Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Kyrith
Acrash jolts me out of my slumber with a start.
“Careful!” Eddy scolds.
“I got this,” Lambert says. “Watch.”
“You’re going to end up on your ass.”
At the same time, a separate argument springs up between Jasper and North.
“Naw, it wasnae like that. You’re remembering wrong.”
“There was a carpet. I’m telling you.”
“You’re both eejits.” Leo’s voice is loud and frustrated. “It was that fancy patterned wood with—urgh. Just piss off already. It was my idea. I was making good progress before you lot started meddling.”
“Shut it. You’re going to wake them.” The last is Dakari, breaking through the discussion with a low grumble.
I blink several times as I rouse properly, taking in the nearly empty foyer with a frown.
“Don’t look,” Pierce cautions, his eyes still closed. “Unless you’re willing to endure whatever unholy Live Laugh Love nonsense Edlynn has come up with.”
Swallowing back my nerves, because I am a little concerned about what Eddy might do if given free rein in the Arcanaeum, I twist until I can peep through the rails of the headboard.
Everyone else is awake. Through the open door, I smile as I watch them trying their best to put Botanical Hall back to rights. I should leave them to it. They’re clearly trying to surprise me, and their intentions are sweet.
Although…some things really should be supervised. Especially when North summons an ugly grey carpet tile into existence.
I roll gracelessly out of bed. “It was parquet flooring!”
Dakari slips into the foyer and catches me before I can make it to the door. “Don’t.”
I tilt my head to pin him with an unimpressed stare.
“They want to surprise you. Go cuddle Pierce. They’re almost done.”
I search for Jasper in the hall beyond. “But I need to check on your wound and Jasper’s magical well.”
“Leo already did. We’re all fine. Some bruising, but we’re okay.” He turns me, taps me lightly on the butt, and ushers me back towards the bed. To Pierce, he orders, “Keep her there.”
I slip one leg onto the mattress, already wishing I was able to ghost again. What I wouldn’t give to be able to slip through the walls and peek, or better, be connected to the building so that I would just know what they’re doing.
Pierce’s hand slides up my outer thigh, keeping me in place when I might’ve moved away. The touch elicits a burst of awareness, but I studiously ignore it.
He just lost his grandfather. The Arcanaeum is still quiet.
Neither of us is in the right place to finish what we started in Fort McKinley. I don’t want the memory of our first time buried under the need to feel something that isn’t anxiety or loss.
For his part, he must feel the same, because although his hand stays there, his thumb rubbing up and down gently, his next words aren’t heated.
“Are you going to fix the books?”
“The books?” I repeat, confused.
“When Mathias and my mother took over, they couldn’t read any of them. The words were jumbled.”
Oh. That.
“I wanted to protect them. They couldn’t censor any of them if they didn’t know what they contained.”
Pierce is right, though. I can undo it now. I perch on the edge of the bed, flipping my grimoire open on the covers between us, and accept the pen he offers me. The counterspell for the confustication runeform I used is as complex as I could make it.
I’ll admit, I stole inspiration from Ammie Talcott when I created it, blending four runeforms from different schools together in a way I was sure would protect the books for a long while.
It’s satisfying to hear that they stumped the lich.
At least something went right that night.
“Are you planning on reopening?” Pierce asks, his tone carefully neutral, as I lift my pen away from the page a while later.
I close my eyes. “You think I shouldn’t?”
His silence is damning.
“If the Arcanaeum remained closed, we’d be safe,” I admit. “Mathias would struggle to find a way in as long as you six remained shut away with me. The dagger would remain hidden. I would never have to face him again. It would be…easier.”
He nods.
“It would also be a betrayal of everything the Arcanaeum stands for.” I slide my grimoire to one side.
“At its core, the Library exists to defend everyone’s right to a good education and freedom of thought.
If I shut our doors, I’ll protect the collection at the cost of abandoning those principles.
” I hope my face makes it clear what I think of that option.
“Knowledge exists to be shared, to empower the people, and to hold those in power accountable. All of those things are sorely needed right now. So we’ll reopen.
We’ll continue to serve the public good.
And in doing so, I hope we cause him as many headaches as possible. ”
I trail off as I realise I’ve accidentally slipped into using ‘we’ while the Library remains as silent and unresponsive as it was when we entered.
“And with a little luck,” I finish, voice quavering slightly as I tumble back onto the mattress beside him. “I’ll figure out how to restore the Arcanaeum. Otherwise, I’ll be doing an awful lot of that by myself, and I’m not sure how that will even work.”
I can’t physically be in all places at once. When the other librarians were helping me, it must’ve appeared to the patrons as if I were tidying books and answering their queries and ordering index cards simultaneously.
The dagger can still sense the Arcanaeum, and I’m still connected to the dagger.
There must be a way to bridge that gap and restore our bond.
Unfortunately, the blade still lies in glimmering fragments on the floor. Both of the rituals to bond me to the building and separate me from it required that knife to be embedded in my chest. I’m not so na?ve as to believe connecting us again will be any different.
If it’s the only way to restore the Arcanaeum…I may have no choice.
And if this time I join the other librarians as part of the spectral consciousness…is that a price I’m willing to pay?
I don’t want to. Stars, I don’t know if I could bear it….
“Mathias won’t be a problem forever,” Pierce says gently. “We have his phylactery now.”
“Yes, but the spell he used to break your mother’s was complicated. It’ll take time to engineer a runeform from the incantation we heard.”
Time we might not have.
As much as I wish we could just stab the thing and be done with it, it isn’t that simple. Even when Isidora’s soul vessel was broken, she didn’t die. We have to assume Mathias won’t either.
We’ll have to kill him.
Lambert’s sunshine voice breaks through the chill suffusing my organs. “We’re done! Boss, come on. You’re gonna love this.”
His warm hand wraps around my arm, pulling me towards Botanical Hall.
“We couldn’t find the plants,” he rambles. “But we put the pots back, and Dakari reckons he can find replacements for most of them. Oh, and I grabbed some of our stuff from Fort McKinley too—and Westley. If we missed anything, you can tell us, and we’ll fix it. So, what do you think?”
I can’t answer him.
“If you hate it, it was Leo’s idea,” North says. “But if you love it, then Eddy and I did most of the work.”
“Feck you.” Leo’s curse holds zero heat.
Eddy just beams. “Thanks for recognising my contribution.”
“Well, you were instrumental in… What did you do again?” North frowns like he genuinely can’t remember.
“I carried the mental load, asshole!”
“She conjured that tiny pot on the windowsill, I think?” Lambert adds.
Eddy makes a noise of disbelief. “Traitor.”
“We’ve probably got some stuff wrong,” Jasper admits. “I’m sure the rug over there wasnae green…”
“But we did our best,” Leo finishes. “Look, I’ve got to head out but—shite. She’s crying. Lambert, you said she’d love it.”
I reach up, wiping away the lone tear as I try for a watery smile.
They’ve done it or nearly done it.
Botanical Hall is almost exactly as I remember it.
Sure, there are tiny differences, changes to the patterns in the stained-glass windows, tiny flourishes to the scrollwork on the bookcases that weren’t there before.
Meaningless deviations from the original that mean less than nothing because there’s Westley, purring as he stretches out across a reading desk, as if he never left.
That’s the final straw for my beleaguered heart, which crumples in gratitude. More hot tears well in a silent and humiliating flood that I try to stem with my sleeves.
“We only managed this half of the hall,” Dakari murmurs, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind. “But we can work on the other side and the Rotunda, or one of the other halls next. Just say the word.”
I shake my head, then nod. “What…ahem. What prompted this?”
Because I’m leaning back to kiss his jaw, I catch the moue of distaste on Dakari’s face a second before he wipes it away. “I woke up, and Leo was missing.”
The man in question, already edging towards a brand-new door, freezes at the guilty words. “You thought I was—”
“Obviously you weren’t.” Dakari’s arms tense around me. “When I found you in here, transmuting all of the windows, I figured it was a halfway decent idea. North was on watch, but we couldn’t remember what the banisters looked like and then…”
“It snowballed.” Lambert offers me a smile. “Wait. Where are you off to?” He aims the question at Leo, who swallows.
My gut sinks.
Leo must read the worry in my expression because he shakes his head.
“It’s not like that. I just…” His shoulders rise and fall on an exasperated sigh.
“There’s a support group for my family. A lot of us…
we’re still struggling even though the curse is gone.
It’s helpful to be surrounded by people who’ve endured the same thing. ”
“Surely the curse being gone is good?” Eddy says, her brows drawing together.