Chapter Thirteen Adela
I love the brightness of the little library off the great hall. Windows above the shelves let in brilliant streams of light, and the darker corners have lanterns for yet more. It smells of oranges and some herb I can’t quite place, and if there is a speck of dust to be found, it is hiding well.
In the center of the room, at a table so large that you can barely scoot around it to access the shelves, sits Cecelia.
Despite her small size, Cecelia takes up space, especially here. Maybe it is the fact that she appears utterly in her element, surrounded by half-unrolled scrolls, piles of books, and almost as many piles of scribbled-on parchment and papers. Her own chaotic notes.
She’s currently flipping back and forth in a massive illustrated manuscript. It must be very old, because the colors swirl on the page—something jackalope-wearers used to do, but haven’t been able to access in a hundred years or so.
She looks up from the giant tome in front of her, her large brown eyes unfocused as she thinks through whatever she’s been reading.
“Morning.” I set down the overloaded breakfast tray on a small side table, using its corner to gently shove aside dirty plates and mugs without toppling them over.
I plop into a chair beside her. Partly I’m here to learn how to sever the bond between me and the phoenix, but I also just miss my best friend.
“When was the last time you left this room?”
Her attention finally shifts to me. “I’ve been in the hall looking at tapestries, too.” She grins, knowing that doesn’t count. “What’s the word from the outside world?”
We chatter as if everything is normal; she hasn’t been locked away researching for two days, and I don’t have a phoenix skull permanently attached to my face—and possibly my soul. She doesn’t touch anything I’ve brought, even though it’s all of her favorites.
After a few minutes, she stands to retrieve another book, but I lift a pot of hot chocolate off the tray. If she’s not going to eat anything, she should at least have a bit of sweetness to get her through the morning. “A researcher cannot survive on tea alone.”
She shoots the teapot and multiple half-drunk mugs scattered around the table a dirty look, as if their very existence has betrayed her, and sits down. Her foot taps. She wants to dig into her research and hide from her own overwhelming feelings, but she’ll suppress that for a bit. For me.
I pour us each a cup of the thick, almost pudding-like liquid, and we hold the steaming chocolate to our faces and inhale. We sigh simultaneously, just like we’ve done since we were children.
Kian comes in just as I’ve taken a big swig of chocolate. I splutter, I’m so surprised. I didn’t take him for the type to spend any time in a library.
“Quite the welcome.” He steps close, bending low, and I tilt my head up, as if expecting a kiss. He simply takes his thumb and rubs it across the top of my lip.
It comes away with a smear of chocolate on it. My breath catches on an inhale, and I’m surprised the tension in the air isn’t enough to curl the corners of Cecelia’s papers. Then he licks it off. An electrified shiver rolls down my spine.
“Damn.” Cecelia clears her throat and arches a brow at me when I look her way. I’d momentarily forgotten my best friend, along with the rest of the known world. It all rushes back, along with a violent heat that no doubt reveals itself as a blush.
I bury my nose in whatever book is in front of me, pretending to read it closely, though my eyes can’t focus. Still, I keep up the pretense, even turning pages, until Cecelia makes a soft tsking sound and turns it right side up for me.
Looking for anything to draw their attention away from my horrifyingly intense reactions to a simple touch of my lip, I ask Cecelia if she’s come across anything on the phoenix yet.
“Yes!” Cecelia hurries to a particular shelf far in the back of the small library, squeezing past Kian.
She lugs over a book nearly as big as her torso. The cover is a deep burgundy, with no title, author, or illustration on it. The way her mind keeps track of these books amazes me.
She flips through the massive pages quickly and carefully. When she gets to the passage she’s looking for, she reads it aloud to us. “The firebirds of lore are the most magical and mystical of all of the nineteen mythical creatures that are currently known.”
“Nineteen?” There are only ten species of creatures currently in the valley. I had no idea there were so many extinct varieties. “How’d we lose so many?”
“It wasn’t necessarily we,” Cecelia replies.
“Some of them never migrated to the valley. And like all living species, things happen. Some creatures were lost to disease, some because they were a threat—or delicacy—to other creatures. The keepers were partly responsible though. Our ancestors killed off at least five species with poor caregiving.”
“That sounds ominous,” Kian says.
“It was pretty awful.” Cecelia grabs another book from one of her piles and flips through it.
This one is tiny, and looks to be handwritten, more like a journal than a reference book.
She points to the page that’s covered in script so full of flourishes I can barely read it.
“There was a time when magic was so strong and wild that it had started to leak beyond the valley, affecting folks in the villages in the surrounding countryside. That’s when one of the large creature migrations began.
Everyone was afraid of what would happen with so many creatures in the valley, even as large as it is. ”
I sit up straighter, listening closely.
“They captured and caged some of the newest arrivals, which were mating pairs. Wyverns, vargs, spirit moths, basilisks, and chimeras—” She looks up at us, wearing our matching skulls. “And phoenixes.”
Feelings of anger and despair from the phoenix flood through me so violently that I wonder if she herself was one of the caged phoenixes.
I’ve never heard anything about any of this. The creatures’ influence extending beyond the valley, efforts to contain creatures. This is part of our story as keepers, yet it’s not taught to us like the rest of our traditions and history. Purposefully?
Possibly. It doesn’t sound like a time to be particularly proud of if it resulted in the extinction of five species of creatures.
Cecelia continues. “In a year’s time, not one of them reproduced, and within three years, they were all dead.”
“Three years?” My voice cracks with sorrow for some unknown creatures hundreds of years before. Three years is nothing in the span of a creature’s life.
Cecelia nods. “Except for the phoenixes. I haven’t found what happened to them yet.
” She continues to share with us what she reads, taking momentary pauses here and there when she forgets we’re in the room.
At some point she changes books, and stops sharing altogether.
When it’s clear she’s so engrossed with her own research that she’s forgotten we exist, Kian and I pick up our own books.
He grabs Death Rites of the Blessed: A Primer.
It’s a pretty little book with a soft black leather cover, embossed with a gold-foil bird skull.
It’s a stylized design, so I can’t be certain, but I suspect it is a phoenix.
I’m surprised Cecelia isn’t hoarding it in her growing stack like a dragon with their preys’ bones.
In mere moments, he’s deeply engrossed in his reading, but I’m a bit too affected to make much headway.
He’s sitting near enough that I can smell him when he moves, some combination of lemongrass soap and his own natural scent, which makes me want to bury my face in his neck and inhale his deliciousness.
And he keeps licking his finger to turn pages.
I’m afraid he’s going to make either Cecelia or me combust. Her from anger if she surfaces from her research long enough to notice he’s transferring saliva onto her precious book, me from desire.
I can’t stop thinking about the way his lips looked when he licked the chocolate from my mouth off his finger. The way his tongue feels against my neck and lips, and…
I fan the pages of my book to cool myself.
Goddess, he’s hot.
Cecelia gasps, and I think she’s caught him until she swings around the table, sliding between us. She points to a page with illustrated birds winding together in the margins. They’re beautiful, all orange and red and yellow. Like fire.
She begins reading, her voice growing higher as she gets more excited. “ ‘While their powers frequently mimic those of their charges, they are wholly unique. A harmonic pair, they must exist together. Two halves for a whole. One does not exist without the other.’ ”
Kian and I share a look. Two halves of a whole.
Surely that is just the living creatures.
“ ‘Living, they are as wild as the original magic itself, and cannot be caught or contained. Dead, they awaken only in tandem.’ ”
My mind whirls. Fated pairs. Wild magic.
“But what does that tell us about what we can do? It has to be done together?” Kian asks. “How do we harness it?”
“Or escape it?” I ask.
Cecelia doesn’t answer either of us. She’s far away in her own mind, flipping through the book and then various pieces of parchment and papers she’s been scribbling on all afternoon.
Finally she says, “In the stories, a single phoenix dies and then comes back from the ashes of itself, right? But in my readings here, there are two and their magic represents a balance, yeah? Death. Life.” She closes the book with a thunk.
Kian and I both jump. “My theory is that it’s a combination of the stories and these writings.
Two halves of a whole. One is destruction, and the other is rebirth. ”
She continues, but I can’t process what she’s saying now.
I’m stuck in the horror of what she’s just said.
She’s confirmed everything I’ve been afraid of over the past couple of days.
That I am responsible for all the recent deaths, that my impulses have destroyed lives.
I had to go and stick my cheek against a phoenix and then my lips against a novitiate and upend everything.
If one half of the phoenix is destruction and the other is rebirth, my new fate is clear, and it’s what I’ve always feared. I am destruction, and there’s no escaping my ruin.
I tune back in when Cecelia says, “—and they’re romantically entwined.
The phoenix. I think the best way to explore the magical connection is to explore your own romantic connection.
Or at least, the physical aspects of it.
I’m not sure your actual hearts need to be involved.
” A wild smile crosses her face. She’s delighted at her cleverness of piecing it all together and absolutely certain she’s gotten it right.
“So you think we should fuck to unlock our magic?” Kian asks. I’ve never heard a man laugh so loud or so long. “Done and done.”
“I do, yes,” she says.
I want to slink between the stacks of books and never come out. Not because I don’t want to explore my physical connection with Kian. I do. Too much. That eager, desperate wanting has never resulted in anything good.
Without another word, Cecelia gets up and leaves. Surely she doesn’t expect us to start going at it here, in the library.
I look at Kian, about to make a joke, but the way he is looking at me steals the words. His brown eyes are somehow impossibly darker. With desire? He sits up on the table, pushing books and papers aside, and slides over until he’s directly in front of me.
I move back, making space for him and his knees bracket my body. I could lean just slightly forward and kiss his stomach or his chest. I look down his body, at his legs on either side of me. At other parts of him that begin to show interest in our positioning.
Sitting in front of me, he removes his phoenix skull and carefully sets it beside him on the table. He’s moving slowly, carefully, and I get the sense that he’s giving me time to bolt if I want to.
And I do.
But I also want to stay. To see what happens next.
He wraps his hand around the side of my neck, gently pushing on the edge of my jaw with his thumb until I tilt my head up to look into his face.
His eyes never leaving mine, he leans down, so close that our breath mingles.
His smells of mint and tea and I self-consciously hope mine is as pleasant.
He’s going to kiss me. I want him to kiss me.
I turn my head slightly in anticipation, giving him space to duck under the edge of the phoenix.
He’s taking his time, and I squirm with impatience.
I’m tempted to push him back on the table, to climb on top of him like it I did in the pantry, to show him what I want, how eager I am to touch him again. To be touched by him again.
He chuckles knowingly, as if he can see every one of my wants in every move of my body. But if he can, he does not give them to me.
Instead, he kisses the beak of the phoenix. “Oh, we are going to have fun, beauty.” Then with a smirk, he leaves.