Chapter 37 #2
Six towering pillars reach high above me, their columns a spiral of carvings that depict the flowers of the forest. I walk up to them, my mouth hanging open, my neck craning back as I take it all in.
Above the pillars is a second floor, with statues of ravens facing out, overlooking the city of Kholar.
Two large wooden doors sit behind the pillars, and I walk up the few steps towards them. There’s not a single smooth bit of wood on the door. It’s all carved with little shapes that tell a story I don’t know how to read despite how simple it seems.
Yondus –four-limbed creatures with long tails, longer dicks, and orange black-spotted fur– run through grass and across the trees.
They swing on vines and jump up and down on branches, their faces all twisted in laughter.
Even the ones that are shown to be in the middle of having sex, their fanged mouths are open in howls of delight.
Lifting a hand, I press it to the wood. One might look at these doors and simply see them for the humour they are.
A joke perhaps. Or someone’s obsession with yondus.
A lot of brownies, after all, have died trying to fuck them.
Maybe whatever fairy or fairies who made these doors dreamed of that too.
But there is something deeper within this piece – a love and joy that seems so lost in the rest of Raza.
Granted, I’ve not seen much of their kingdom, but the air here is thick and heavy.
Even Jace, who laughs freely, has a darkness behind his eyes.
It’s like everyone who lives here is afraid to truly love.
Like my king… Deciding it’ll be easier to kill me than to rule with me.
Dropping my hand from the door, I swallow, then reach for the round knocker handle and pull.
Despite the size of it, the door swings open easily, and I know a magic spell is helping me. I step inside, feeling so small and inadequate as I enter this love letter in building form.
The breath that’s caught in my throat doesn’t ease any as I make my way inside. My footsteps echo in the wide open space, and I’m not surprised to find the library empty. I feel like I’m invading a sanctuary.
The building wraps around me in an octagon.
Weathered wooden shelves span the full-length of every side, towering six or seven storeys high.
Balconies run along the walls at every floor, but the middle of the library is left open all the way to the top.
The ceiling is made up of a series of thick intercrossing beams. They spread across glass panels that depict multiple galaxies full of stars.
My breath rushes out of me.
A massive globe, much taller than me, stands proudly in the centre, surrounded by a handful of well-worn sofas and chairs.
Pulled in by a magnetic force, I walk slowly, my eyes taking everything in.
Running my hand along the globe, I’m not surprised when it moves – nothing in here would be left to rot.
I give it a little push. It spins flawlessly, bits of Gaera flashing by. The mushroom forests of Yogalha. The diamond caves of Jardo. The lost Temples of Hondu. Ular. Ev’lan’dic. Atheria. Vinsio.
I place my hand on it at random. It stops after gradually losing momentum. Aizela. That’s where I want to go one day, decided as of now. Craning my neck, I look up at the northern pole. Stepping back, I take it all in. The world is so big. How much of it will I never see?
Walking around, I find Raza, Richard’s kingdom. It’s just a speck of colour. A miniscule existence. Brownston isn’t even listed.
My gaze turns to the glass dome in the ceiling. Each one of those galaxies have more worlds in them. Halzaja. Persic. Blódyrió. Konistra. Alazul. Earth. All the places I will never see.
“Can I help you?’
My chest aching with a dull pain, I turn to the woman asking. She’s shorter than me, with her black hair up in a stern bun.
“Yes. I’m looking for –” I clear my throat. Taking a deep breath, I smile innocently. My eyes latch on to the freckle at the corner of her mouth rather than the piercing darkness of her eyes. “A book on murders. Nice murders, if possible. For research.”
Blinking rapidly, I add, “Book research, I mean, not real life research, obviously. Ha. Why would I admit to needing it for real life research if that were true? That would be dumb, right? I mean, who would do that? That would be like publishing a How I Murdered My Husband book after being accused of… murdering… my husband.” Sweat breaking out across my back, I laugh nervously.
She reaches for my shoulder, and I flinch, knowing she’s going to yell for the guards to drag me back down to the dungeons.
“It’s okay,” she says with a smile. “I’m an author too.”
“An author…” I look at her blankly, then exhale strongly as I nod. “Yeah, that’s me. Yes, of course, it’s for my work in progress.”
“What’s your book about?”
“Uh…” I shake my head, thinking of Fabia’s latest book.
“It’s about a man” –King Richard– “who ends up captured by the Jokeni” –who fuck him to death, probably, assuming; she hasn’t finished it, but honestly, what else could happen when he has to service the whole army?
– “but then he gets saved by the queen, who asks him to marry her, but instead of falling in love with her, he decides to kill her, so I need to learn how to do that. For the book. Which is fiction.” I gulp, wondering if I edged too close to my situation.
She nods. “Sounds interesting. Are you a pantser or a plotter?”
My mouth works uselessly as I struggle to recall what those terms means. “Um… a bit of both?”
Chuckling, she says, “Oh, I know what that’s like. I try to plot my books all the time, but the characters end up doing whatever they want, so I end up pantsing it more times than not.”
Gesturing for me to follow her, she leads me towards one of the walls, then up a love-touched stairwell. I look behind me and try not to sigh when I notice none of the guards are following me. Half are standing at the doors, the other half at the globe.
“You know,” the librarian says as we climb, “I plotted out a whole book about this woman who was kidnapped by a vampire. Her sister was supposed to save her at the end, with help from a special agent, who she fell in love with along the way, obviously.”
We pass the first floor, then the second, and I’m so glad we’re talking about her book rather than ‘mine’.
“Well, sort of save her. They had to put her in a coma to stop a curse from killing her at the end of the first book. Then in the second, a telepath was supposed to go into her mind to help her. She was to fall in love with him, and the four of them were supposed to live happily ever after.”
Glancing at me, she snorts. “But do you know what happened as soon as I sat down to write?”
I shake my head. “What?”
“The fucking vampire decided he wasn’t that fucking stupid, and he fucking got away at the end of book fucking one.”
Wow, that’s a lot of ‘fucking’. She is clearly still holding a grudge against her characters.
“So now the damn thing is a twelve book series. Twelve.” She shakes her head in exasperation. “And in the second book, the stupid male lead kept cutting off his hands. Who even does that? Like, dear gods, why? I couldn’t leave him alone for two paragraphs before off came his hands.”
Rolling her eyes, she exits on the fourth floor. Her slow amble takes me around the edge of the library.
“So what did you do?” I ask, getting invested in the story.
She grins devilishly. “I drugged the crap out of him. Every time he woke up” –she snaps her fingers– “drugged. Fucking prick. Anyway, this is the reference section. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for here.”
She waves at a shelf of books, and my eyes follow. The Fastest Assassinations in History. The Cruelest Ways to Die. 101 Ways to Kill a Queen. Getting to the Heart of a Person.
Looking back at her, I smile. “I’m sure I will, thank you.”
“My pleasure. Let me know if you need any more help.”
As she walks away, I turn my attention to the books in front of me. Pulling one off the shelf at random, I flip it open.
Honey, Does This Taste Like Poison to You?
A male’s body was found collapsed at the kitchen table in a house in Valarassi.
A large feast was laid out before him, filling the entire six-person table.
His death would have baffled the investigators, as there were no wounds on his body or traces of poison, if not for the waterproof note found at the bottom of his empty soup bowl.
It read: “I bet you regret using my people scissors on paper now, you piece of shit.”
It is uncertain what poison the killer laced all the food with, but every bowl, plate, and cup had a similar note at the bottom.
For those who are unaware, ‘people scissors’ are exactly what they sound like – a specialised pair of scissors that are made for cutting into people.
They are a favoured form of torture by none other than Evangeline Sinclair.
Though, of course, this author does not think she’s the killer of this unsolved case.
Great. Well, that wasn’t helpful at all. Not only did it not tell me where to find any poison; it didn’t even tell me what kind to use. Ugh.
Book after book, I pull off the shelves. Book after book, I set aside, finding nothing within them that will help me. Sitting down, I drop my head into the pages of the latest book, pressing it against my face.
“Not having any luck?”
I jerk upright at the sound of Jace’s voice. Scrambling to my feet, I hide what I’m reading behind my back with both hands. “What are you doing here? Is Richard here?” My eyes dart around nervously.
“It’s my day off, so I don’t know for sure, but I’d say he’s in his study.” Looking over my head, he scans the shelves.
The blood drains from my face. “It’s for research. Book research,” I squeak. “For my book. That I’m writing.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“It is.”
Reaching past me, he grabs a book with a chained, naked man on the cover. His arms are stretched over his head, a blindfold sits over his eyes, and a ball gag is crammed into his mouth. “I’d recommend this one then.”
He hands it to me, and I take it slowly. My eyes widen. “Good Enough to Die For?” This is definitely a sex-murder book.
He leans in with a smirk. “A few of those entries are mine.”
My mouth drops open. The urge to flip through it and see which ones he could possibly mean is making my fingers twitch.
He pulls more books off the shelves, balancing them all on one hand. My eyes widen the more he stacks. One, two, three… fifteen books. In one hand. Dear gods, how strong is he?
And is it bad that I find that hot?
Clearing my throat, I look away. “You don’t have to help me,” I say.
“I insist. These books are meant to be read, and Aurelia would’ve liked you.”
“Aurelia as in the owner of this library?”
Holding out his free arm, he ignores my question and says, “Come on. I’ll take you back to the castle.”
Knowing I can’t refuse without making him suspicious, I loop my arm through his. But there’s a part of me – a large, growing part of me that wishes he’ll catch me.
And stop me.
Because the more I think about a world without Richard in it, the more I think it won’t be that bad to be dead.