Chapter 33 Khalid
Iwas so glad I was mated to people who didn’t need to be told not to bring their lunch in the library with some of these precious tomes. We ate our lunch in the dining hall and then walked to the library to talk to the librarian.
I was used to being every librarian’s favorite person. I was always there checking out books, and I was very respectful of them. I always used a bookmark, brought them back before they were due, and never caused any damage.
This librarian really liked Liam and I couldn’t even blame it on the fertility god magnetism. She just got a kick out of his book requests. We’d go in to study and he’d ask her for some really bizarre books.
“So, Fern, before we seek your glorious assistance, I need help. I have a mind to read a book about a possum shifter, but I want cozy and funny. You haven’t failed me yet.”
Liam kept asking for books about shifters that didn’t exist. Sometimes, he wanted cryptids and Eldrich Terrors. I didn’t really know if he wanted these books or he was just taking the piss out of the librarian and trying to stump her.
“You’re in luck. I’ve got one where she’s a possum shifter with a little witch in her and runs a magical bakery. She frequently faints and ends up in the morgue because she’s a possum shifter.”
“I love you platonically and I want it.”
I started thinking about the time my baba took my camping in Canada and we got accosted by geese. What the hell…?
“Do you have any books where someone is a Canadian goose shifter?” I asked.
They both looked at me like I was utterly insane when Liam just asked for a possum shifter and that wasn’t even the weirdest thing he’d asked for.
“Not kink shaming, but why would you ask that, mate?”
I threw up my hands. I could not with Liam sometimes.
“Do you want more books on Egyptian gods today?”
“No, Fern. We actually need to creep on the books Radames has been checking out. He’s in our year, kind of quiet, wears a cross around his neck. We’re pretty sure he’s using this glorious library for nefarious purposes.”
“I know of him and you’re wrong. He’s checked out a few books on Egyptian gods, but he said he wants to be a healer. He’s been checking out books on that, but he’s looked at a few on ancient fertility rituals.”
Liam. He hadn’t figured out any rituals and as far as I knew, no one had gotten pregnant since he’d gotten here, but from what Saffron said, the gardens were doing better than ever. He definitely took his protection of women to a murderous level. I still didn’t get why Lola attacked him like that.
“Are the books about fertility rituals returned?” Liam asked. “It’s kind of my domain.”
“So, full disclosure, some of these don’t work.
Some involve dressing in animal skins and hitting women with whips.
Some involve showing your genitals to a statue of a god and asking them to bless you with fertility.
There are a few that are a lot darker and involve sacrifices.
Like, old school sacrifices, not like donating blood or volunteering at a food bank like we do now. ”
“Which ones actually work?” Lucian asked.
“None of them, actually. Most of them were invoking a god to bless them with fertility, but not all gods can do that and even they have their limits. And back then, the gods were mostly being invoked for sons.”
“What would sleeping with a fertility god do?” Sage asked.
“Oh, hon, if you’ve managed the birth control spell, you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant with this one. The reincarnation of Artemis is teaching here and the reincarnation of Aphrodite is a man in this life.”
“I smashed an onion in his face because he’s a ponce.”
“Anyway, the reincarnation of Parvati was here a few years ago. Fertility gods aren’t more potent than other kids or some of them would end up with millions of kids.
It’s some kind of magic, not fucking them that does it, though there was probably a lot of confusion about that in the past because some of the male ones didn’t want to clarify that to get their dicks wet. ”
Yeah, I didn’t take Radames for having deep conversations with the librarian about fertility gods. He had several contemporaries in his first life associated with fertility and birth, but Apep didn’t exactly make a lot of friends.
For some reason, Lola really wanted to be pregnant, but with anyone but Radames and Radames was researching how. I thought they were just trying to trap Mazen because he was the type of man who would stay with someone who made him miserable if his child was involved.
But she flunked our first lesson in Arcane magic because she never did master the birth control spell. She never admitted to Professor Gefn it was intentional, which would have saved her grade. Iman said she was sneaking around with half the school intentionally not using any birth control.
They must have not done their research on fertility gods. They didn’t approach Professor Theron because she was a woman and they left Liam’s new nemesis alone because he was openly only into men. Liam was pretty much into everyone until he met Sage and then he only saw her.
So, Lola just decided to drug and rape him because if she’d asked, he would have laughed in her face.
I didn’t know why they were so dead set on Lola getting pregnant or what all the murders and disappearances meant. And we couldn’t exactly ask them because we’d never be friends and for now, Sage wasn’t seeing any red auras.