She studied herself in the mirror as she dressed. Her already milky skin looked even paler, and there were deep shadows under her green eyes, sharpening her prominent cheekbones. And yet somehow, she looked more like herself than she had in years. There was something in her gaze, something she didn’t know how to name, that felt familiar, like sliding on a well-worn sweater.
She downed both tea and scone and joined Allaster outside her room a few minutes later. “Are you ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. He scowled and snapped them again. The world slid away, the transition so smooth that she knew for sure this time that he’d been making it intentionally rough before.
They reappeared in one of the artifact rooms, nearly atop a glass case. Kasira stumbled away from it. “Did you mean to do that?”
Allaster drew a steadying breath, wrapped his long fingers around her wrist—which she noticed so starkly because his rings were impossibly cold andnotbecause some inane part of her snapped awake when his fingers met her skin—and very decisively snapped again.
This time they appeared in a crumbling cavern ringed in jagged natural balestone. The silver-blue light illuminated a platform with a white marble basin, a shallow line of clear water gleaming in it. Old stains indicated the water level had once been much higher and had depleted over time, though she didn’t see any rivulets or trails in the ground to suggest it had escaped.
Roots thicker than her arms hung from the ceiling above the pool,nearly cocooning it. A few of the tips dipped below the water. She traced them up to the stone of the cavern’s roof, where they disappeared, and she suspected she knew where they came out again: at the very top of the cliff overhanging the Library, where the single, leafless tree sat, its branches like yearning arms.
“This is the heart of the Library,” Allaster said as he stepped up beside the basin. Piles of deteriorated stone lined the perimeter and tumbled down the edge to gather in the crevice where the platform met the ground. Some were pieces of a mural painted long ago, others the last remnants of a guardrail that had encircled the basin. The whole place had the air of something fine left to fester and die.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“We aren’t certain,” Allaster replied grimly. “Some believe it was an attack on the Library; others, simply old age.”
“And none of you have had the time to right it?”
He stiffened, turning away. “There’s no point. Now, come over here.”
Ignoring the way his order made her bristle, she joined him on the platform, a flutter of nerves beating in her breast. Though this was a piece of the plan, and though some part of her curiosity swelled at the possibility of magic, she couldn’t quite silence the quiet voice in the back of her mind that whispered,What if the priests were right?What if taking this magic damned what little of her soul remained?
“How does this pool relate to me learning magic?” She crouched to inspect the basin. The water had a faint silver gleam to it that she couldn’t tell if it was from the balestone or emitting from the water itself.
“You drink from the pool. If the Library accepts you, it will grant you magic.”
“And if it doesn’t accept me?” She peered up at him, and he stared back with a crooked twist of his lips.
“It kills you.”
Kasira nearly slipped into the basin. The silver water suddenly looked twice as menacing as any beast-infested swamp as she scrambled to her feet. “What happened tonotkilling me?”
Allaster folded his arms. “I don’t make the rules, Corynth. Thewater will test you. If it finds you wanting, it will destroy you to protect the Library’s secret. No one must know about the pool save the Librarian and their Assistant.”
She regarded him plainly. “So you’ve accepted me as your Assistant?”
His jaw shifted. “I have.”
“Or,” she countered, “you realized this solves your problem. Either I’m a Kalish spy here to befoul the Library, or I’m worthy of being your Assistant. One way, the magic kills me, the other, you can finally stop watching your back. Both ways, you win.”
Allaster’s face betrayed none of his thoughts. He merely stepped back from the pool and swept a hand toward it. “Drink or don’t; it’s your decision.”
Kasira regarded the silver liquid with no small amount of apprehension. This was what she had come for, but she hadn’t anticipated risking her life for it. She was no friend of the Library, and it would know that. It would test her and find her wanting, like everyone always did. It was hard to be enough when you always had one foot out the door and never looked back.
But if she refused to drink, she would never truly become the Assistant Librarian, and Vera would see her back in Belvar by the week’s end. She could run, but it meant a life of never stopping, of always looking over her shoulder. It meant giving up on her dream of the cottage, of breaking her promise irrevocably, just another endless rhythm like the Malikinar.
Her gaze flitted to Allaster, who stared stonily back at her. If Amorlin sought to kill her, would he step in?Couldhe, or would the Library overpower him to protect itself? There was still so much she didn’t know. So much left to discover. And beneath her fear and apprehension, beneath the guise she wore, there was a part of her that wanted to know.
Dropping to her knees, she scooted to the edge of the pool and peered down. Even with the balelight, the water held no reflection. As she dipped her cupped hand beneath the surface, she felt nothing. No resistance, no wetness. It was like grasping silk, or the way she imagined clouds would feel. She lifted it to her lips and drank.
It started as a gentle warmth in her gut, almost pleasant, and she went to stand. Then it changed. A vicious heat surged through her, and she cried out, her knees striking the hard stone, but she barely noticed the pain for the roaring fire in her veins. It filled her from head to toe, worse than any fever, worse than any flame, and some distant, intact part of her brain thought:This was a mistake.
Then the visions started.
She saw a flash of a pearl-white face, a woman screaming, flames dancing in the background, but it was like peering through distorted glass. It shifted, and she saw her seven-year-old self roaming the streets of the Kalish capital with the other urchins, begging. Always begging. Until the priests took her in, and she met Loraya, who taught her to take instead. She saw her street mate: thin limbed and bright-eyed, a perpetual smile on her rosebud lips.
She had died wearing that smile.
