“She talks too much!”
“You don’t like Wolfe.”
“Who does?”
“You don’t like Cillian.”
“He’s very arrogant.”
“Morton! You’re being a snob.”
He raised his chin. “No I’m not.”
I shook my finger at him. “If you want this castle to trust us, then you’re going to have to try and come out of your shell a little.”
Morton looked around, his tail curling behind him. “I don’t trust this place yet.”
“Fairwitch got attacked by the brotherhood too,” I said. “I think that at least makes us somewhat on the same side.”
My gaze swept around the room. The bookshelves were now all empty, ready to be cleaned. We were getting there. Slowly but surely.
“This place has secrets,” Morton said. “And until we find them, I’m perfectly content to stay in the library.”
I grabbed a rag and plunged it into a bucket, then marched toward one of the shelves. “What happens when people start visiting the library? Isn’t that the whole point of what we’re doing? So people can check out books and read and learn?” I pressed my hands together, swooning over the idea.
“If anyone can ever find this place. We came upon the library five days ago, and didn’t you just have dinner with Cillian yesterday, and he said he still couldn’t find this room? It’s only appearing for us.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, some of my excitement deflating. If that was the case, this would all be for nothing. I loved the library, but I wanted everyone to be able to access it. I stopped cleaning and set my elbows on the shelves. What games was this castle playing? Why would it reveal the library only to us and no one else?
“There we go,” Morton said, humming to himself as he inched along the shelf above mine, his rag now covered in dust. “I’ll never have to talk to anyone again.”
“Hypocrite,” I coughed into my rag.
Morton stopped, his shaggy eyebrows drawing together. “I am not a hypocrite. I stand by the fact that you should talk to people. You are people. I am not. I’m a bookwyrm, and I find most people to be wholly annoying.”
“What about me?”
He continued pushing the rag, almost to the end of the shelf. “I said ‘most.’ You are an exception.”
“While I appreciate that”—I put all my weight down on the rag to scrub a particularly stubborn stain—“I think you’re missing out on a lot of experiences.”
“I experience the world through books. Isn’t that what you said in the tower?”
It was hard arguing with a bookwyrm who had read thousands of books and had more knowledge than I could ever hope for tucked into that tiny brain of his.
“I also get to experience the world through you,” Morton said, finally getting to the end of the shelf and breathing heavily. “You still haven’t told me about the training session that almost killed you!”
The stain finally disappeared, and I moved on to cleaning the rest of the shelf as Morton slithered up the bookcase to the top shelf. “It didn’t almost kill me. I passed out from overexertion, but I’m fine now.”
His tongue stuck out and he hissed. “And you say people are trustworthy. That Rafe Wolfgang certainly doesn’t seem trustworthy.”
“He is!” I wasn’t sure why I sounded so defensive, but Morton raised his eyebrows, and I cleared my throat, softening my tone. “He’s a good trainer, and I’m excited to learn from him.”
“You’ve been training with him every day. You come to the library all sweaty, hair a mess, clothes rumpled. What are the two of you doing?”
At that description, an unbidden image flashed in my mind of Wolfe and me tangled in his sheets, his huge body hovering over mine, both of us sweaty, writhing...
“Why are you licking your lips like that?” Morton gasped. “Is that barbarian not giving you any water to drink?”
