I shake my head. Fine, I’m annoyed with him, and I hate his displeasure with me. All that glaring is getting to me. I wish he’d… look at me differently.
Oh Gods, what’s wrong with me? No, no. This is the last thing I need, to want more from this man.
“Give me the book,” he says, more softly.
“No.”
“You have to leave the book here. It’s the law of the library.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’m not putting Olm on that shelf.”
“How are you so convinced you are the one who got the serpent back into the book?” he asks. “What did he tell you? And you… Aline, what did you do?”
“Like you said, I made a promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE EGG AND THE SERPENT
ADELINE
“What in the ever-loving fuck?” Roane demands.
I grind my molars together. “I said what I said. I’m keeping the book.”
“You can’t! Didn’t you see the fucking serpent coming out of it?”
“I... I think Olm was scared. And what’s the point of leaving the book in here,” I jab my finger at the floor, “if I can’t leave anyway? If none of us can?”
“The point is to chain a fucking dangerous book!”
“What’s going on?” Ardruna demands.
“She’s lost her godsdamned mind,” Roane says, teeth bared. “She made a deal with the book.”
“A deal?” Ardruna turns to me. “What sort of a deal?”
“I’m not leaving the book here,” I say. “Would you have chained your dog and left?”
“Thanks for comparing me to an animal,” Olm mutters.
“This is fucking pointless.” With one last glare at me, Roane turns and stalks away. I watch him go, his tall form vanishing in the darkness.
Gods.Am I making a huge mistake?
Olm says, “Am I a mistake to you?”
I want to shake the book so hard his metaphorical teeth rattle. He unleashed a serpent on us. On Roane. Can’t he see it could be problematic for the people already convinced he should be chained?
“You can’t wander around with that book,” Ardruna says, right on cue. “This is where the books are kept. For a reason. They are bound. Then we lock the doors, which are reinforced with magic. When monsters escape the pages—and trust me, it happens a lot—we do our best to keep them inside this world, not giving them a chance to escape to the outer world and eat people.”
“To my world.”
“As you say,” she growls.
“I thought nobody can escape this place.”
“Can’t take any chances.”
