"You let me sleep for two hours?" She sat up too fast, head spinning. "I can't—we need to—"
"You needed it," he repeated calmly. "Exhaustion wouldn't help us understand anything."
She stared at him. In Eliam's court, falling asleep during lessons would have meant... she didn't want to think what it would have meant. But here, Arion had simply covered her with a blanket and kept reading.
"Did you find anything?"
"Perhaps." He showed her a page covered in old script. "There are references to something called heart-flowers. Blooms that manifest from deep magic, usually royal or divine. But they require..." He hesitated.
"What?"
"A connection. A resonance between the grower and something greater. The texts are unclear, but they suggest the flowers appear when someone carries a fragment of power that seeks reunion."
Fragment. Power. Reunion.
Her chest warmed, just slightly. That strange heat that wasn't the mark.
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. Yet." He closed the book gently. "But we'll figure it out. You have my word."
"Why?" The question escaped before she could stop it. "Why are you helping me? Ferria's right—I'm dangerous to your entire court. When Eliam comes—"
"You saved yourself." His voice was quiet but firm. "The flowers bloomed for you, not him. That means something. And I think..." He paused, something uncertain flickering across his features. "I think I'm supposed to help you. Don't ask me why. I just... know."
She wanted to ask more, but exhaustion was pulling at her again. The mark on her arm pulsed once, still strangely quiet. Still waiting.
Two nights left.
But for now, in this sunlit library with its kind lord and impossible safety, she let herself believe they might find answers.
Let herself believe she might be more than just marked property.
Let herself rest in the fiction that somewhere, somehow, there was a place where bread was just bread and tea was just tea and falling asleep meant blankets, not punishment.
The afternoon wore on in quiet research. Arion had moved to the floor at some point, surrounded by open books. Briar curled deeper into her chair, fighting sleep and losing as she tried to parse ancient texts that seemed determined to speak in circles.
"'The golden bloom of hearth and home,'" she read aloud, squinting at faded text. "'Shall rise when stone remembers foam.' What does that even mean?"
"Poetry," Arion muttered from his pile. "The older fae loved their riddles. As if clarity would somehow diminish the magic."
She turned another page, finding only more cryptic verses. The sunlight had shifted from gold to amber, afternoon becoming evening without fanfare. Her second day was bleeding away moment by moment.
They'd been in the library all day. Book after book, reference after reference, and nothing. Every text that mentioned golden flowers spoke in riddles or dismissed them as myth. The few that treated them as real demanded royal blood, divine blessing, or ancient pacts that didn't match her situation.
Briar rubbed her eyes, frustration building in her chest. "This is useless. We're not going to find anything."
"Perhaps not today." Arion closed the tome he'd been reading, dust motes dancing in the dying light. "Come on."
"Where? Another archive? Some secret collection?"
"You need air."
She blinked. "Air?"
"Fresh air. Sky. Something besides old paper and older words." He stood, extending a hand. "Trust me?"
Strange question from a fae. Stranger still that she found herself answering, "Yes."
