Chapter Twenty-Five
Farren
“Alright, I’m ready, and I’ve told Hades and Khaos about what’s happening. They said they may not be able to make it to read it with us,” I say as I step back into the front room.
“Great, let’s get going then,” Storm says.
Kill walks closer and takes my hand in his, “Are you going to be okay going back there?”
I shrug, “Yeah, I should be. I know that it should probably affect me more than it does, but it doesn’t. I’m okay going back there.”
“If that changes at any point, you tell us immediately, and we’ll leave,” Rival says. “Fuck the book.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline, “Fuck the book?”
“Never thought I’d hear you say that, mate,” Loki grins.
Rival shrugs, “Farren comes first.”
I can’t help it, I know we’re in a rush, but that was the sweetest fucking thing ever. Especially since I know how much he loves books. Walking up to him, he looks at me, slightly confused, like he doesn’t quite know what I’m going to do.
I put my hand on his chest as I step closer, and his confusion vanishes as he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me tighter against him, and I stand up on my tiptoes so I can kiss him.
“What was that for?” He asks.
“For being sweet,” I reply. Stepping back, I say, “Alright, let’s do this. I’ve got to warn you guys, my father’s library is huge, and there’s no guarantee that it’s actually in there. This could take longer than we thought.”
“That’s okay. We’ve got time, and if we don’t find it tonight, then we can come back tomorrow after classes and look for it,” Reaper replies.
Zev shakes his head, “No, we can’t. We have to find it tonight or it’s going to disappear, and we won’t be able to find it again.”
“Wait, seriously?” Kill asks.
“Yeah, we need to go. Now. Time is running out,” Zev replies urgently.
“Well, shit,” I curse. “Everyone, grab hold of me, and don’t let go. I don’t want to risk losing anyone in the Void, or running into another one of those creatures, they are not easy to kill.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Loki says. “Are you injured? I can’t believe that I didn’t ask that before.”
“I’m fine, I wasn't, but I’m all healed now. I promise,” I reply honestly.
“Good,” Loki replies.
I don’t waste any more time since we’ve already wasted a lot, and it’s pretty much all been because of me, so once I’m sure that all of them are touching me, and aren’t going to be left behind, I open a door and we all step into the Void.
“Huh,” Kill says.
“What?” I ask as we move forward, and I call on a door to take me to the library in my father's castle.
“It looks different in here,” he replies. “Lighter somehow, even though everything is still shrouded in darkness.”
“Yeah, it’s been changing,” I reply. “Are you guys ready?”
They all nod, and we step through the other door and into the dusty library.
“This place is absolutely huge,” Rival says.
“Yeah, I wasn’t allowed in here,” I reply as I look around. “If he’s got one stolen or rare book in here though, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that there are more here, so if you find any that you want, take them.”
“Seriously?” Rival asks with wide eyes.
“I think you just made his year,” Mayhem chuckles.
I grin, “Well, no one else is going to use them. Technically, this place is mine now, or maybe my uncles. Although if my uncle is a god and actually my father, then were they even related?”
“I doubt it,” Storm replies. “I would assume that you were put with Godfrey for some reason and that when Magnus realised how you were being treated, he found a way around having to keep his distance. He said that by the time that they realised what he’d done, he was already implanted in your life as your uncle. ”
“I suppose that’s just one of those things that I’m going to have to try to remember to ask Magnus, and I guess Monty about,” I reply with a frown.
Changing the subject, because I’m not quite sure how to deal with that yet, I continue, “Come on, this is going to take a while, we may as well get started.”
“Is there any way that we can make this easier?” Kill asks as we all head down one of the aisles of books and start to rummage through them.
“I don’t suppose he had a section specifically for super-rare stolen books?” Reaper asks hopefully, as he pulls out a book, checks the cover and then immediately puts it back, moving onto another one.
I shake my head, “Unfortunately, not. I would actually be surprised if he had a system in here at all.”
“He doesn’t,” Rival replies, sounding pained by the words. “There is no system whatsoever. Everything is just shoved on the shelves with no care. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
Loki claps him on the back, “It’ll be alright. Don’t worry, mate.”
I move over to where Rival is and open up a pocket in the Void, instructing it to stay with Rival.
“Here you go, this will fit as many books in it as you could possibly put in there, and they’ll be safe in there until you have somewhere that you can put them,” I explain. “Just let me know when you’re done, and I’ll close it back up.”
“You shouldn’t be able to do that with the Void,” Reaper points out, somewhat nonchalantly as he raises one of his eyebrows.
“I know,” I reply simply because I really don’t know what else to say to that. There is a lot that I can do with the Void that I shouldn’t be able to do. That no one else can do, or to my knowledge has been able to do ever.
“Remember that we are on a time crunch,” Zev reminds Rival with a smile.
Rival grins, “Got it.”
He starts pulling books off the shelves with speed, glancing at the covers and then either carefully putting them back, or placing them into the Void pocket that I opened for him.
Sometimes I forget that although the twins each have elements that they prefer using, they are actually capable of using more than one, which I’m reminded of when Rival starts to use his air element to float multiple books out to him to check.
He’s effectively given himself more hands and made the job ten times quicker.
I narrow my eyes slightly, “How many elements do you and Mayhem control?”
“All of them,” Mayhem answers before Rival can, which is a good job really because Rival is so absorbed in what he’s doing that I’m not sure he heard me ask in the first place.
“Wait, all of them? As in all seven of them?” I ask when his words catch up to me.
Mayhem stops what he’s doing and looks at me, “Yeah, you didn’t know that?”
I shake my head, “Absolutely not. It’s supposed to be impossible to have more than two elements.”
“You have more than two,” Zev points out. “You’ve got force fields or wards, which I rarely see you use, actually, air, and fire. Plus, you’re a Spell Weaver and you have an extremely strong affinity with the Void.”
I pull a face, “Good point. It just surprised me. I had no idea that the twins could control all seven elements.”
Rival shrugs but doesn’t take his eyes off of what he’s doing as he replies, “We don’t advertise it for obvious reasons.
Although I genuinely thought that you knew.
We also have elements that we prefer to use.
I like fire mostly, and Mayhem likes water, but we like other elements and use them nearly as much.
We just need to be careful who knows that we can use as many as we can. ”
“No one other than the people in this room, and Hades and Khaos know,” Mayhem adds, going back to what he’s doing.
“We’re all stronger than we should be,” Storm adds.
“I realise that,” I reply. After a moment's pause, I add, “You know I don’t really know that much about you guys.”
“You know the important things, everything else will come in time,” Reaper replies.
Kill comes over and kisses the top of my head, “You know more about me than anyone else in this room.”
I nod, and smile.
“I know. I’ll get to know you guys better, and you guys will get to know more about me too, like Reaper said, it will come in time,” I reply.
“Let's find this book, and work out how we’re going to get into the realm. That niggling has gotten a lot more intense, and I think we’ve got less time than I thought we did.
I think something has changed, although I don’t know what, and I don’t know how I know that. ”
“Instincts,” Loki replies seriously.
We don’t speak for a long time after that as we make our way through the vast library. Eventually, Storm’s patience runs out.
“Alright, I’ve had enough,” he exclaims. “What are the chances that it’s actually in here anyway? Wouldn’t he be more likely to hide a stolen book like that in a safe somewhere?”
“That’s a good point,” Reaper agrees. “I mean, it’s rare, so it’s got to be valuable, right? It wouldn’t make sense for him to keep it in a library where anyone could see it, especially since it was stolen.”
“Laikynn made it sound like it had been stolen generations ago, so I’m not sure that anyone would have been looking for it still,” I reply. “I see your point though.”
“I don’t know where better to hide a book than in a room full of them,” Rival points out still absorbed in his task.
“Yeah, that makes sense actually,” Kill says with a sigh.
“I guess we’re stuck here then,” Loki groans.
I shrug, “We could go and check his office. There’s a safe in there and he did like to keep his most favourite things close to him. The worst-case scenario is that it’s not there, and we can come back and continue searching here. There’s less space to search in his office.”
“That’s true,” Mayhem agrees.
“It would give us a change of pace too, and then at least we don’t end up searching the entire library to discover that it was never here in the first place,” Zev agrees.
Storm nods, “Lead the way, Farren. I could definitely do with a change of scenery.”
I grin and turn to leave.
“Er, Farren,” Rival says, and I turn back to look at him. “What do I do about the Void pocket?”
“Oh, I’ll close it for the moment, and then I can open it back up when we get back down here, because honestly, I think we’re going to end up back here,” I reply, as I close the pocket.
“I hope so,” Rival replies as we head through the shelves and out of the door. “Well, I hope so because I want some more books, not because I want to try and sift through the unorganised mess in order to find the book that may or may not be in the library.”
“Agreed,” Loki admits.
Heading through the opulently decorated hallways, I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Of course, everything has a layer of dust on it, as I suspected, no one is here, or certainly no one has been cleaning since I killed my father.
Who isn’t my father. It’s just easier to refer to him as such at this point, I suppose.
When we get to the door of his office, I reach for the handle and then pause.
Opening the bondlines to the guys with me, making sure not to disturb Khaos and Hades, I ask, “Do you guys hear that?”
“Yep,” Kill replies.
“Looks like someone is still here,” Zev mutters, pulling his sword free.
“And they’re after something in your father's office,” Kill adds, his shadows ready and swirling around his hands as his tail moves from side to side in agitation.
Storm’s wings flutter once before they settle again, both of their horns staying dim, it wouldn’t make sense if they lit up all the time, and in my experience, they only tend to in times of great emotion. Everyone readies themselves to fight.
Just in case.
There is a chance that whoever is in my father’s office is not a member of the staff. He did have enemies after all.
In theory, no one should be able to get into the estate.
Even the staff wouldn’t be able to get back in once they left, which means that this is either one of the staff members who decided to stay behind for some reason, or someone has somehow managed to bypass the security and wards that lock a place down when someone dies.
It's not impossible to do, I’ve done it, but it takes a lot of magic, and it’s not easy to do.
Storm takes the lead and quickly opens the door.
What I see inside has us pulling up short.
“Father?” I ask.
My father’s head snaps in my direction, and I immediately realise that it’s not my father, not as I knew him anyway.
“Farren, my murderer,” he smiles. “I’ll be glad to finally repay the favour.”
“He’s a Wraith,” Kill mutters.
“Secure him, he’s the best chance we have of finding the book,” I state. Not as bothered by this turn of events as I probably should be.
Godfrey growls, a sound that I have never heard him make before, and although he is stronger and more unpredictable as a Wraith, he is of absolutely no match for the guys, and they soon have him secured by Killian and Storm’s shadows.
He’s not going anywhere.
He’s stuck and extremely pissed about it.