Hard knocks rattled the door. I considered letting whoever it was rot there. But the knocks softened and persisted,tapping at my patience until I pushed myself from my sanctuary to confront the disturbance. ‘What?’
‘Shit. Bad time?’ Miriam’s eyes, a sharp, smoky red, met mine when I yanked the door open.
Drawing a long breath, I tried to fan the bitterness from my chest and cursed the fates for sending the one person who treated me the nicest. ‘A little bit. I’m partaking in a therapeutic exercise.’
The red of her eyes brightened as they widened, excitement spilling into every line of her face. ‘I love therapeutic exercises! What exactly do you do? I dabble in meditation.’
Fun.
‘I dabble in reliving my traumas until they no longer bother me.’
‘And how is that working out for you?’ she asked, her voice carrying a flicker of curiosity beneath a faint, unsettled note.
Her troubled expression could make me snort. ‘You’ll be the first to know when it starts working.’
‘Since you’re in a contemplative mood, want to see where I go to think?’ she asked, hand outstretched in quiet expectation.
How could I say no?
When we stepped through the shadows to emerge somewhere entirely different, I noticed everyone seemed to have their own brand of darkness.
Like fire of varying hues, their shadows differed in texture and shade, in the way they brushed against the skin. Miriam’s felt like a hug, a comforting contrast to her brother’s or the professor’s. The link between personality and shadow-craft intrigued me.
We landed in a small, carpeted foyer where posters and fliers jostled for space on every wall. The air was thick with the musty sweetness of wood and glue, a scent I welcomed with near relief.
Nostalgia hit like a tide as my eyes swept the stout wooden shelves, home to thousands of books. Leather covers, hardcovers, and paperbacks, some in binders and others left open on the desk in the middle of the room for repair.
The scent alone could have knocked me to my knees. A paradise.
Miriam cast me a questioning look, as if she struggled to gauge my opinion on her space. I found it ridiculous. ‘Your thinking place is where I would go to get lost and not think.’
A soft smile of relief stretched her blood-red lips. ‘But books lead to reflections, no?’
No. ‘For me, they’re a form of escapism. I travel between worlds, running away from reason. I’m troubled by enough reflections as it is.’
‘Fair enough. Do you like it then?’ she asked, running her manicured fingers along bundles of poems. Some I had read, some I had heard of, and some were completely foreign.
‘That’s an understatement. Before my adventure in Fogoya, people laughed that I was chained to my castle’s library.’
My remark seemed to send Miriam into deep thought. She really meant it when she said this was where she came to think. ‘Not everyone gets it. We live a thousand lives in those pages. Imagine being so lucky.’
‘I’m self-aware enough to know it’s a coping mechanism for me. Why would you want to escape your life?’ I was beginning to wonder whether her cheerfulness was a cover to hide what lurked beneath—a darker side she didn’t dare reveal, possibly even to herself.
‘Fulfilment is a tricky matter. Even when you have what others would kill for, it’s not always enough.’
‘What would you kill for?’ I breathed the place in, feeling my flames calm down at last. The familiarity soothed me.
‘A lot. Though I’m not sure murder could help with what I crave.’
‘What is it?’ I pressed, trying to understand where her discontent came from.
Putting back the book she was studying, grief replaced her usual happiness. ‘I crave a family, Ava.’
‘But you have a family.’
‘I crave a child. A husband who’ll cherish me and the little family we build. A small house with a picket fence, tangled with stubborn plants that will vex me as much as they charm. And a dog—faithful and warm—to keep me company when I retreat into my books.’
Her dreams seemed so attainable, but I couldn’t understand her despair. Not when she was so close to achieving it anyway. ‘You’re engaged, right? You can have all that.’
