shifting beam or the distant cry of a seagull. This had always been her sanctuary. As a child, she dashed through the labyrinth of towering bookshelves, laughter trailing in her wake as her parents scolded her for breaking the hallowed silence. More than once, she’d dared to ride one of the rolling ladders as fast as she could, crashing into stacks of dusty tomes. The punishment had been days spent dusting shelves from floor to vaulted ceiling, but even then, she hadn’t minded. She belonged here, in this vast world of stories and maps, where adventure and mystery waited behind the covers of leather-bound books.
A dramatic clearing of his throat pulled her back to the present. Vivienne blinked, startled as her eyes refocused. Across the broad, hand-carved table, Lewis leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, narrowing his golden-brown eyes.
“Viv,” he said, dragging out the nickname as if it were a burden to say. “We’ve been at this for hours and it’s going to take even longer if you keep getting distracted.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, the motion in between a smile and a frown. He pushed his round spectacles up with a finger and sighed. “I snuck out of work early tohelpyou, not do your project for you.”
Vivienne gave him a sheepish grin and drummed her fingernails against the table. “I’m not asking you to do the workforme… but you could try complaining less.”
He rolled his eyes but couldn’t suppress the grin that followed. The late afternoon light streaming through the high windows caught the golden undertones of his wheat-colored skin, darker than usual after a summer of tending to the royal gardens. His lean frame, clad in a simple button-down shirt rolled up at the elbows exuded a casual strength, a byproduct of hauling sacks of soil and cultivating the crowded greenhouse that was practically his second home.
“Fine,” he said, further disrupting her reverie. “But only because I don’t want you using me as an excuse when this doesn’t get finished.”
Vivienne snorted. “I don’t need an excuse when you’re around. You’re practically made of them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Me? You’ve never objected to my excuses saving your neck every time you do something impulsive, which, let’s be honest, is often.”
“Hey! It’s not that often.”
Lewis leveled a glare in challenge. “If I made a list, I’d sit here for a week and barely get through the prologue.”
She mirrored his expression. “The bigger takeaway from this conversation is that you actually know what a prologue is.”
Lewis threw a balled-up scrap of parchment at her, grinning when it hit her shoulder. Their laughter bounced off the walls. This was what made Lewis and Vivienne who they were. The unshakeable rhythm of good-natured teasing, sarcasm, and leaning on each other when it mattered. She’d known him since they were small children, first bonding over their mutual disdain for naps. Over the years, their friendship solidified into something she couldn’t imagine living without. She glanced at him, noting the faint smudge of dirt along his forearm, marking him as a Botanist. Lewis had always been there for her, reliable as the earthy scent that clung to him from hours of planting and pruning.
“I know what this is really about. You don’t want to spend the day with me,” she said, her lips debating whether to pout or smile.
Lines formed between his brows. “We’ve spent almost every day together for twenty-four years. I’m just not interested in being boiled alive like a lobster—especially ifyoukeep dragging things out.”
"So, you’re happy to boil like a lobster if I stay on task?”
Lewis tilted his head, his mane of light brown hair flopping to the side. “Do I even have to answer that?”
She waited, staring into his eyes, a playful challenge.
“Fine.” He sighed, removing his spectacles to clean them with the fabric of his shirt. “You can boil in here by yourself. I need to head back to the greenhouse anyway.”
“Come on, it’s not like your beloved plants are going to grow legs and run away.”
Lewis peered over the spectacles he had returned to the bridge of his sharp nose. “Oh, and your maps are going out on the town, are they?”
