She felt it the same way she had in the cavern. It hovered all around her, just waiting for her to reach out and use it. Rather than fall into it like last time, she touched it gently in her mind’s eye, allowing the warm, tingling feel of it to spread through her. She sensed herself first, the way you see yourself in a dream. Pushing out farther, she detected four people in the tower, as well as a leopard spirit.
This must have been how Allaster knew she had been outside the portal room but why he didn’t constantly know her location—he had to actively access the magic to sense her. Which was how she realized he was now halfway down the stairs without her.
Rolling her eyes, she focused wholly on him—then snapped her fingers. Everything twisted, then straightened, and she reappeared at his side. He flinched, slamming back into the stairwell, and she realizedthat it must have been a while since he’d had anyone else around who could do this.
“You have to know by now that you can’t run out on giving me answers,” she said as he peeled himself off the wall with a glower.
Something shifted in his expression, and he looked almost pained when he asked, “Why do you care?” He ran a hand through his hair, his movements frenetic. “I realize I may have jumped to … conclusions … about you when we first met, and that you are not the Kalish zealot I expected, but you actually sound like you’re genuinely interested in all of this.”
The question stole the smile from her lips, as sobering as a shock of cold water. Because her questionshadbeen genuine, her excitement as real as the beat of her heart. She had felt, if only for a moment, what those short few years with her parents had been like, full of magic and curiosity, with no one to tell her she was wrong. But itwas. This life wasn’t for her; it was a means to an end.
This is what you do, came Loraya’s warning.You lose yourself to the game and leave me with the consequences.
I won’t, Kasira promised. It was because of Loraya that Kasira had stayed alive as long as she had, because of her that Kasira had made it through the orphanage, through Belvar and the Malikinar. Loraya kept her alive, a beacon that lit her path, and this place was doing everything within its power to make her forget that.
She had failed Loraya once already. She would not do it again.
“I suppose I am,” she replied at last, her excitement contained. “I’ve always had a thing for stories, and this place is full of them.”
Truth.
“Besides,” she added, “this is my life now. My duty. I will see it done right.”
A wry smile curled his lips, but it quickly soured, and he leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “Give it a few decades. At best, you’ll come to resent it. At worst …” He trailed off, his jaw working, and she didn’t know if it was the implication of worse or that decades would be meaningless to her if she stayed that sent a shiver down her spine.
“Am I like you now?” she asked. “Ageless?”
“So long as you stay at Amorlin,” he replied. “Our powers weaken the farther we get from it, though they will never leave you entirely. However, you will age with prolonged distance.”
Kasira didn’t know what to make of that. For all that she had worked to avoid it, she had neverfeareddeath—and she had found herself on its doorstep more than once—but the idea that she would never age stood in stark contrast with the day-by-day survival that had become her life. For so long, she had been focused on staying alive, and now she had been endowed with the ability to live a prolonged life—for some reason, that terrified her.
How long would it take for the power to fade once she left the Library? Would she crave it once she found her house by the lake, or be thankful for its absence? She tapped each finger against her thumb, feeling the spark of magic beneath her skin. This sense of connection, of place, it was new to her in a way she didn’t know what to make of, and some traitorous part of her didn’t want to let it go.
You don’t have a choice, came Loraya’s voice, softer this time.Either you finish this job, or you spend the rest of your life in Belvar. Either way, this isn’t something you can have.
Allaster spun a ring about his finger, his gaze set somewhere on the stairs below them as a muscle flexed in his jaw. Her gaze dropped to the ring. She had yet to find any information about the substance in the Library, but she was sure now that he was wearing more of them than before.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked and watched his expression shutter. It was more of a tell than a denial would have been. “Does it have something to do with why your magic has been acting strange?”
“There is nothing wrong with my magic,” he replied defensively. “Anyway, come with me. It’s time you fully understood why I was so concerned about you being a Kalish spy.” He offered her his hand, and she obliged. It wasn’t until they had disappeared that she remembered he didn’t actually have to touch her to take her with him.
They reappeared in his study, Kasira stumbling over a stack ofbooks and very nearly crushing a small glass statuette of a beast. Allaster released her, navigating the clutter with the ease of someone who had lived with it for far too long.
“What’s with all the figurines?” She made a point of looking as though the office’s clutter surprised her. “This room is a death trap.”
Allaster paused with his back to her, silent. Then he said simply, “They belonged to Mora.”
The solemnity in his voice silenced her next question:And you kept them?There had to be hundreds of them scattered throughout the room. Little glass birds in mid-flight, feathered Relins, even one long-tailed Zeras, but mostly birds.
Allaster pulled back the curtain she had hidden behind the day she broke in, revealing a map tacked to the wall above the armoire, and beside that … nothing. The door she had fled through was gone, with only smooth stone in its place. Why had the Library helped her escape that day? Why had it given her this magic knowing full well what she intended to do?
Trying not to feel overwhelmed by her endless questions, she picked her way across the room to join Allaster. The map wasn’t the first she had seen of its kind, with the Library’s island in the center surrounded by the six nations. The ice kingdom of Avaria dominated the top, cut off by the Terasor Mountains. Below it rested Kalthos on the left and the four-queen nation of Ayador on the right, with the desert lands of Jacara below it. Allaster’s home of Miraval hovered beneath Kalthos, with Riviair at the southern tip of the continent. The Seven Veils River split the continent from north to south, funneling straight around the Library and out into the Halien Sea.
What was unusual were the circles around Jacara, Kalthos, and Amorlin in bright red ink. There were also several X’s along the Miravi-Kalish border and the edge of Kalthos where it met the Seven Veils, and she remembered Ambric’s mention of the border skirmishes between Miraval and Kalthos. There were similar markings on Amorlin’s river border with Jacara.
“What does this have to do with me not being a spy?” she asked.
Gesturing at the red X’s along the Miravi border, he said, “Theseare locations where the Kalish have pressed into Miravi territory. Nothing drastic, just enough to get my brother’s attention. In exchange for a shipment of vylor weapons and a promise to remove their troops from the border, he’s been advocating their interests to me.”
