Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
GWENNA
Saturday night and the library is quiet as a mausoleum. Just the way I like it.
Yet I’m still on edge, despite the quiet. Because I’m not here by myself. I’m here loaded down with notebook papers and dictionaries, reference guides and glossaries, waiting for?—
“Gwenna.”
I look up into a pair of golden-brown eyes.
“Hi,” I say, the word almost sticking in my throat.
“Hi.” Kingston meets my eyes, but just briefly. And he looks…rough. Nothing in his behavior gives him away, no cracks in the facade, but physically, he seems different, somehow.
The arm hanging in the sling doesn’t help, either.
He shoots a glance around the library, at the various late-night studiers propped up on elbows and yawning into their textbooks, blearily picking at keyboards and scribbling on looseleaf.
As he does, a few of them turn, almost magnet-like, to take him in: mighty Kingston Pendragon, the fencing star laid low.
He doesn’t need to say it. I can practically read his mind.
Too many people. Too many eyes, observers .
“I know somewhere we can go,” I say, low enough so just he can hear. “This way.”
I brush past him towards the side of the room, through the passageway with the stationery cart and copier and down to the service staircase, down from the A-level to B1 and then B2.
It’s dark when I swing open the door, and I fumble to the right for the timer switch on the wall, giving it a good crank when I find it.
“Archives level,” I say. “No one ever comes down here. Hence the…lighting on a timer.”
Kingston doesn’t say anything. Just nods, taking in the racks of moveable shelving, the dim, dark walls, the warm, dusty air that comes without thousands and thousands of yellowing pages and minimal ventilation. “Where should we set up?”
“Here.” I walk him to the side of the room, to what I’ve started to think of as my private table, and set down my coat and bag.
I tug at one of the narrow table drawers and remove some spare notebooks and pens I left down here last time, along with my copy of the Pocket Oxford Latin-English dictionary.
All the while, Kingston stares, like it had never occurred to him that I might have any sort of secret dealings outside of his awareness, no matter how mundane, and a wave of embarrassment washes lightly over me.
What kind of weirdo school obsessive keeps a cache of translation materials at the ready in a basement level of the library?
Be normal, Gwenna.
Too late.
With a final glance back at the staircase door, Kingston sets his own bag on the table. I take a seat, but he stands a moment, considering, and I realize a beat too late that he’s still wearing his coat
“Oh,” I say. “Here. I can…”
I jump up, step to his side and curl my fingers under the camelhair collar. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look me in the eye, just inclines his head slightly as I slide the coat from his shoulders. It falls into my arms in a heap, still faintly warm from his body heat.
“Thank you,” he says softly. His eyes are lowered, his lashes practically sweeping his cheekbones, and it occurs to me that this might be the first time someone’s ever done the all-powerful, ever-so-chivalrous Kingston Pendragon a small favor.
Because clearly, he isn’t used to it. The slight tinge of pink in his cheeks is testament to that.
Well, the honor is all mine , I think sarcastically.
Or half-sarcastically, anyway.
Because up close…
Strong jaw. Straight nose. Cheekbones.
…up close he’s not so bad.
All at once, Kingston moves, pulling out his chair with his left arm and settling in. I fold his coat and drape it over the back of another chair, almost reluctant to let it go, and take my seat. From his bag, he produces the folder of papers from Emrys.
My heart sinks.
It’s in terrible shape. Not physically—the facsimiles are good, well rendered and crisp—but the lettering is…well, it’s barely lettering. Serpentine, rippling, almost curlicues—there’s no sense of individual letters, let alone words.
Kingston must share my dismay, because his golden eyes go wide. “This is…”
“Awful,” I agree.
He presses his lips together. “I was going to say challenging. ”
I blow out a breath, not quite hard enough to be a snort. “All a matter of perspective, I guess,” I say, throwing my hair over my shoulder to lean closer. Then I frown. I grab the first sheet of the stack and pivot it around, so that it’s facing the opposite way.
“What are you doing?” Kingston says .
“I’m trying to read it,” I say. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“You’re reading it upside down now,” he says, and rotates it around with his left hand. “There.”
A small burst of indignation flares at the base of my neck. “No”—I turn it again—” this is the right way.” I give it another turn. “ This is upside down. For me,” I add. “For you, it’s right ways up.”
A frown, definitive and firm, draws across Kingston’s handsome face. “I don’t think that’s correct.”
I set my jaw. “Well, I do.”
He blinks at me. Then again, leaving his eyes shut a fraction of a second longer than necessary. Exhales hard—hard enough to be a snort, if you ask me.
And starts writing.
“Kingston!” I cry, almost forgetting we’re in a library—albeit an all-but-abandoned part of it. “What are you doing?”
He barely looks up. “I’m transliterating, Gwenna .”
I don’t care for the way he says my name. Certainly not for the way it feels to hear him say it.
Not one bit.
I clutch my pencil, throat suddenly dry.
“But…” I crane my neck at the paper. “But it’s upside down . For you, I mean. It won’t make any sense.”
“It will make sense, because this is the correct way to read it.” He all but slams his pencil down and looks me dead in the eyes. “Look. You can help, or you can leave, but I will not waste my time arguing with you. Do you understand?”
He’s so sharp, almost harsh, that I temporarily forget how to speak.
But when his eyes meet mine, they’re not hard with fury or even annoyed.
They look…desperate.
It’s too intense. I blink first. Look away. Heat crawls up my neck, and I take an inordinate amount of time tearing a sheet from my notebook, arranging it to write on.
And still…he’s wrong.
I sneak a look up to glower at him. It’s five minutes to midnight, we’ve already lost an entire day for this assignment because of his need to focus on this fencing match—which, at the risk of sounding cruel, does not seem to have mattered, in the end, for him, given that he got hurt—and now he’s just steamrolling over the fact that the text is literally not readable from where he’s sitting?
I would rather die than give him the satisfaction. Especially because he is wrong.
I sit up straighter.
“No, you’re right,” I say, forcing my voice to be calm and even. “We’ll both give it a shot, and eventually it’ll be clear which way is up.”
“Agreed,” Kingston says, without looking up.
“Fine,” I add, needlessly except for my crushing insistence on having the last word.
I pick up my pencil and write.
It’s miserably slow. Painstaking. Lots of stops and starts, checking against various reference sheets. But it’s also…kind of satisfying in its slowness, like cross-stitch or whittling or something else cozy and deliberate you’d do to relax.
And…it’s nice, being here. In the library. Working.
Even if it is with Kingston.
“Done.” I put down the pencil, push my paper a few inches away to actually read what I wrote now that I’m not just focused on finding letterforms and spacing.
“What is…beneath,” I murmur slowly, “is…just as…that which is above. And what is above is just as that which is beneath. ”
Huh. A little tautological, but it’s grammatical—a real sentence. Triumphant, I look up to see Kingston’s reaction.
He straightens. Lowers his pen. And turns his own paper around to me.
Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius.
The same thing. The same exact text.
“What?” I pull his sheet closer. “How?”
It’s then that I notice his handwriting isn’t its usual perfect penmanship, but shakier, more labored…
He’s writing with his left hand. Because his right is in a sling. My heart squeezes a little at the realization, and I immediately feel like a jerk for gloating.
Of course you finished first, Gwenna. He literally can’t go any faster.
“I told you,” he says.
“And I told you ,” I retort. “I guess we’re…both right.”
He nods, frowning at the paper. Turning it one way, then the other.
“The same thing from either side,” he says—unnecessarily, I think. Then he pins his eyes on me. “What does it mean?”
“It means…it means what I just said,” I say, not following. “It’s not that complicated of a text.”
“But what’s the point ?” Kingston says, a little sharper. “What is it telling us?”
I tilt my head at him. “It…means that what’s above is below, and vice versa?” I frown. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
Kingston curls back in his seat and blows out a breath, which, combined with the stony look on his face, makes him look like an overgrown, sulky little prince.
He mutters something I can’t quite catch.
“Sorry?”
“Waste of time,” he says, loud enough for me to hear. Then he’s on his feet, pushing the chair back in place, and grabbing his jacket. Doesn’t bother to put it on, or ask for help, just throws it over his arm and leaves, the door to the B2 level swinging behind him.
Stunned, I sit in silence, until?—
Click.
The timer shuts off. And I’m left in darkness.