44. Chapter 44
Chapter 44
L onging for solitude, I leave the Main Hall, heading straight for my room. I know I need to think, but I’m so overwhelmed, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, lost in a haze of suppressed memories and events of the past day.
It’s just as I reach the end of my hallway that I spot something.
A black tail disappearing around the next corner.
I freeze, my mind flashing with an image from a long, long time ago — when I first applied for the Archivist position, went into the Forbidden Section and ended up following a black silhouette that looked just like the one I saw now.
I frown. No, it was only my imagination.
“If that were true,” my wolf’s voice sounds from the shadows, “ I wouldn’t have seen it.”
I let out an unsettled chuckle, then turn serious again.
It would be impossible.
But the slightest possibility that it is what I think it is… It’s enough to get me moving.
Practically running, I turn the corner where I saw the tail disappear, spotting it rounding the next one.
Now determined to catch the sneaky animal and prove myself and my wolf wrong, I break into a sprint.
It’s not an easy task — to follow a small, swift creature through a crumbling old building in the middle of the night. I find myself having to use my fire to light the way, jump over heaps of rubble and avoid old ornaments falling on my head from the ceiling.
But I’m so focused on the image of the black tail that I almost let myself slam into a wall. Coming to a screeching halt, I stumble back and look around, blinking.
Where the hell did it disappear?
My wolf directs my attention back to the wall. I summon another flame to illuminate the sight before me, but it still takes me a second to understand what I’m looking at.
There’s a plant climbing the wall — it’s dark, succulent leaves covering the torn painting underneath. And right below the frame, there’s a hole through which she must’ve disappeared.
I’m already moving to try to go through when my wolf stops me. “This is no ordinary plant,” she tells me, her nose working. “It’s magic.”
“Alright, but what do I do? I’m already risking losing her.”
She thinks for a second. “Move as if you’ll touch it.”
I do as I’m told. The second I do, sharp claws burst out of the edges of the leaves and all the leaves snap in my direction, like countless heads with a single collective mind.
Frowning, I snatch my hand back and retreat.
“Try burning it,” my wolf suggests.
But that only makes the plant grow more leaves, completely filling up the hole through which I need to go.
Damn it. “That’s the everroot vine. It feeds on fire, it must have grown here as a result of some explosion.”
“I have an idea,” my wolf tells me, “but you’ll have to be real fast.”
Impatiently, I nudge her to talk.
“Fire makes it grow, but electricity stuns it. Electrocute it, aiming for the roots, then use your Movement to go through the hole. You’ll only have a few seconds though.”
I give her a determined nod and get to work. I summon a whip and shoot it straight at the leaves, leading it down to the roots.
Instantly, the plant freezes and retreats, however little.
Without a second of hesitation, I dart through the hole, only a couple of claws managing to stick to my skin.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I find myself in a dimly lit space.
There she is, and this time, she’s not running away, she’s waiting for me.
The place she’s led me to looks strangely familiar, but it’s the animal that has the whole of my attention right now.
She lowers her slender black body onto her haunches and stares up at me with those yellow eyes of hers.
My breath catches. “Nymeria,” I whisper.
And it really is her, the realization making a flood of emotions sweep over me, so powerful that for a moment, I don’t know what to do with myself.
Then I rush to grab and pick her up. But the moment I reach for her, she disappears again, making me realize two things. Number one, I’m in the Forbidden Section. Number two, it’s the Lexarcanum she’s just darted into.