Chapter 4
Four
Avalon
Ineeded a nap. Maybe I’d wake up, and this whole thing would be a fever dream. What did I do with everything I’d learned? I wanted to go back in time until I had no idea that… well, that I could go back in time.
Even though it seemed completely inconceivable, it resonated in my soul. I knew it was true. Now I had to work out what to do with this information.
And what to do with the enemy in our midst. Even though Lierick didn’t feel like an enemy. I also hated the First Line, and Baron Vylan specifically. I knew how he treated Vox. How he treated Shay.
Despite Lierick’s words, you’d have to be blind not to see that his hatred for the First Line was indiscriminate.
I was in the middle. On the outside once more, with my hands tied.
I’d let Ebrus burn for Vox. This country hadn’t ever done anything for me; I’d been magicless and useless to the Upper Lines.
To the Lower Lines, I was damaged goods.
The Second Line was a cautionary fairytale to most of us, despite the fact that their Heir was standing in front of me, looking at me imploringly.
I had to talk to the Twelfth Line. I needed to know if they knew about the Second Line and had been keeping it from me. Lying to me from the start, even if it was by omission. It wasn’t fair, because it wasn’t like I’d told them everything about myself either, but still, this felt big. Huge, even.
My head was starting to hurt, and my heart already ached. It was like it knew what it had lost, even if I didn’t remember it. Vox had died in my arms, and if the book in front of me was to be believed, that had been less than five hours ago.
I reached out and linked my fingers with Vox’s, holding him tightly to me as I cleared my throat. “So you came all the way down here on a whim?” It seemed impossible, just like Lierick’s existence. “To what end? Just to have a chat with me?”
Lierick shrugged. “Well, the actual intention was to abduct you and bring you back to Ozryn. But I wasn’t entirely convinced you even existed, that you weren’t just some delusional prophecy. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Like fuck you’re taking her anywhere,” Hayle growled.
“How could you know that if time went back?” Vox asked.
Honestly, it hurt my brain to think about. If I reset time, he wouldn’t have known I was there, therefore he wouldn’t know that I existed when he walked up in this next recreation, which probably should have resulted in it repeating… This was too much.
“I checked our copy of A Future History before we got off the boat. I’ve checked it every step of the way since we set out to sail down to Boellium. I saw our mistake—my mistake—and corrected the course.” He smirked at Hayle. “And if I wanted to take her, you couldn’t stop me.”
“Try it,” Hayle gritted out.
My head was seriously starting to pound now. “Enough. I’m not going anywhere with you, so I suggest you come up with a new plan or go home.”
Grinning widely, Lierick swept his arm around the library. “Attending Boellium is my birthright, is it not? You’re looking at the newest conscript of the Second Line.”
“They’ll murder you in your sleep,” I muttered at him. It would only take one person running to the First Line with information about the Second Line to cause a full-blown bloodbath.
Lierick tilted his head. “I guess I’m an Eleventh Line conscript then. A little late in the year, but no one will really know. Who pays attention to the other conscripts, especially the ones from the Lower Lines? The dirt scrabblers.”
Shaking his head, Hayle dragged me closer again. Soon, he’d be trying to tuck me inside his jacket. “And will everyone just ignore the invading boats?”
Lierick’s grin this time was nothing but predatory. “They won’t even know they’re there.”
I shuddered at the idea of anyone having that level of power. To bend and warp your brain until your brain refused to believe what your eyes saw. “Will long-term use of your powers hurt the other conscripts?”
I wouldn’t mind if a few of them got their minds melted—namely Eugene—but most conscripts didn’t even want to be here. They didn’t need to have their brains turned into cheese over some centuries-old vendetta between two Lines that weren’t even their own.
“Simple deflection magic. They won’t even notice.”
I looked at the Librarian, who I could see taking in everything we were saying. Was she going to be a threat? Why would she even facilitate this, if she was just going to throw Lierick—and by extension, us—to the wolves?
As if she could read my mind, she shook her head at me.
“The Librarians are impartial and have been since this very library was constructed, long before the Fall of the Second Line. Before the disappearance of Ellanora Halhed. Before there were even Lines or an Ebrus. We have no loyalty to anything but the Libraries and the information inside its walls. Plus the protection of history.”
The words were meant to be reassuring, but at the same time, they weren’t. If it was in the best interest of the library, would she turn us in?
She seemed unsurprised by all of this—not by the books, or the plan, or the appearance of Lierick Hanovan at all. Which meant…
“You knew! You knew the Second Line still lived. You knew about Ellanora Halhed and the fact she didn’t die. You knew all along.”
Enora had the good grace to look a little guilty. “I didn’t know, but the library knew.”
What the fuck did that even mean? “Are you trying to tell me that the library is sentient?” I knocked on the circulation desk, like it might knock back.
She gave me a disappointed look. “Don’t be ridiculous. This building is made of stone and glass, Miss Halhed. No, the institution of the library is far more vast and comprehensive than you could ever imagine; it works in ways you couldn’t ever comprehend. I might not have known
that the Second Line existed, but someone did. Someone knew you were a Recreationist and that it was time for you to come into your true powers. To know the truth. That is the strength of the library. It knows, even when we don’t.”
Great. That was just wonderful. More mystical vague explanations to confuse things. “I’m going to find Epsy. And a snack. I need…” I needed to get the fuck away from here.
I left the library, briefly hearing Vox telling Hayle to stay with Lierick. They’d sort themselves out, but I felt like I was suffocating. I needed out of the library. Out of the atrium. Out of Boellium.
Catching up with me quickly, Vox squeezed my shoulder, dragging me into a small, darkened alcove and straight into his arms. I held him tightly, feeling the twitching muscles either side of his spine, counting the soft breaths on the top of my head.
He was here. I was here. That was all that mattered.
“He tried to have you murdered,” Vox whispered softly, like he was afraid to put it back out into the world and tempt fate. “That can’t happen again.”
Feodore Vylan had tried to have me killed in a past life, the one where I’d dared to love his son, out in the open. The one where it had been clear he’d loved me back.
“I don’t want to hide us forever,” I replied softly, leaning into the hard lines of his body.
He looked over my head at the library doors. “Not forever.”
Vox Vylan was going to turn traitor on his own Line. I knew it in my soul. “He’ll kill you too, if he finds out. He’ll murder us both and call it a day.”
Leaning down, Vox brushed his lips over mine.
“Bury me beneath the dirt with you, because I don’t want to spend even a day walking on it without you.
” His forehead resting on mine, we breathed together.
“We’ll get through this and get our happy ending.
If we have to cut away the rot in a festering system to do it, then so be it. ”
We were silent as he held me in the shadows of the hallway, hiding from the rest of the conscripts, from the instructors, from the horrible truth that he’d died hours ago and I’d brought him back to life.
Finally, I looked up into those eyes that held me captive, even in my dreams. “Do you trust him?”
Vox snorted rudely. “With you? Not even a little. But I trust that he wants to do what’s right for his people, which is more than my Line has ever done. My father tried to steal your life like it meant nothing.”
I just rested my cheek against his chest, listening to his heart beat its reassuring rhythm behind muscles, bone and sinew. “He made you kill yourself. I can’t trust him either.” If Vox hadn’t been my lover, he’d be dead now. Properly dead, forever. No takebacks.
“I can hardly blame him. My ancestors murdered almost every single person in his family tree. Some slights are so bad, they’re written into your DNA.”
I snorted rudely. “Well, I can blame him. I’m not the forgive and forget type.”
Laughing softly, Vox lifted me into his arms until we were nose to nose.
“There’s a vicious little creature beneath all that softness, isn’t there?
It’s one of the things I find so endearing about you, Avalon Halhed.
” He pressed me into the rough stone of the wall, kissing me like he’d almost lost me. Like we’d almost lost each other.
And in a way, we both had.