Chapter 47 No Apologies
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
NO APOLOGIES
ADELINE
“Are you all right?” Roane asks softly a little later, as our horse comes to a halt.
I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m feeling after all the fear and blood and death. After seeing two creatures I’ve started to consider my friends die gruesome deaths, only to have them resurrected as I mourned them… and then discover they are monsters who escaped from magical books.
Monsters that Roane pulled from books.
Why?
“It’s complicated,” he says quietly and only then do I realize I spoke the question out loud.
“You know you’ll have to tell Ardruna the truth,” I say.
“I’m sure Talton has told her already.”
“But why, why would you take them out of their stories when—”
He whistles, rams his heels into the horse’s flanks and we lurch forward into a full gallop. We race toward the city, the wind stealing my breath and any other sound.
Fine. He doesn’t want to talk about it. But the truth always wants out, sooner or later.
“Only if you keep pushing,” Olm says inside my head. “Not every truth needs to come out, and it often won’t emerge unless someone goes looking.”
“Well, I’m looking and I won’t stop, no matter what you or Roane wish I’d do. You want to bury the truth? I’ll dig it back up.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t live a lie,” I explain. “Escaping into books is lovely, but I want to write my own story, to control my ending. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
It’s Olm’s turn to fall quiet and we continue our journey in silence.
The horse falters when we reach the great staircase leading up to the library, so we dismount. Roane helps me down and my knees almost go out from under me.
“I’m fine,” I say when he reaches for me. “Just tired. I’m not used to riding.”
He nods and slaps the horse’s side, sending it cantering away.
Then we start up the wide staircase. At some point, he grabs my hand in his and I don’t pull back.
It’s an arduous climb up the hill after the day we’ve had.
The events and discoveries, the stress and fear and sorrow, they clump together into a mass that feels like it’s hanging around my neck.
The day is fading, the lights coming up on the roof and walls of the cavern. Distant screeches indicate that the griffins are active, but I can’t even look up, my attention focused on putting one foot in front of the other, climbing the steps one by one.
By the time we reach the top, we’re both out of breath, staggering like drunks. It strikes me as kind of funny that he seems as destroyed by today’s events as I am. He’s the mighty warrior guardian of this world and I’m only a bookish human girl.
How dare he.
“If you can take people out of books,” I say, bowing over and trying to catch my breath, “how come you can’t put the monsters back into the pages they escaped from?”
He shakes his head. “It’s different.” Gesturing for me to get moving again, he glances around with a hand on the hilt of a knife. “It will be dark any moment now. We should get inside.”
I nod and straighten, seeing the wisdom in that. I watch as he walks up to the double doors and presses the hidden mechanism. He shoves the doors wide open, pulls me inside, then turns and shuts them with a mighty clank.
“Are they here already?” I belatedly remember to ask. “Talton and Ardruna.”
“I sure hope so.” He takes my hand and leads me to the staircase. “It’s still their home.”
I let him haul me along, my mind churning. Something isn’t making sense. Scratch that, too many things aren’t making sense, but one in particular bothers me.
My steps slow down. His magic is all wrong. His magic isn’t failing him, it’s just… different. Powerful but not the sort a warrior librarian should have.
He stops, his hand around mine tightening. “What is it?”
But before I can speak, Ardruna appears at the foot of the staircase. “There you are, liar. You betrayed our trust.”
“Druna…” Roane stops. “Where is Talton?”
“Right here.” The raven flies down to land on the lioness’s back. “You were saying?”
“I wasn’t saying anything.” Roane pushes past them, tugging me along. “It’s dinner time.”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to brush this off,” Ardruna says. “We need to talk, Ro.”
He whirls about, releasing my hand. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I’m not.”
“How can you say that?” she demands.
His shoulders bow over. “Is your life here with me so bad?”
“That’s all you have to say?” Ardruna growls. “We want to know why you did it. Why you didn’t tell us. Decades, Ro! Whole decades and you never said a word. We wouldn’t have known if Aline hadn’t figured it out.”
He shoots me a loathing glance. “Yeah. Everything would have been fine if she hadn’t poked her nose into this.”
I flinch.
“I thought we were friends, Roane,” Ardruna says.
“We are,” he says tightly.
“That means no secrets and no gaslighting. You should have told us the truth. Look at me, Ro. You should have trusted us. What reason have we given you not to trust us?”
With a last withering look at me, he turns back toward them. “Has it occurred to you that you’re not the reason I can’t trust people? That I was betrayed in the past?”
“Is that true?” Ardruna tsks. “I don’t know if to believe you, and you know why? Because you keep lying.”
His head bows, hands curling into fists. “If you don’t wish to be here, you’re free to go and always were.”
“That’s it? No apologies? No promises to do better from now on? I see.” Ardruna turns around, Talton still on her back. “Stay here, then, and live with your lies.”
I let out a hissing breath.
Roane watches them walk away, his hands still fisted at his sides, his chest rising and falling unevenly. “You are my family,” he whispers. “Don’t go.”
But their forms quickly disappear among the giant columns.
“No.” Roane slides down to his knees. “No…”
And the library shakes.