Chapter 38

Maeve dreamed of a slow chill that turned her bones to icicles, of mildewed barn wood digging into her nail beds, of a horse’s enormous eye finding her in the quiet dark, pinning her for hours while her breath came up short in her lungs. She thrashed and tossed then calmed as the dreams shifted to warm parchment and dust. She dreamed of honey-clove wood polish against her tongue, her red curls skimming over a soft pillow. Of melancholy piano notes melting in and out in shallow waves. A dark voice pleaded with her to wake up, wake up, wake up. “Please wake up,” it coaxed against her ear.

Let me sleep , she wanted to shout, until a burning sensation behind her lungs forced her eyes to open wide.

Her heart raced like a small bird trying to escape its cage, while the rest of her body felt drugged and lethargic. The edges of her vision were still sleep blurred. She blinked until her eyes cleared, focusing on a yellow candle flame guttering on a nearby table—in a room she didn’t recognize.

She could tell she was on a bed because it compressed beside her. A finger swept her hair from her nose. “Maeve?”

“Is this a dream, or did we both die together?” she asked Tristan, then winced at her aching throat.

“Neither one, I’m afraid,” Tristan said, drawing his knuckles along her cheek. A torturous shiver rolled through her that seemed to grind her bones; her skin felt far too sensitive. And her left hand…good god, it smarted.

The Aldervine.

Everything rushed back to her in an instant. They must still be somewhere in the Second Library, probably trapped here for all eternity. But at least they were together, and Tristan had his writing kit with him.

Maeve flexed her fingers. The six punctures felt like teardrops of ice against her palm.

“Hold still. I need to finish fixing a word here.” Tristan slid one of his hands up her bare shoulder.

She was only in her camisole. She tensed as the thin tip of a quill moved along the top of her shoulder, spreading cool ink.

“That tickles,” she said, squirming.

“If you don’t hold still until the ink dries, I’ll make sure to put the next one across your forehead.”

Tristan must have finished with her shoulder because she felt him draw very near and blow the wet ink for far longer than ink took to dry.

“Is that necessary?”

“Very,” he said quite seriously.

He traced a finger along the shell of her ear. He hadn’t stopped touching her since she had opened her eyes—a fact that she was not mad about.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like I could fall fast asleep and run a race at the same time.”

“It’s the coffee scribings. I’ve been adding them slowly—only one a day, so as not to shock your system.”

“How long was I asleep for?”

“A little under a week in total.”

A week underground in the library? Maeve slid around to face him.

Candlelight spilled out in silver waves behind his head, giving him a ghostly aura. He was freshly shaven, but his silk shirt was horribly rumpled and filthy with ink, then cuffed above his elbows. He tucked his quill behind one ear and corked the vial of open ink beside him on the bed.

The bed itself looked more like a scriptomancy worktable than a bed. Tristan was surrounded by quills and wells of pigments and endless vials of ink—some uncapped, others used up and tossed aside. The duvet appeared bruised by all the spills.

Maeve didn’t care about the mess because Tristan was here, awake. The sight of him sent a sharp wave of longing racing through her, accompanied by a sudden need to rise up.

“I think I need to leap,” she said, clambering up to sitting much too quickly. Her thighs cramped and she leaned into Tristan’s chest.

He hooked his arms around her. “Leaping will come later. Your muscles are probably sore from disuse,” he said. He took her arm and ran a gentle finger down her elbow, inspecting it.

His handwriting covered every inch of her left arm, from her wrist to her shoulder.

“There’s six coffee scribings, if you’re curious.”

“Oh my god.”

“You were comatose until I finished the fourth. There was a moment when I thought you’d never wake, but then you began talking at the fifth. I don’t know who Headmistress Castlemaine is, but remind me to make her read a nasty sense scribing if I ever see her.”

“You’re too late. She died a few years ago.”

“What a shame.”

“I know. If she were still alive, I’d be tempted to do the same thing myself.”

Tristan shifted her arm over, running his thumb along the inside of her elbow over a few Old Leylish runes. Maeve considered grabbing his collar and pulling her mouth to his, but she forced herself to look away so he could at least finish first.

She took in the room. It was small and well appointed, with a tiny window in the corner that looked out to a stone courtyard. They were above ground. “Unless you’ve done some decorating, this doesn’t look like the Second Library.”

“I pulled you out.”

Maeve froze. “What about the Aldervine?”

“It’s still inside. My father hired a team of metalsmiths to reinforce the exterior door with layers of silver. There are several people stationed outside of it now, keeping watch. But so far, it hasn’t grown back inside the front lobby.”

Maeve could still picture that lobby perfectly, with the Aldervine retreating from the ceiling. She looked above her, half-convinced she could see it now, hiding in the shadows. “Where are we?”

“Inside a room in the basement of Amaranthus Hall.”

“Where the stewards keep their offices?”

“There’s been talk of moving you to a government facility in Gloam proper, but you’re to stay here until they decide what to do with you.”

“I didn’t let the vine out.”

“I know that. Others believe it as well, especially after Nan, Shea, and I told our sides of the story. But there are some that need more convincing and many who are ready to hold you accountable,” he said.

“Including all the stewards?”

“Mordraig wants you released, but the others are stone-faced about the subject. Especially my father. Then there’s that box that Nan’s father brought to the constabulary.”

Maeve had forgotten all about the box. “What was in it?”

“I don’t know exactly. The ministers have it locked away. Supposedly it’s filled with stolen books from Molly’s day, along with a number of dangerous pigment ingredients labeled with your own handwriting.” His mouth drew into a frown. “It’s a shame we never found Sibilla. Part of me was tempted to brave the library a second time to pull her out.”

“You wouldn’t be able to wake her up. She’s dead.”

Tristan dropped her arm. “You mean you saw her?”

Maeve explained how she found Sibilla all by herself on the floor, then spoke with her before the Aldervine got her. “She didn’t do it. She didn’t even know my father was murdered in Inverly. It was someone else,” Maeve whispered. “They broke the Aldervine out and left before anyone noticed.”

“Then they’ll be brought to justice,” he said, though he didn’t sound as convinced as he had before the library.

Maeve felt it as well—as if the truth were falling through her fingers like a fistful of ash.

He took her hand and turned it over, stroking along the top. It was the lightest touch, but she felt it tingle up her arm. She reached out and ran a finger over Tristan’s shoulder.

Her sensitive fingertips couldn’t seem to stop touching him. She slid a hand along his shoulder and neck to his ear, then ran a fingertip along his eyebrow and sighed. “Why does touching you feel so…good?”

His mouth twitched. “It’s the coffee scribing in your system. Your nerves will calm down in a few days.”

She didn’t want this to calm down. Her breath hitched when Tristan brought his hand up to skim along her jaw. Then he traced her bottom lip with his thumb. Her lip was more sensitive than her fingertips, and her breathing notched up at the touch. He jerked his hands away.

“Did I just burn you?”

“Nearly,” he said, his hands at his sides. “All I want to do is kiss you right now. It’s a bit of a struggle, in fact.”

Heat rose up her back, racing over her neck and chest. She pressed toward him. “Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m afraid that once I start, I won’t be able to check the rest of your coffee scribings before your guard kicks me out.”

“I have a guard?”

“You have six.”

As if on cue, someone pounded on the door. “Are you almost done in there?”

“I need another minute with her,” Tristan called out. He finished checking Maeve’s arm, then slipped his hand around the back of her neck. Of course the moment their lips touched, the guard beat the door again. Tristan pulled away and pressed his mouth to a spot on her shoulder between lines of ink. “I’ll be back later to check the scribings. Try not to smudge them.”

After he left, Maeve curled up on the bed and tried to sleep, but she wasn’t remotely tired. She was, however, terribly thirsty, but there was no lavatory or water save for the glass Tristan had used to clean his quill.

“I need a drink of water,” she shouted to whoever was guarding her, but the door remained shut.

Perhaps her guards were hoping she dropped dead of thirst.

To take her mind off of her parched throat, Maeve cleaned up Tristan’s mess, then sorted a stack of dusty linens that she found in a closet. Her mind soon wandered back to the Second Library, the broken shards of glass covered in blood, the strange chips of wood along the floor.

There had to be some clue she wasn’t seeing. Something that didn’t fit.

Maeve longed for a blank page of her journal to work out her thoughts, but Tristan had taken all his writing supplies with him.

She lay down and shut her eyes, picturing that room with the blood and glass. There was no sleeping person inside it. There was also no speck of the Aldervine, even though the vine had covered nearly every bookshelf on that entire floor.

It should have been inside that room as well. There should have been a body there. And why would the person behind everything risk their life to unleash the vine?

Unless they weren’t risking their life.

What if they had a method to protect themselves against the Aldervine? Something that they used to escape, so they could blame everything on her? They could have used the same method to protect themselves in Inverly. But what was it? Who were they?

She felt the answers were staring at her in the face, but she couldn’t quite see them.

Maeve thought through everything else she saw after she left Sibilla. The ink manifestation, the pile of sleeping officers, the lobby with the Aldervine crawling across the ceiling while everyone outside shouted and pointed. Then that last moment when she grabbed the clump of the vine in a fit of desperate anger and threw it. It had hit the ground and curled up like a wilting flower. The vines across the ceiling all fled the room at the same moment. Right after she touched it.

Her eyes snapped open.

She sat up and lifted her left hand to the light. It was bruised along the side in a mottled mess of yellowish green.

She curled her fingers. Days had passed, and yet thick half-moons of gray dust still clung beneath each of her nails. Crematory ash.

She’d upended her entire ash satchel into her left palm when she thought a manifestation was about to attack Sibilla. The ash still coated her hand when she grabbed the Aldervine. Then immediately afterward, the vine looked wilted. It was the same moment the rest of the vine across the ceiling disappeared from the lobby.

Maeve’s spine pulled straight, picturing the vines covering the bookshelves. When she was running through the library, the Aldervine never came close to her, had it? Sibilla and the officers were covered in it, along with probably everyone else who was inside that library, but she had been spared. So had Tristan, who also had crematory ash on his fingers to stop the manifestations.

Crematory ash must somehow affect the vine. It was the only reasoning that made any sense.

She had to tell someone.

She shot to the door and rapped her knuckles against the ancient wood as loud as she could. There was a shuffling of feet, but nobody answered.

“Please!” Maeve called out, then winced at her parched throat. “It’s about the Aldervine. I need to speak with Steward Mordraig immediately. It’s a matter of utmost importance.”

He would know more about its origin and how crematory ash might affect it, and she didn’t trust the Postmaster or any of the other stewards enough to call them. Mordraig’s cluttered sitting room was in this building. He might be close by.

The guard didn’t respond, but about twenty minutes later, voices came from outside her room. The door hinged open, and Steward Mordraig stood there in his raiment with a mischievous smile plastered on his face. “Maeve Abenthy, how does it feel to be the most infamous apprentice in all the worlds?”

“Not as well as expected,” she said, then coughed.

She sounded like a croaking frog.

“God’s nose, woman, don’t you have water in there?” He sniffed and peered around her little room.

“I asked for some an hour ago, but nobody brought it.”

He turned to the pair of officers hovering about ten paces down the hall, glaring at her. “How dare you all,” Mordraig said. “This woman saved Leyland from the Aldervine, and you repay her by refusing water? She’s coming with me straightaway.”

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