“Spiced chocolate, straight from the Kalish capital,” Allaster confirmed, setting the package down on a clean spot on the counter. They had each of them their vices; May’s just happened to be sweets from the one kingdom that detested them. He made a point of procuring her some each time he visited.
“We can chop it up and put it in the dough,” May told him. “Though I’ll need to adjust the water ratio to account for it. Here.” She grabbed a knife, cutting the dough in half and handing it to him. “We’ll do half plain. You can knead that one.”
And though he had a hundred and one other things to do, his weariness heavy in his bones, he did as she said and got to work.
ALLASTER WAS UPthe next morning with the sun. He rarely slept past its rise, if he managed to sleep at all, nightmares of Mora’s death an ever-present bedfellow. It took three cups of Iylis’s strongest tea to even nudge his brain into motion, but by the fourth, he was up and moving, ready for another day spent scouring the library’s shelves for answers about his curse.
Each day of searching was another day the magic rooted deeper inside him, another day his hopes of finding answers dimmed a little more. His transformation, his magic—they were tied to Amorlin, but in a place as ancient as this, so much had been lost to time and forgotten places, and he had been looking for so very long.
There had been a time when he rose early each morning to spend the day deep among the shelves, poring over Lady Val En’s original journals from the Second Naming, when she discovered over thirtynew species of beasts, or Lord Hensley’s work of formal categorization, where he began organizing beasts into groups based on species. Each Librarian before him had contributed so much to its history, its knowledge; he had barely been Librarian for a year, and the greatest mark of his tenure was the arrival of a Kalish zealot.
Sighing, he reached for the magic and snapped his fingers. It resisted at first, tugging against him like a stubborn mule, before giving way to transport him to the main library. It had been doing that a lot lately, yet another strange behavior in a long line of the Library’s recent oddities. Vanishing rooms, hearths that refused to light, leopard spirits found staring off into space as if they had forgotten their tasks. Even the mages had begun to notice, and none of Allaster’s assurances succeeded in allaying their concerns.
The Library was more vulnerable than ever right now.
He appeared in the main library beside his lectern, already reaching for the book he’d left there late last night—and stopped.
Eirlana was there.
She was seated at his favorite table by the fire. Reading his books.
Only May’s voice from last night stopped him from teleporting her to some dark corner of the catacombs.If there is even a chance that she isn’t what you think…
May was right. Heknewshe was right, and yet everything inside him warned him to be careful with Eirlana Corynth, lest he find her claws at his throat. Yet here she was, surrounded by stacks of books on beasts, nibbling absently at a scone as she flipped through page after page, consuming words with a voracious appetite.
Genuine study as her duty demanded, or a means of arming herself against them? She looked so relaxed, her obsidian hair loose about her shoulders and limned with blue from the morning light. It reminded him of the mornings he used to spend by the fire, reading about faraway beasts for nothing but the pure joy of it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way about a book.
The last time he’d done anything simply because he wanted to.
Don’t be a fool, he told himself.She’s just reading.
And yet, watching her, he couldn’t help but feel as though it wassomething more for her. Something that made it almost possible for him to imagine her a mage, almost imagine that she was the Assistant he needed. But he required more than books, more than words, if he was going to risk everything on her.
She lifted her head, and in the instant before she turned to look, he vanished. But she was there again the next morning, and the one after that, as if determined to ruin his every day. He used the opportunities to observe her from afar, watching as the other mages went from eyeing her like beasts with their hackles raised to absorbing her presence as inevitable.
One of the mages even invited her to sit with them. The question seemed to startle Eirlana, who politely declined, looking uncomfortable. Embarrassment, or concern about being found out? He saw a double meaning in her every action, her every word, and all the while he was losing time he didn’t have.
Something prodded his leg, and he glanced down to find a leopard spirit waiting patiently. Iylis often sent them to fetch him, and he followed this one through the shelves and up the spiraling ramp, where he found Iylis shelving volumes in a side room.
The spirit vanished as Iylis pointed his tail at a thick tome he’d left in the bay window. “That one appeared this morning,” the snow leopard said as, around him, books floated back to their shelves, slotting neatly among their fellows. “I think one of the spirits incorrectly shelved it ages ago. Useless, the lot of them.”
“Iylis,” Allaster began as he picked up the book, “youareone of them.”
“You have no proof of that.”
Allaster didn’t press him. He and Iylis had had many a conversation of that nature across the decades, and all Iylis would tell Allaster was that he and the leopard spirits had always been there, and the spirits had always been incompetent. At this point, Allaster couldn’t tell if Iylis was obscuring the truth or if he’d simply forgotten it.
He left Iylis to his shelving, returning the way he’d come and already flipping through the book. It was a collection of historical accounts from Avaria, one of the few texts they had on the isolatedkingdom, which was also the home of the first Librarian. Iylis had been pulling every book he found related to Avaria, but none had contained the information Allaster sought about his curse.
As he reached the bottom of the ramp, something flashed in the corner of his vision, and he looked up in time to walk face-first into a tower of books. All but a few crashed noisily to the ground, taking his volume with it, and revealing a flustered Eirlana on the other side.
“Saints,” he muttered. “You really are everywhere, aren’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed in a blend of affront and dismissal only a noble could affect. “You have a problem with me reading now?”
“I have a problem with everything,” he muttered, bending down to reach for his book—at precisely the same moment she did. Her fingers brushed his and he jerked back, but she hardly seemed to notice as she organized everything into a stack and stood, her movements as agitated as her tone.
“Is there anything I am allowed to do, or shall I stay shut up in my room until I rot?” she demanded.
