“Lark.” I say his name so forcefully, so resolutely, that he meets my eyes again. I don’t look away, like I often have. I don’t avoid him. The anger I had for him is feeble now, it’s almost pathetic. I was clinging tightly to a poisonous hatred that never did me any good. “It’s okay.”
I mean it.
He takes a deep breath in and his shoulders relax, like he’d been needing to hear that, like he’d been holding on to the pain just as tightly as I was.
“It’s okay,” I repeat. “Let me go.”
“You’re…” he says in disbelief, “you’re not looking at me the same.”
I study him, his eyes that match the color of the Lunarie’s petals, that dark blond hair that means nothing to me now. No, I don’t suppose I am.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s heavy, a storm denser than this fog.
“It’s okay.”
It’s the end of us, our story. From strangers, to lovers, to loathing. To nothing.
His hands loosen.
The woosh of an arrow shoots between us and my weight shifts back, almost toppling me over the edge of the wall. Lark reaches for his sword.
“Run!” Pigeon shouts from somewhere in the mist.
“I’ve got her pinned,” Howell bellows.
The shake of an explosion jolts the bridge and has me stumbling to a knee.
“QUICK, RUN!”
I don’t take one last look at Lark.
I lurch up and run headlong into the dissipating fog.
When I break through, Will is pacing. Tense. Almost ripping out his hair. Jeremy toes the grass in the open plain on this side of the bridge. I see them both and my heart aches, melts, gives way, and surrenders. I run right into Will’s open arms and breathe him in. He envelops me like I’ll vanish.
Behind us, as I plant myself in a safe embrace, rocks crunch and slide, and the bridge crumbles into the water, swept away like the remnants of the fog in the wind. Neither Pigeon nor the guards are to be seen. Only a crater of rubble parting the river remains, the fingerprints of waves already finding a new path onward, already moving on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’d stared at the water until the ripples remained behind every blink. Will had plunged his hands into the river, searching, trying to locate any sense of them, but said that water is an element not easily persuaded, and he’d never had an affinity for it like he has with the wind. If they survived, the current was strong enough to sweep them far, far away by now. Eventually, we agreed we needed to move on. If we find out what the queen and Morgana have planned for the wedding, perhaps we can save at least one person. Even if we couldn’t save those three.No.Don’t think like that.
Back on the saddle, the silence of the aftermath follows every hoofbeat.
“Pigeon will be okay, won’t she?” I whisper, my head slumped between Will’s shoulder blades. A question and not a question. A truth I don’t know.
“She’s survived much worse,” he says, but there’s a forced lightness to his tone, a concern he’s not letting himself dwell on. “That river leads to the citadel anyway, so we can always check on our way back, ride along the bank.”
“Yes, please.”
For any sign of her or Lark and Howell. Gods, in their metal chain mail, I can’t imagine how they could swim…
“We’re almost there,” Will says, and kicks in his heels to spur us on.
It feels wrong to be approaching the Library of Heris with such gloom in my chest. Knowing Morgana resides here has never made me eager to visit, but I’ve had a lifetime of listening to Card and his obsession with the place. He painted the grandest visions of tall domed ceilings that glistened like the stars on a crisp winter night; of bookshelves that grew like mosaic-decorated branches of a tree, crammed with all the knowledge one could possibly imagine; and more. Where the students could study and thrive and access the deepest, most intimate archives, and residents could dedicate their lives to research. He talked about it over and over, until it was imprinted on my mind like an impossibly impressive legend, growing more and more nonsensical as the years went by.
He was exactly right.
The Library stands like a bold mountain under a late-afternoon sky, surrounded by open green fields that make sure it isn’t obstructed. It’s possibly three, no four, times the size of Alrick Castle, and wildly more interesting. Where the castle has gray-stone walls and four smooth turrets, the Library has at least ten colossal domed towers, shining like the bricks have been stamped with golden sunlight, and pierced with windows in all kinds of shapes—some paper-thin strips of glass, some rainbow-filled circles, and one large dome in the center that holds a giant bronze telescope perfect for reading the sky.
