Eventually, she drew a slow, deliberate breath and retook her seat. “The news about Elyae will not go over well. Kasira was right that the mages already feel distanced from you, and this will only further that. You can’t keep avoiding them while Thane weaves lies for them.”
Allaster’s hand curled into a fist. “I’m trying to protect them.”
“They don’t understand that. To them, you just don’t care. They gave you space after Mora, but now …” She trailed off, perhaps recognizing there was no sense in saying what he already knew. What they both knew.
Mora had been Librarian for over a hundred and twenty years. Everyone here had been personally selected by her, had lived and worked alongside her as a friend and mentor. Her death had hit them all hard. But they didn’t know what he did about how she had died, and they never could. Not if the Library was to survive what was to come.
So May and Allaster carried that pain alone. He gave it its own chamber in his heart and held it close, a reminder of why he did what he did, of why he kept himself apart.
Because soon, they would lose him too.
“It won’t be much longer,” he admitted. “It’s getting worse, May.”
She regarded him with unguarded sorrow, and he restrained the urge to tell her not to worry. They were past such hollow platitudes. They had promised each other the truth long ago, when Mora’s body was not yet cold.
“You have to tell Kasira.” She said it so simply, as if the words would not condemn them both, wouldn’t shatter everything he had worked so arduously to hold together.
As if they weren’t the very reason he could never act on what he felt.
“I will,” he agreed. “Soon.”
ALLASTER REMAINED INhis office long after May departed, until the flames of the fire died into embers and went cold. It felt as though everything he had worked for was slipping through his fingers, and he was running out of time to mitigate the damage. How long did he have left? Days? Weeks?
He could feel the beast writhing beneath his skin, feel its desperation to take over. When Mora had turned, the transformation had torn her apart, body and mind. There had been nothing left of the woman he had known for over a century.
There would be nothing left of him.
His office door clicked open, and he sensed Nyelle before he sawher. She approached him with a file in hand and set it softly on his desk. “Everything I could find on Kasira Vitalis.”
He took the folder reluctantly, already regretting his decision to ask for it. The idea of fully placing his trust in Kasira still left him unsteady, but after what had happened in Spenshire, this felt less like due diligence and more like a betrayal. But he had told May he would share the truth of his curse with Kasira, and if he was going to do that, he had to know.
Flipping open the file, he flicked quickly through the sparse pages within. There was little about her before her sentencing to Belvar, and the information after talked only of her time in the Malikinar until she deserted. But he found what he was looking for on the last page, the knowledge slotting into place like a book onto its shelf.
“She worked for him,” he said. “Thane.”
“She did.” Nyelle eyed him carefully, before taking her customary chair. “But she also turned him in. Whatever existed between them before, I highly doubt it survived that.”
“I would like to believe that, but you didn’t see the way she looked at him.” It had been the look of someone who had found something familiar in a sea of strange. And the way he had spoken of her …
Whatever story existed between them, it was still being written.
A sly smile quirked Nyelle’s lips. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you sounded jealous.”
Allaster shut the folder with a scowl. “It’s a good thing you do know better then.”
But did he?
Unbidden, he thought of their sparring sessions, of the moment between them in the portal room after Spenshire, when she had left her hand in his. She probably thought he didn’t remember, but his skin was branded by her touch, and if he was honest with himself, that was the very reason he hadn’t called off Nyelle’s search.
Because his emotions were clouding his decisions, and that was not a mistake he could afford to make.
Nyelle gave him an almost pitying look. “You should know that Ambassador Vera is making quite a show of campaigning againstKasira at court. She’s painting her as a con artist and a thief who’s stolen Kalthos’s rightful choice for Assistant. She’s blaming you for not turning her over.”
“I can’t, even if I wanted to.” Not without giving Vera the opportunity to plant a pawn who would become Librarian after him. “She knows that.”
“If you agreed to relieve Kasira of her position, it would go a long way toward weakening Vera’s claim against you,” Nyelle pressed, ever the diplomat. She had always been the counterweight to Allaster’s emotions when they were together, a tension that often caused the arguments that inevitably led to the end of their relationship. “It would also do me a fair turn to be able to claim I persuaded you.”
Allaster’s grip tightened around the file, nearly folding it in two. “She is the Assistant Librarian of Amorlin, Nyelle. For better or for worse.”
