And reading some more.
The books were thorough. Painfully so. Orcs were covered in exhausting detail—tribal structures, battle strategies, the kinds of magic they tolerated versus the kinds they despised. The mondo boar entries were unsettling in a different way, filled with diagrams and notes about armor grown rather than forged, creatures bred for endurance and momentum.
Woodland creatures were a mixed bag. Allies sometimes. Enemies often. Never neutral.
I learned a great deal.
None of it helped.
Because every answer circled back to the same place. Force. Territory. Conquest. These books explained how orcs moved, fought, and survived.
They didn’t explain why they were moving now.
I pushed my chair back with a sigh and pressed my fingers to my temples.
“This isn’t it,” I said quietly. “This isn’t quite what I need. Although it was all very useful.”
A sprite hovered near my shoulder, tilting its head, then zipped away and returned with another book, setting it carefully in front of me.
Motivations of the Power-Hungry.
I snorted. “That’s a little on the nose.”
I opened it.
The pages were full of broad theories and cautionary tales, all variations on the same theme. Control. Legacy. Fear of being forgotten. Fear of losing relevance. Fear of death.
I read through the chapters until my eyes blurred, made it to the end, and closed the book gently.
“That’s not enough,” I whispered. “Close but not quite.”
The library remained quiet, but not empty. I could feel it listening, waiting for me to ask the right question instead of the urgent one.
Footsteps sounded behind me then, light and familiar.
“Mom?”
I turned, and Celeste stood at the edge of the reading area, her expression careful, like she wasn’t sure whether to interrupt or join. Her hair was pulled back loosely, her eyes bright with curiosity that hadn’t dulled even after everything she’d seen.
And in her open palm sat a very annoyed toad.
Her dad.
He ribbited sharply as if to underline his displeasure at being carried into a library. He had never been a man who enjoyed reading.
I laughed despite myself. “You brought him.”
She shrugged. “He wouldn’t stop hopping toward the stairs. I figured if he was going to follow me anyway, I might as well keep an eye on him. Little did he know this is where we’d be.”
The toad puffed up indignantly.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “This is a no-hopping zone, and quite frankly, we can’t trust you not to pee on the pages.”
He blinked.
Celeste stepped closer, peering at the piles of books. “Research?”
“Yes,” I said. “And failing spectacularly.”
