“I don’t lie,” he growls.
“Of course you do. You lie all the time. What about your name?”
“What about it?”
“Why did you change it? Don’t you like the sound of Ersil?”
His shoulders stiffen. “I don’t want to talk about Ersil.”
“About yourself, you mean?” I frown. “Strange way of putting it. Do you often refer to yourself in the third person?”
“I’m a strange man.” Finally, he lifts his hand with the ring and places it on the door. The door shivers and when he pushes, it opens easily. “After you.”
Casting him one last, withering look, I enter.
“Here we go again,” Olm sighs. “Was it all a ruse to bring me back here?”
“Not everything is about you,” I grumble, marching deeper into the sanctum. The lectern glows faintly, like Roane. “It may interest you to know that there are more important things for me to worry about.”
“Like this oaf of a librarian?”
“Like just about everything about this world.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
UNSTABLE WORLD
ADELINE
We’re inside the sanctum. A library inside a library, inside a library. The impossibility of it is screwing with my mind.
If only that were everything…
Roane stalks after me, exuding heat and light. The ring on his finger seems to pulse with a white glow, while he’s all shadows and golden glimmers.
The books whisper and shift on their shelves and in their niches. Slender chains clink and drag. It feels like… an aviary. I’d seen one at the royal palace, full of small birds flitting here and there, their wings fluttering.
Pages fluttering, as it turns out, sound quite similar, and the sense of this being a prison lingers.
However, these aren’t songbirds; they are dangerous portals into alternate worlds, I remind myself. No matter what Roane and his friends think, I’m able to grasp the concept. I may be reckless sometimes, but I do realize the hazard.
I’m aware. I won’t ever forget the serpent slipping out of Olm’s book and attacking us. That was a wake-up call, for sure.
Roane’s presence at my back is comforting. I smooth my hands over my bodice, over the gems and embroidery, then down over the tulle of the skirt. The dress he chose for me.
“You’re the kind of girl who should always dress in silk and gems.”
The stupid smile won’t leave my face. His taste lingers on my tongue. The memory of his mouth on mine, his hands possessively gripping me, the feel of his arousal pressed to my body, those moments stay with me, wrecking my train of thought.
Then I spot the lectern with the Book of Areon and I hurry up the dais steps to gaze at it. It’s still open on those two pages I glanced at last time.
Roane follows me up onto the dais. “Remember not to touch it. You’re not allowed to read that book. Come, let’s go.”
“You’ve never leafed through it?”
“No, and neither should you.”
“Are you saying this world may crumble if I undo the binding and read one more page?”
