Despite his having ensured the room was empty, they arrived to the sounds of an argument. He very nearly sent Nyelle back to his study before he recognized May’s insistent tones trailing from the infirmary next door.
“Please, Taya, just a little longer,” she begged. “I know this has been difficult—”
“Difficult? I’ve been handling everything on my own while you play nurse to an overgrown child.”
Nyelle pressed a hand to her mouth, smothering what Allaster suspected was a laugh. He gestured pointedly at the Kalish door, and she approached it.
“You were meant to be home weeks ago.” Taya’s voice softened to the point of breaking. “It’s getting harder to believe you care half as much for me as this place.”
“I do, Taya,” May promised. “I—”
Allaster ripped open the Kalish door as loudly as he could, allowingit to bang into the wall behind it. The conversation in the room beyond cut off, the couple appearing in the infirmary’s entryway after Nyelle had crossed through the portal, the door shutting in her wake.
“Taya.” Allaster greeted her with a rigid smile.
“Librarian,” Taya returned with equal severity. Tall and long-limbed, with dark skin and coils of black hair pulled back into a tail, she had the grace and build of a dancer, with none of one’s subtlety. A retired soldier from the Jacari Guild, she was twice as deadly as she was intelligent, and only May’s intervention kept her from grinding Allaster into little, tiny pieces each time he upset her wife.
Taya looked to May, who sighed and opened the Riviairen door. May stepped forward as if to kiss Taya goodbye, but Taya was already moving, pulling the door shut behind her. May stared after her, her hands quivering.
After a moment in which Allaster forcibly talked himself down from vanishing on the spot, he asked, “Is something wro—”
“I’m leaving.” May’s voice wavered, but the look she gave him did not. “I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time, but I couldn’t. Not since …”
“You found out the truth,” he finished softly.
It hadn’t been long after Mora’s death. The transformation had come upon him so suddenly, and it had taken him time to find the right balance of henolite to subdue it without interfering with his magic. May had found him in his study, clawed and fanged, and in the absence of an Assistant in whom to confide, he had told his First Mage everything.
May nodded stiffly. “Taya and I had a plan. After my mother became too ill to run the bakery, we decided to take it over together.” She did not say the rest, did not tell him how badly she wanted to go, though he could see it written on her face. He’d known May’s love of the Library had dimmed a little the day Mora died. Known that the sway this place once had over her had faded, and that in time, she would move on from it.
He just hadn’t realized it would be so soon.
“She’s been handling it alone while I tie up things here, but I told her I would leave weeks ago.” May’s voice trembled. “She doesn’t understand why I’m delaying.”
Nor could she. All May could offer Taya were vague explanations, promises that something important was happening at the Library, something she had only to get through and then she could depart. Because May, like him, put the Library first. Before herself, before her future. It was why he’d trusted her with the truth.
May wrapped one arm about her middle, the other pressed to her mouth as she spoke between her fingers. “She thinks there’s someone else.”
Allaster had not been lying when he told Eirlana that it had been a very long time since he had been someone’s friend. He’d needed to be May’s, but he’d been too much a coward to face that truth. For everything that she had done for him, for the Library, for all the weight she had shouldered in his stead, he had let her deflect his questions about her wellbeing, let them both pretend everything was fine, too overwhelmed by the enormity of his own troubles to give another’s the attention they deserved.
But more than that, he didn’t know how to comfort her when her pain was his fault.
If she didn’t go soon, she could lose Taya. It was because of her wife that May had clawed her way out of the pit Mora’s death had cast them both into, and he understood now that only he kept her tethered to its edge. But losing May meant losing the one person who knew the truth, the only one he could fully rely on. For as much as Allaster had accepted Eirlana as his Assistant, entrusting her with his transformation was something else altogether. Because it was more than just the knowledge of his curse that he withheld from her.
It was something much, much worse.
This time, there was no mistaking the burn of the magic. It seared beneath his skin like a living flame, preying on his fear, on him, on the precious few moments he had left. He knew what he ought to say. Knew he ought to tell May to go, to save herself. But withouther, more than just his life would be in danger. Until he knew for certain that he could tell Eirlana everything, he needed May. The Library needed her, and he would not fail it.
So instead he asked a question he should have asked long ago. “What do you need, May?”
She looked at him, the answer evident in her dark eyes, and the only thing she wouldn’t ask for. So she swallowed it back. Visibly locked it away, like he had everything he’d dared to want since Mora died, and said, “A couple days to myself. I need to talk to Taya. Can you handle things?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, even as fangs curved against his lip. “And I will get you home soon, May. I promise.”
But first, he needed to find out who Eirlana Corynth really was.
CHAPTER 21
KASIRA
