Chapter 9 Allaster #2
Genuine study as her duty demanded, or a means of arming herself against them?
She looked so relaxed, her obsidian hair loose about her shoulders and limned with blue from the morning light.
It reminded him of the mornings he used to spend by the fire, reading about faraway beasts for nothing but the pure joy of it.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way about a book.
The last time he’d done anything simply because he wanted to.
Don’t be a fool, he told himself. She’s just reading.
And yet, watching her, he couldn’t help but feel as though it was something more for her.
Something that made it almost possible for him to imagine her a mage, almost imagine that she was the Assistant he needed.
But he required more than books, more than words, if he was going to risk everything on her.
She lifted her head, and in the instant before she turned to look, he vanished.
But she was there again the next morning, and the one after that, as if determined to ruin his every day.
He used the opportunities to observe her from afar, watching as the other mages went from eyeing her like beasts with their hackles raised to absorbing her presence as inevitable.
One of the mages even invited her to sit with them.
The question seemed to startle Eirlana, who politely declined, looking uncomfortable.
Embarrassment, or concern about being found out?
He saw a double meaning in her every action, her every word, and all the while he was losing time he didn’t have.
Something prodded his leg, and he glanced down to find a leopard spirit waiting patiently. Iylis often sent them to fetch him, and he followed this one through the shelves and up the spiraling ramp, where he found Iylis shelving volumes in a side room.
The spirit vanished as Iylis pointed his tail at a thick tome he’d left in the bay window.
“That one appeared this morning,” the snow leopard said as, around him, books floated back to their shelves, slotting neatly among their fellows.
“I think one of the spirits incorrectly shelved it ages ago. Useless, the lot of them.”
“Iylis,” Allaster began as he picked up the book, “you are one of them.”
“You have no proof of that.”
Allaster didn’t press him. He and Iylis had had many a conversation of that nature across the decades, and all Iylis would tell Allaster was that he and the leopard spirits had always been there, and the spirits had always been incompetent.
At this point, Allaster couldn’t tell if Iylis was obscuring the truth or if he’d simply forgotten it.
He left Iylis to his shelving, returning the way he’d come and already flipping through the book.
It was a collection of historical accounts from Avaria, one of the few texts they had on the isolated kingdom, which was also the home of the first Librarian.
Iylis had been pulling every book he found related to Avaria, but none had contained the information Allaster sought about his curse.
As he reached the bottom of the ramp, something flashed in the corner of his vision, and he looked up in time to walk face-first into a tower of books. All but a few crashed noisily to the ground, taking his volume with it, and revealing a flustered Eirlana on the other side.
“Saints,” he muttered. “You really are everywhere, aren’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed in a blend of affront and dismissal only a noble could affect. “You have a problem with me reading now?”
“I have a problem with everything,” he muttered, bending down to reach for his book—at precisely the same moment she did. Her fingers brushed his and he jerked back, but she hardly seemed to notice as she organized everything into a stack and stood, her movements as agitated as her tone.
“Is there anything I am allowed to do, or shall I stay shut up in my room until I rot?” she demanded.
“You have my book.”
“Or better yet, why don’t I drown myself in the Seven Veils? Save you the headache.”
“Corynth—” he began, but she was already heading for the collections room beneath the ramp, where mages returned texts for the spirits to reshelve. Books had a habit of vanishing from there the moment they hit the counter, and the Library had already lost his book once.
He cut her off, very nearly causing a second collision.
“If you make me drop these again, I’m going to aim for your foot,” she warned, though she would hardly have to try.
Room was a generous word for what was really an alcove, and with the both of them tucked inside it, there was hardly space to turn about.
“I need that book,” he demanded.
She set the stack down, pulling his book from the middle and very nearly sending the whole thing toppling again. “Why are you researching Avaria? We don’t have contact with them, do we?”
“There is no ‘we,’ and that is none of your business.” He made a grab for the book, but she stepped deftly around him, flipping the tome open to scan the first page.
Her back was to him now, nearly pressed against his own in the cramped space, but all Allaster could think about was getting the book back before it inspired the sort of questions he didn’t want her asking.
He spun and reached for it again just as she turned around, bringing them face-to-face with the book between them, his arm nearly encircling her.
She stopped then, her head tilted back the barest so she could peer up at him through her lashes, and he realized with a start that she had done this on purpose.
Running into him, taking his book, drawing him here alone.
She must have seen the realization on his face, because the smile slipped from hers. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “I had to get your attention somehow.”
So she had taken his book.
He snatched it from her, its width the only space between them. He could still feel the heat of her against his skin. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I simply happen to be where you aren’t.”
“You’ve been watching me,” she countered. “What exactly is it you’re waiting for me to do? Go on a beast-murdering rampage?”
“The thought has occurred to me,” he muttered, and her annoyance redoubled.
But there was something off about it, something that left him doubting its sincerity even as he struggled to identify it.
As desperate as he was to trust her, as much as he needed her to be who she claimed, something held him back.
And after a hundred and twenty years, Allaster had learned when to trust his instincts.
“Allaster—” she began, but he was already gone.