“Why won’t you speak to the human?”
My ears perk, but I can’t hear any reply. Putting in a last burst of energy, I finally reach him falling into step with him and his pets. “Hey.”
He glances at me, as if surprised I’m now beside him instead of trailing far behind but offers no answer.
The snake in the grass, as well as the lioness and the raven, proved one thing: there is life in this world. I wonder…
“Are there people living here?” I ask, out of breath. “In this city?”
I think I won’t get anything more out of him, but he shakes his head. His eyes glimmer in the shadow of his hood. Does it mean he’s exasperated with me, or is that a no?
Wary of the lioness, I do my best to keep up, even if my feet are killing me. We walk through the streets which are covered in dirt and overgrown with weeds. Many houses are missing their doors and windows, and I see small animals scuttling inside.
Yeah, there is life in this world. Definitely.
“Where is the library building?” I gape right and left, feeling like a baby who sees the world for the first time. The houses may be falling apart but they were obviously rich once, porticos supported by marble pillars, walls covered in slabs of colorfulgranite, abandoned gardens turned into tangles of roses and thorns. “Is it nearby?”
It’s eerie. You’ll find similar houses lining the avenue leading to the palace in Siris, but in Siris you’ll also find trees planted along the way, gardens in full bloom, carriages rattling down the road, children running, birds flying, dogs wandering… This place feels like a graveyard.
“What happened here?” I whisper. “It’s as if the inhabitants abandoned the city one day and never returned.”
The lioness snuffles, nose in the air, and I jerk away, remembering how she had leaped at me.
A whistling sound comes from above, and I raise the book over my head to protect it, ignoring Olm’s indignant shriek.
But a hand grabs me and hauls me away, pulling me up a flight of wide steps and into an abandoned house.
“What is…?” I have to swallow to get some moisture into my mouth as the librarian drags me further inside, over broken tiles with weeds sprouting in the cracks and trees growing through the windows. “What was that? We’re inside a mountain, it can’t be… Was that a dragon?”
With a growl, he swings me around and pushes my back to a wall.“Fuck.”He’s panting, his broad chest rising and falling, splotches of red on his cheeks. “It wasn’t a dragon. It was a griffin. Why did you come here?”
He’s glaring down at me, and from up close, his eyes are a frosty gray edged with blue. They look almost too pretty to be real, as is his hard-jawed face with those sharp cheekbones. The scar somehow adds to that air of beautiful danger.
His hood has fallen back all the way, revealing the sharp points of his ears. His hair had seemed short, but now I see a long dark braid hanging over one shoulder.
His words take long moments to sink in and then I glare at him. “You can talk?”
He rolls his eyes a little, as if to say,Yes, isn’t that obvious?but that’s it.
“As for why I came, it was for this book, remember?” I shake it in his face, struggling to shrug off my shock. “I told you that already.”
“You’re right,” he says evenly after a long moment. “You did.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me before, Ersil?” I didn’t mean to sound so accusing, but that was rather rude.
“I’d rather you called me Roane,” he replies instead. His voice is low and grave, just like his laughter.
“Roane?”
His gaze is unflinching. “That’s the name I go by now.”
Roane.Honestly, it suits him much better than Ersil. And also… “Wait, griffins? In here?”
He blinks thick, dark lashes, which are as distracting as his mouth, so soft and wide, and… “You need to leave.”
“Um.” As he steps away, I fight to regroup my thoughts. “What?”
“This place is dangerous.”
