Could I truly do this? Was I going to get my life back … every single part of it?
Ilia caught me, threading her arms through mine and pulling me closer. Asher’s heat was right at my back, and there was no way she could whisper without him hearing, but she didn’t care.
“Details.” Her voice was low at my ear. “I need all the freaking details.”
Shaking my head, I glared at her before my expression softened into one of love. “Thank you,” I mouthed, so only she could see. She just squeezed my arm harder.
The last year had weakened my bonds with a lot of the people I loved. But two of them, Ilia and Larissa—our bond had never been stronger. “I love you,” she said, dropping her head to my shoulder, and I tried really hard not to think of this as our goodbye confessions.
I knew we were entering the final phase of this battle, but that didn’t mean we would lose.
No way. I was not losing to power-hungry gods. Never gonna happen.
43
“There’s one book that might contain this information,” Connor explained, standing in the center of the round room, looking serious and maybe a little nervous.
I didn’t blame him. Asher had been eyeballing the fuck out of him since we arrived—there was no love lost between those two. Asher was probably never going to let the shit Connor had done go—kidnapping me, getting me killed, orchestrating this entire fucking thing that brought the gods back.
I didn’t blame Asher for his animosity. I would probably never trust Connor—brother or not—but right now we needed to work together.
“How do we find the book, then?” Ilia asked, exasperation tinging her tone. “There’s got to be ten thousand books in here. I’m guessing we don’t have time to go through them one by one.”
Mab fluttered closer, coming to rest on Asher’s shoulders. Disloyal little fairy already loved him. The two of them hit it off in their thirty-second introduction. “If you describe it to me, I might be able to help,” she said snootily in her powerful little voice.
Connor cleared his throat, withering under Mab’s angry stare. She hated Connor. “It’s written by the mother of all. The writing glows gold and can only be read by a god.” He met my gaze. “Or demigod.”
I immediately wanted to read this book. Just to see if Connor was right.
Unfortunately, Mab didn’t shoot up in the air with a triumphant expression on her face. She looked confused, blinking as her eyes went hazy. I could almost see the gears turning in her brilliant mind as she ran through the catalogue of books in this library.
“Maybe,” she finally murmured before flying off Asher’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s in the section I can’t access.”
Hello? What section?
“You’ve never mentioned it to us,” I said, trying not to accuse the most powerful fairy queen of something, but also a tad annoyed that she’d kept that information to herself.
She didn’t take offense. “You know when you need to know. That’s mostly how information works. Until this moment, you didn’t need that section.”
Uh-huh, right. More obscure fairy speak.
With no time to waste, we filed after her as she crossed the library to a far shelf. I’d been over that shelf multiple times, and while it wasn’t impossible that I’d missed a book, the probability was low. When she reached the shelf, Mab reached forward and gently stroked her finger along one spine. The book started to shake, rattling the books next to it. Mab then flew up to the higher shelf and did the same thing with another book up there. Over and over she did this, stroking the spines of certain books, setting them to shake and rattle.
I watched with fascination, waiting to see what was going to happen next. I might go to a magic school, but this shit was straight out of my library fantasies. If this shelf rotated into a secret hidden stairway, I’d probably scream in happiness.
Mab flew back. I counted eleven books shaking. “How did you know to do that?” I whispered.
Mab tilted her head at me, gossamer wings moving so fast I couldn’t see them. “I felt power from these particular books, so I experimented. Pulling the books out, reading them, placing them all together. It took me years to unlock the code.”
Asher shifted closer, his eyes locked on the shelf that was trembling even harder, other books falling to the floor until only the eleven remained.
“What’s the code?” he asked.
Mab’s voice was filled with power. “Read the spines. Read the letters.”
We all moved closer, and I finally noticed that instead of an author name or title, there was only a single Atlantean symbol on the base of the spine. I hadn’t seen that before.
“What are the letters?” I asked.
