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I smile down at the cover. “I think she should choose the monkey,” I say. “He’s loyal and clever. He steals only what is needed and he never once lies about who he is.”

That pulls a surprised laugh out of him. “The monkey,” he repeats.

“The thief is a liar.”

“The monkey cannot marry the princess.”

“You would have her marry a thief?”

He shakes his head, still smiling. “Don’t all little girls dream of being a princess so they can marry the prince?”

“Well, if you’re talking about us, that makes you the princess and me the thief.”

Kylian chuckles low in his throat. “Hmm. I suppose you’re right. I would have to be the princess in our fairy tale. You are most definitely the thief.”

“What? You aren’t supposed to agree! If I remember correctly, you kidnapped me,” I say, lifting my chin.

“Are you forgetting the coin pouch? That must have slipped your mind,” he laughs, and I press my lips in a line, having forgotten that.

“I guess that does make me the thief.” I sigh.

He laughs and holds his hand out to me. Setting my book down, I take it, and he pulls me to my feet. “Yes, you’ve stolen many things from me.”

“Many?” I try to remember what else I could have taken from him.

“Yes. First, you stole my coin pouch. Then you stole my advisor. He much prefers your company to mine. After that, you stole my patience, piece by piece, every time you argued with me. You’ve stolen the love of my people. You stole every thought I have. I cannot hold a single one without it finding its way back to you.”

I stare up at him, my breath catching as he continues to rant. His thumb brushes my chin.

“Then, before I even realized it was happening . . .” His forehead rests against mine. “You stole the one thing I refused to surrender to anyone.”

I barely breathe, and then something shifts in him.

“You’ve stolen my heart, little mage.”

The words settle over me, heavier than I expect, and I have nothing clever to say back. For once, the quiet between us feels warm. His thumb brushes across my cheek, slow, like he is deciding something.

“Come.” His voice lowers. “There is a part of this room that you haven’t seen.”

He takes my hand as he turns, drawing me against him and leading me between the tall shelves toward the darkest corner of the library. The air smells of dust and old leather. He stops before a section of blank paneling that looks like every other stretch of wall, presses his palm flat against it, and pushes. A door I would never have noticed gives way with a low groan before he flicks on the light.

Beyond it is a small room lined floor to ceiling with shelves. Every shelf is crowded with books and trinkets, and something beneath my skin hums faintly the moment I step inside. It’s the same feeling I had stepping into Xavian’s hidden bunker.

Grimoires. Spell books. Bound diaries with clasps gone green with age, wooden crates and boxes. Kylian says nothing. He only sets a hand at the small of my back and nudges me gently toward the far wall, toward a row of volumes older and more worn than the rest.

My eyes catch the spines. The sloping, careful script, and there’s something familiar about the writing. “These books,” I say carefully. “They look like the handwritten book you gave me before, the one in our room.”

“Yes. That book was your mother’s, as are all of these.”

I gasp at the realization.

He leans down, and his lips brush the shell of my ear. “Now they are yours.”

I turn my head. He is close enough that I can see the light moving in his eyes. “Why,” I ask. “Why would you keep all of these?”

He peers around the small, hidden room. “I was hoping there might be a way to break the curse somewhere among her things.”

Yet as I stand here, surrounded by every word my mother ever wrote, I find myself overwhelmed by grief. ‌I don’t know whether to hate him or love him for it. But I am beginning to suspect that I no longer know how to do one without the other.