Chapter 17 Kasira #2
“The Eyrie,” he replied, eyes pinned on where she held him.
“It’s where the majority of our protected beasts live, though this is only one room.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the Library has a way of playing with space.
What it fits inside does not always align with how it appears from the outside.
Contained within these walls, there are many more rooms of different climates and geographical designs to suit beasts from all over the world. ”
“It’s incredible,” she said, and found that she meant it.
Allaster shifted awkwardly, then tugged her up along the beach.
The warm sand transitioned into velvet-soft grass that swayed in a gentle breeze as they approached a circular pen, one of many placed beneath the shade of a swath of willows.
The Alkatir cub lay curled inside, one tattered wing cupped around its head as if to hide it from the world.
Its injuries had been treated, the other wing placed in a splint, but it looked so small and frail.
The cub quivered and wound itself tighter when they approached, emitting a small, pained breath that reminded Kasira of a hound that used to whine outside the orphanage all night.
Kasira extricated herself from Allaster and leaned against the pen, peering through the slats at the beast. “They used it as bait.”
“Alkatir are the Zeras’s favored prey,” Allaster replied tightly. “They’re usually safe in their prides, but a cub alone, particularly an injured one, had no chance of survival.”
She’d thought she had let it go, but she had only condemned it to a different death.
Had it been imprisoned in their camp even as she had made her escape?
Carted through the Isherwood by soldiers who would have jeered at and tormented it, only to be tossed into that building like a scrap of meat to be torn apart?
“I will find the people who did this,” Allaster said softly, and in his voice Kasira heard not the vexing prince whose manner she had come to disdain, but the powerful sorcerer who had all the time in the world to take someone apart piece by piece.
A shiver rolled down her spine she prayed he thought was the cold. “Will it be okay?”
“Perhaps. He will require daily attention, but he’s strong.”
“I’d like to be responsible for him.”
Allaster cast her a sideways glance, evaluating, and she met his icy gaze. “Very well. He’s yours. And Corynth?” She held her breath, waiting for the words she needed to hear. “When you’re healed, I’ll grant you your magic.” Then he was gone.
Kasira used the fence to lower herself gently to the ground and rested her forearms on the lowest rung, her chin propped atop them. The cub watched her with a fearful look.
“I didn’t know it would be you,” she told him.
She hadn’t known the cub had been captured. Hadn’t known it would be a Zeras waiting for them. She suspected that was the point. Vera had wanted the ploy to be convincing, and there was no greater symbol of Kalish fear than a Zeras. And oh, had Kasira’s fear been real.
The best cons dealt in expectations. Kasira hadn’t expected a Zeras, and so her performance had been authentic. Allaster hadn’t expected her to risk her life to save a beast, to save him, and so the last of his reservations had faded. He no longer expected her to be his enemy.
Which was why he wouldn’t expect her to have planned the entire thing.
AFTER DELIVERING AN update for Vera in the compendium, sleep claimed Kasira heavily that night, and she slumbered well into the following evening.
She came to long enough to eat the buttery vegetable pie that had appeared in her room, then fell back under.
Late afternoon sunlight slanted in through her window by the time she woke again the next day.
Atop the nightstand beside her bed sat a plate of cookies and a steaming cup of tea, along with a note that read:
Please get out of bed so I can change the sheets. It’s been two days!
—Iylis
She did not get out of bed, instead sleeping through the rest of the afternoon and that evening. When she blinked blearily awake the next morning, there was someone in her room.
She slid her hand silently beneath her pillow to where she kept the small blade she had taken from Eirlana’s trunk.
Her fingers curled around the handle, and in one motion, she threw back the covers and sat up …
only to find Allaster sitting at her table, eating the fresh food Iylis had left for her.
He devoured the last of her scone and drank the cup of tea in one long gulp.
Kasira lowered her knife. “That’s my breakfast.”
“It was.” He set the teacup down, and she reconsidered her decision not to stab him. His eyes flicked to the blade. “Where do you keep all of those?”
Kasira stuffed the knife back under her pillow to remove the temptation.
“When you spend your life looking over your shoulder, you learn to conceal a blade.” It was just as easily something Eirlana would say, though it was her own life Kasira thought of when she spoke.
“Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“It’s dawn.”
Her fingers curled into the sheets. “I’m not interested in more sparring lessons. Either grant me magic, or leave me be.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” she repeated. He’d said he intended to do it once she recovered, but she hadn’t quite believed him.
He stood and regarded himself in the mirror, running his fingers through his hair, which looked a faded copper in the morning light. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
“I suppose you did.”
Allaster caught her gaze in the mirror. Was it her, or were his eyes a shade paler than before?
“I have not, nor will I ever, lie to you,” he said. “You should know that, for what’s to come.”
“What’s to come?”
He waved a hand at her folded uniform, which lay at the foot of her bed. “Get dressed. Today’s going to be a long day.”
A distant tremor of excitement pulsed through her, the same feeling she used to get when the pieces of a con began to come together.
She had earned Allaster’s trust enough to be granted a piece of Amorlin’s magic, and with her position as Assistant Librarian stable, she would be able to start work on the next stage of her plan.
Everything still felt a little off-kilter when she climbed out of bed, her muscles weak from the lingering effects of the venom.
When her feet sank into a luxurious sapphire carpet that had appeared overnight, she very nearly lay right back down atop it, but she forced herself to trudge onward to the washroom.
By the time she returned, there was a new set of sheets on her bed, alongside a fresh scone and a replacement cup of tea for the one Allaster had drunk.
She studied herself in the mirror as she dressed.
Her already milky skin looked even paler, and there were deep shadows under her green eyes, sharpening her prominent cheekbones.
And yet somehow, she looked more like herself than she had in years.
There was something in her gaze, something she didn’t know how to name, that felt familiar, like sliding on a well-worn sweater.
She downed both tea and scone and joined Allaster outside her room a few minutes later.
“Are you ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he snapped his fingers.
Nothing happened. He scowled and snapped them again.
The world slid away, the transition so smooth that she knew for sure this time that he’d been making it intentionally rough before.
They reappeared in one of the artifact rooms, nearly atop a glass case. Kasira stumbled away from it. “Did you mean to do that?”
Allaster drew a steadying breath, wrapped his long fingers around her wrist—which she noticed so starkly because his rings were impossibly cold and not because some inane part of her snapped awake when his fingers met her skin—and very decisively snapped again.
This time they appeared in a crumbling cavern ringed in jagged natural balestone.
The silver-blue light illuminated a platform with a white marble basin, a shallow line of clear water gleaming in it.
Old stains indicated the water level had once been much higher and had depleted over time, though she didn’t see any rivulets or trails in the ground to suggest it had escaped.
Roots thicker than her arms hung from the ceiling above the pool, nearly cocooning it.
A few of the tips dipped below the water.
She traced them up to the stone of the cavern’s roof, where they disappeared, and she suspected she knew where they came out again: at the very top of the cliff overhanging the Library, where the single, leafless tree sat, its branches like yearning arms.
“This is the heart of the Library,” Allaster said as he stepped up beside the basin.
Piles of deteriorated stone lined the perimeter and tumbled down the edge to gather in the crevice where the platform met the ground.
Some were pieces of a mural painted long ago, others the last remnants of a guardrail that had encircled the basin.
The whole place had the air of something fine left to fester and die.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“We aren’t certain,” Allaster replied grimly. “Some believe it was an attack on the Library; others, simply old age.”
“And none of you have had the time to right it?”
He stiffened, turning away. “There’s no point. Now, come over here.”
Ignoring the way his order made her bristle, she joined him on the platform, a flutter of nerves beating in her breast. Though this was a piece of the plan, and though some part of her curiosity swelled at the possibility of magic, she couldn’t quite silence the quiet voice in the back of her mind that whispered, What if the priests were right?
What if taking this magic damned what little of her soul remained?