Then I lifted the top book—the history of Gostet Felix had disparaged—and held it to the flames.
As I had hoped, the node read the truth of the text, treating the printed author as a signatory.
I listened to the bells and whistled. “He knew what he was writing was that wrong and still published it? This book is nothing more than propaganda.”
Felix swished his tail over the marble floor. “I already told you that. It still doesn’t explain your comments.”
“Patience.” I set the false history book down and lifted the next book.
Also from the third floor of the library, that book was declared a work of fiction, though with benign intent, when I held it to the node. I went down the stack one by one and confirmed my theory. The books from the second floor were all truer than those from the third. And the ones from the first floor were the truest of all. My demonstration wasn’t quite perfect, as the order of books from the same floor didn’t always match the increasing levels of trueness, but how they were organized within a level was an experiment for later.
By the time I finished, I could see that Felix had figured it out. He gaped at me. “That is the answer? All this time, the library has been organized by trueness?”
“I bet it is the same system in the archives.”
“You’re probably right, but I’m not sure how that helps us.”
“If you remember what color you saw when Lady Cecily cast the curse, we can find it in the archives. Knowing the exact phrasing might help us figure out how to reverse it.”
“It can’t hurt.” Felix looked up at me with wide eyes. “But can we eat first?”
Twenty-Six
Felix
???
Isa finished hermeal quickly, rolling her eyes at me as I lingered over my plate of chicken. It wasn’t until she stood up and I insisted we enjoy dessert first that I consciously understood what I was doing.
I was stalling.
Finding Cecily's curse might not give us the answers we needed to break it, but it was by far the most promising lead we had. And I didn’t want to go into the archives and locate it, because if it led to a solution, Isa’s time at Rose Castle would end.
If I had to choose between staying a cat and losing Isa’s company, I suspected I’d choose to remain feline. Not that the ideal situation wasn’t enjoying Isa’s company while human once more, but I knew better than to expect such an outcome.
She didn’t hate me anymore, though. At least, I was fairly certain she didn’t. Perhaps if I had more time, I could get her to like me. I had moments of thinking she did, but I also knew that if the curse broke right this instant, she wouldn’t hesitate to return home. I wanted that hesitation. A chance to convince her to stay of her own free will.
When Isa rubbed at her sternum, I realized I had taken too long. The node was pulling at her, insisting she fulfill the terms of her contract even as I wished she wouldn’t.
I leapt from the table, now impatient to move and relieve her of that discomfort. “Let’s go.”
When we reached the archives, I paused. “We know the archives are arranged by trueness, but how does that help me find a particular scroll?”
“Look for the correct color. You can see the magic on the scrolls, can’t you?”
I shifted my focus to that odd state where I looked beyond the physical and studied the first row of shelves. Magic glinted everywhere, the power enough to make me dizzy if I studied it for too long. I blinked away my magical sight. “I can see magic, but it doesn’t look the same as when the flames change color. In fact, I didn’t see any colors at all.”
A crease formed between Isa’s brows. “Let’s try from deeper inside the archives.”
I let her lead the way, and when we stopped, I once more looked at the magic coating the scrolls. “It is all glittery and translucent. I feel like I’m seeing textures instead of colors.”
“Damn. I was hoping it would be different for you since you actually see magic. I don’t hear the same sort of bells as I do when truth-reading here, either. Probably because the scrolls are created by node magic. That takes over. But there are still differences from one scroll’s power to the next. We need to match what we can sense with the original truth-reading.”
“Why don’t we repeat your experiment from the library? We can take a few scrolls from different rows up to the node and see what it shows us.”
“Good idea.” Isa consulted the map she had referenced as we wandered deeper, pulling the pen I had enchanted for her out of her pocket. She grabbed a scroll, unrolled it just enough to read the signature, and made a mark on the map. I trailed behind her as shewandered the archives, stopping occasionally to pull out a scroll and mark the map. She piled a dozen scrolls in the crook of her arm before finding us a path out of the archives.
When we reached the great hall, we discovered she shouldn’t have bothered being so thorough. Nothing happened when she held the scrolls to the flames.
