I felt deep in my gut that meeting Mab was one of those predestined things. She left me when I made it to the main part of the library, and then I was heading for the front doors. The librarian shouted as I breezed past, but I didn’t bother to stop.
Once I was outside, I decided to hit the commons first, having no idea what time of day it was or where anyone would be.
“Maddison James!”
The growling voice was barely recognizable, and I was snatched up into Jesse’s arms before I could even turn my head. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I puffed in and out to catch my breath. “In the library,” I said swiftly. “Were you looking for me?”
Jesse had grabbed me from between two pillars near the commons. Within a minute, Axl, Rone, Calen, Larissa, and Ilia surrounded us. “Were you all looking for me?” I asked, confused.
Rone’s fangs were fully out as he lunged for me, snatching me from Jesse’s arms. For a second I didn’t think the lion shifter was going to let me go, but he must have decided it was easier than ripping me into two. Rone held me tight, his arms trembling, and I found my eyes heating at the slashes of panic and pain bleeding from the vamp. “You disappeared,” he rumbled close to my ear.
I pulled back as much as I could in his strong arms. “What do you mean? I said that I needed some alone time.”
Axl’s eyes were red-rimmed, and he leaned in closer, brushing a thumb across my cheek. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “My tracking locator on you went dark. Just … gone. Your energy wasn’t here. Nothing was here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I’ve been in the library this entire…” I trailed off, before my eyes went very wide. “The Atlantean library. It must block energy so that no one knows it’s there.”
“What?” Calen asked, squinting at me. “Did you just say Atlantean library?”
I nodded roughly. “Yes. Yes, I found it, and that must have been where my energy disappeared. I came to find you all immediately because we should start researching before heading to Atlantis.”
Rone still hadn’t let me go, and now that I’d had a minute to really look at them all, I realized there was deep-seated grief written across their faces. “I’m so sorry that I worried you all,” I said softly. “I know after Asher, it would have been…” I cleared my throat. “You might have guessed I would choose to join him. I’m really fucking sorry.”
Axl’s eyes were shiny; he wiped roughly at his nose. “All good, you didn’t know that would happen. We’re just really happy you’re okay.”
Rone finally let me drop, almost reluctantly, and I ended up between Ilia and Larissa. Both of them were silently crying, and I started doing the same, the three of us wrapped around each other.
“Don’t ever fucking do that to me again,” Ilia finally said, all but blowing her nose on my shirt. “You deserve that,” she added with a hoarse laugh.
I just shook my head. “Yeah, I did.”
When we got all of that out of the way, I straightened. “Okay, we have about fifteen hours until we have to leave for Atlantis. We need to gather whatever intel we can before we go. We need to know about the gods, what the royal families really did to cause the destruction of Atlantis, who I am … who Asher was…?”
Nods all around, and then I led them back to the library. “How did you figure out where it was?” Axl asked, his brow furrowed.
“Disappointed you weren’t the one to find it?” I asked with a small laugh.
He shrugged. “I thought I had the location calculated so many times, but I never expected it was in the Academy library. I’m excited about exploring new information though.”
Probably an understatement. “It was hidden in plain sight,” I told him. “And since it’s in the library, you were probably the only other one who might have found it.”
Calen snorted. “I doubt that. You’re the strongest of us all. You were no doubt drawn to the energy, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.”
He might have been right about that. There was something that kept pulling me into the library. I thought it was escape, but maybe it was fate.
I wasn’t sure fate and I were copacetic these days, because that meant the fates set the path in motion for me to lose Asher. And if that was the case, I would be hunting them down and I would not stop until they paid.
19
When we entered the library, we drew quite a lot of attention. Wasn’t every day the Atlanteans came in here, especially in the wake of Asher. No one stopped or questioned us, and I was relieved when we made it through the first shelves and into the back section. Just like me, Axl started to run his fingers across spines almost absentmindedly.
“Are you okay?” Jesse asked, and I shook my head.
“No. Not even a tiny bit. But I’m glad I can focus on this right now. I can’t cry anymore.”
He nodded like he understood. This time I noticed the invisible barrier that barred this back section from the rest of the library. There was an obvious change in temperature as well. All of the Atlanteans walked through without worry, but Ilia and Larissa were both stopped, their faces screwed up like they couldn’t see us any longer.
