Chapter Two
Zyr
If Zyr could be said to have friends–and he couldn’t–then Aisling was chief among them. Clever, twisting, and quietly ruthless, the woman had a knack for knowing things. Secrets, in particular.
When he needed access to knowledge not within his own library, it was frequently Aisling he turned to. And so, he found himself at her doorstep, not long after she’d had her little pup–Declan, wasn’t it–visit him with questions about human bonds and tales of Solstice Kings.
When had that been? Months ago? Years? Surely no more than that. Though his relationship with time had grown more slippery of late.
Probably not years.
“Zyr, dear!” Aisling’s voice was bright as she threw open her front door. Like most her kind, she bore a deathly pallor and had huge, dark eyes. Clever eyes, in her case. “This is a surprise. Do come in.”
He stepped in after her, still turning over the question of time. “Your son–”
“Oh, is that what this is about? I was worried you might have mislaid your invitation.”
Unsure of what she was talking about, Zyr allowed her to prattle until they reached the sitting room where she usually conducted her business, the walls lined with book shelves and oddities.
“We do have a little time,” she was saying, though he had no idea what had come before that. “Was there something else?”
“I’m looking for two books.” No. That wouldn’t help. He was always looking for a book when he spoke to her. “I’m missing a pair of books.”
“How?” Aisling asked, sweet voice gone sharp with incredulity. She blinked at him with those huge eyes. “You’re very calm about this, Zyr, dear. Are you feeling well?”
Calm. Yes. He was much too calm. He had walked into his library that morning, and he had felt the absence of what was his. Two pre-convergence volumes, treasured and well guarded, gone from his hoard without a trace.
He should have lit the sky with lightning. Raged and snarled and demanded justice. Killed indiscriminately, until what had been taken was his again.
Instead, he’d sighed, walked out into the rain, and presented himself on Aisling’s doorstep.
“I believe I’m dying,” he admitted. “Other than that, I’m well enough.”
“Ah. How silly of me. Just a little death.”
He shrugged, tail twitching in impatience. “We only pretend at immortality, Aisling. Even a beithir must lose themself eventually.”
“Your books,” she objected, voice gone soft.
His books. His life’s work. Nearly two thousand years of obsession, neatly categorized and minutely studied. A silent rejection of all he had been taught to believe.
“I’m not so far gone that I don’t care what happens to them. Or that two of them have been taken from me. But they cannot change what is, Aisling. When I was young, there were still so many of us. Faerie was still vast. Now…” he shook his head. “I may be fading, but so is Faerie.”
Aisling studied him, lips pressed together in disapproval.
“Despair isn’t a good look for you, dear,” she said at last. “All the better that you’re coming with me today.”
“Coming with you?”
“To Declan’s meeting. The invitation, remember?”
She had said something about that, hadn’t she?
“I didn’t come here for a meeting. I came to advise you to check your collection. And ask that you tell me if you hear whispers of anyone trying to move a rare volume.”
“I’ll check my collection after. And if you tell me what books you’re missing, I’ll see what I can learn.”
“A record of late pre-convergence court proceedings. One of a kind but not dangerous. The other is a volume on veil magic. It isn’t a book I would lend.” Well, he didn’t own any volumes he would lend. “Or allow someone to peruse, even in my presence.”
“That’s not exactly something one would advertise having, either,” Aisling mused, frowning slightly.
“Not unless you wanted the Council to get nosy about what other magics might be in your library. I recommend putting together a list of those who would know about both and working off that. After the meeting. Which will be starting shortly.”
“I don’t attend meetings, Aisling. Especially not directly after someone has stolen from me.” The words came sharp, and his skin crackled with electric irritation.
Aisling, typically, only smiled. “Well, there’s the Zyr I know. We’ve some Monarchs to overthrow, my dear, and your name is on the guest list. It’ll do you good.”
Overthrow the Monarchs? Zyr stared at Aisling in silent incomprehension. The desire, he understood. When he’d been young, when they had been actively reshaping his world and controlling his every waking hour, he’d wanted the same.
Of course, he’d never been able to do more than irritate them.
They’d blamed tantrums, when lightning harmlessly scorched the wood at their feet.
They’d said that of everything. The lashing of his poison-barbed tail.
The storm flashes in his eyes. The way he’d spiral, when they confiscated his books.
This is for your own good. You must learn to control yourself.
An easy thing, to want their deaths. But actually achieving such an act?
“When I said no fae is immortal, I did not mean it as a theory to test,” he said.
“And yet, how diverting it’ll be for you to do so. We’ll need you for this, Zyr. You know more of them than anyone else we might ask.”
Their cruelty, yes. But not their weaknesses. The Monarchs, even in those early years, had felt inevitable. He’d needed his books to believe otherwise.
“There will be others there?”
“A few,” she admitted. “All trustworthy.”
It wasn’t their trustworthiness that concerned him. “I prefer to keep to myself.”
“If you really think I’m going to let you sit alone in that library of yours, waiting to die, I’m afraid you’ve not been paying attention. Besides, you must find the idea of killing the monarchs at least a little interesting.”
Zyr wasn’t sure they could be killed. Though he did have some volumes that might address the topic. Intellectually, the question was fascinating. Practically, it was suicide. But it was, at least, something to think about. And he was dying anyway.
“The Solstice Kings,” he said, more to himself than to Aisling. “And quite a lot of blood.”