11. The Knight in the Library
N icodemus headed straight to his study after ensuring that all the weapons were safely locked away in the vault on the bottom floor, trying not to think of the look on the knight’s face when she discovered the armoury was empty. It had been tempting to stay to watch her expression, only he didn’t feel like lurking until she returned, and his leg was starting to ache. It had been foolish to conduct an entire tour without his cane.
Still, it was nice to finally have someone to show the castle to. Cordelia was much harder to impress, and had no taste for fine art. He’d allowed her to redecorate the main corridor when she’d first arrived, and it was a decision he was still regretting.
Sitting down at his desk, he opened his notebook again, turning to the back where he’d written out their tally. He crossed out the word Knight and wrote Viola instead.
He’d been wondering what her name was for months. He’d never imagined it would be something pretty, almost delicate. A plant. An instrument. Vi-ah-la. A sound so soft his mouth almost broke with it.
He was definitely calling her Windbright. It seemed the safest option.
He wondered what she would call him, and then wondered why he was wondering that. He didn’t care for her good opinion, even if it might be useful for her to form one of him.
She’s a knight, a voice reminded her. You know what they’re capable of. Stop wanting to impress her.
He held onto his resolve for a good hour or so, before he grew bored of the silence and decided to head off in search of her.
Just for something to do, he assured himself. It wasn’t that he desired her company. He was merely curious what she was getting up to. It wouldn’t do if she tried to escape yet.
The shadows at his feet rippled, colliding with the shadows in the castle, all rummaging around in search of her. The armoury, they seemed to whisper. That was where she was.
Nicodemus didn’t know how it was that the shadows seemed to whisper to him, or even how to explain it. It was voiceless, wordless, more a feeling than a sound.
Curious that she should be in there without any usable weapons, he pushed the door open cautiously, only to find her on the floor, doubled over, crouching next to one of the practice swords. Blood seeped through her shirt.
She hadn’t…
“You ripped open your stitches,” he remarked.
Viola sucked in a painful breath. “I may have stretched them slightly—”
“Umbra’s shadows, you’re as dumb as it gets. You’ll take twice as long to heal at this rate.” He grabbed her arm and manoeuvred her into a nearby chair, his shadows flickering at his feet like the tails of disgruntled cats. “I am going to get some medical supplies. If you move from this spot, my shadows will tie you up faster than you can leave.”
“But—”
“Windbright, it’s like you don’t even want to leave. Really, I’m touched. Or at least, I would be if I cared about you at all.”
She shot him a dark look. It might have been terrifying if it didn’t make her lips purse in a delightful manner. He stifled a smirk, letting a shadow pour out of him to stand guard. “I’ll be right back.”
He headed to the castle pharmacy to collect some supplies, a room that was almost exclusively Cordelia’s. The air thickened as he pushed open the door, heavy with a pungent blend of herbs and potions. Shelves lined with jars of grotesque specimens cast eerie shadows that danced along the obsidian walls, filled with everything from withered toads to gnarled chicken feet and carefully labelled vials of blood. The milky, dead eyes of preserved creatures seemed to follow Nico’s every movement, their secrets whispering through the musty air. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, their scent mingling with the mustiness. Dozens, maybe hundreds of bones were stacked neatly in boxes, ordered by size and creature. Until Cordelia moved in, Nico had been quite unaware of how many shades of yellow and brown there were. Cream no longer seemed like a nice colour.
He shivered, glad Cordelia was tied up in a project and didn’t notice him collecting the basket of medical supplies. He grabbed it quickly and raced back to Viola’s side as quickly as his leg would allow him. He could have sent a shadow for it, of course, but they’d he’d have been forced to make small talk with her which wasn’t exactly easy for him when he wasn’t showing off.
Viola was right where he had left her, staring at her shadowy-guard as if her glare alone would be enough to disperse him. Nico dismissed it with a wave of his hand, setting the box down beside his reluctant guest.
“Lift up your shirt.”
Viola did one step further, hauling up the hem over her head and dropping the entire shirt on the floor. Her bandages did not cover her chest.
Nico stared, his eyes wide. Viola stared right back. “What? You must have seen me naked when you doctored me the first time.”
“I assure you, the utmost care was taken with your modesty. I saw little more than a glimpse.”
She shrugged, as if it was neither here nor there. He imagined, as a knight, she must have lived in very close quarters with her comrades during training. Nudity probably did not bother her in the slightest.
Nico, meanwhile, was not used to the sight of naked anything. He’d been living in the woods since he was thirteen years old, and given what he was (and what he looked like under the mask) it was hard for him to fit in with society. Curiosity had at last gotten the better of him several years ago, and he’d visited a pleasure house in Florenwall, the first major town north of the Feywood. Not a brothel in the traditional sense, The Jolly Dolly was a tavern where anyone in search of a good time or a temporary escape could meet with people of a similar mindset. Rooms were dedicated both to sex and magical highs, with potions to heighten pleasure, to bring on visions, to riddle your body with sensation or sink your mind into dreams so lucid you could taste the honey on your tongue.
Nico had bought a cream from a witch that concealed the worst of his injuries, and he’d strode into the tavern with the sole purpose of discovering what all the romance books in his collection were about. He had discovered a lot more about himself.
Namely, that meaningless sex wasn’t for him. He wasn’t easily attracted to people, and being naked in front of strangers just made him feel awkward and exposed. He’d spent most of his very brief time in the tavern certain that the cream would wear off or his shadows would flicker nervously and he’d be discovered.
He hadn’t once been back.
And now there was a half naked woman in front of him, glaring at him with steely eyes, and he was expected to put his hands on her and act like this was perfectly normal .
One step at a time.
He snipped away her bandage, mopping up the running blood and examining the raw, angry lines in her flesh. Her fingers tightened on the seat, from pain or exposure, he wasn’t sure.
Nico forced a smile. “Need me to hold your hand while—”
“Fuck off.”
“A polite ‘no’ would have sufficed, but all right.” He pinched her torn flesh together, making her skin prickle in protest.
“Auriel’s light, your hands are freezing!”
“Sorry,” he said, retracting them to rub against his clothes in an effort to warm them up. He tested them again next to the back of her hand. “Better?”
“Tolerable.”
“Well, you know what they say about a man with cold hands—”
“I swear, if this is a euphemism—”
“Don’t be crass, Windbright. They say, ‘my word, those are some cold hands you’ve got!’”
Viola glared at him.
“No? Hmm. Tough crowd.”
Jokes were easier. Easier than looking at her flesh, mindful of quite how close her small, pert breasts were to his moving hands. He swallowed, picking up the instruments to remove the torn stitches.
A large tattoo of a black feather wrapped around her upper arm, curing over her right shoulder. He’d noticed it briefly when dealing with her wounds before, but hadn’t stopped to look at it.
“Nice tattoo,” he commented. “Does it have meaning? Is it runed?”
Knights frequently bore runes to increase their strength or give them better eyesight, speed or agility. Sometimes they’d hide the runes within other marks, or so he heard, though that was difficult to do. Rune magic was incredibly precise; it needed to be drawn in a particular way, in a particular spot, and with the right equipment and ingredients. There was no use painting a strength rune on your smallest finger using crushed beetle blood. Magic came from magic, a science more than an art.
“It’s not runed,” she told him. “I got it after I was given my hippogriff, Blackberry.”
“Ooh, I like that, maybe I should get a pawprint.”
Windbright glared at him.
“Or not.” He snipped away at her stitches, placing the discarded thread in a nearby bowl. She didn’t even wince. “Any more tattoos?”
Her fingers brushed against her wrist, like she was trying to hide the three characters she had inked there, all to no avail. They were written in Sunscript, a character-based language Nicodemus had little knowledge of.
“What does it say?” he asked.
“It’s not important,” she said quickly, in a way that made him feel it almost certainly was.
He shrugged, not willing to pry. He worked quickly to restitch her wound, his patient impossibly still. She bore several scars already. She was clearly used to this. He wanted to ask the stories behind some of the others, but he couldn’t summon the courage. Scars felt too personal. He should know.
“Favourite flower,” he said.
“Come again?”
“Favourite flower. Do you have one?”
“You’re asking me what my favourite flower is?”
“Mine’s a calla lily, if you wanted to know.”
“I did not,” she said tersely. “I don’t have a favourite, but I like colourful ones. Tulips. Sunflowers. Wildflowers, too.”
He smiled. He quite liked the thought of her in a meadow, armour and prickliness and all. It made for quite the agreeable contrast. “Favourite season?”
“Summer. I like the heat and the long days.”
“Winter, for me. I like the darkness and the warm fires. Animal?”
“Hippogriff. Do you interrogate all your guests this way?”
“Well, you’ve the first one I’ve had since Cordelia. She quite liked the simple questions as a way of getting to know someone. Straightforward.”
“I’m not sure you can tell much about a person by their favourite flower.”
“Well, you can tell their favourite flower, for one thing, and also distract them from the fact you’re giving them stitches.” He put aside his needle and thread, sliding across the wound with ointment and holding up another roll of bandage. “Arms up.”
A few seconds later, and he was done. He fetched her shirt from the floor and handed it to her, grateful to be able to look away.
“Come,” he said, when she was done redressing. “I have somewhere else to show you that might hold your interest for a while.”
Cursing every step and her inability to sit still, Viola followed Nicodemus through a grand set of doors on one of the lower floors. It was easily the most impressive room he’d shown her so far, a colossal space filled from floor to ceiling with books. It had more colour than the rest of the rooms. A mural of the night sky over a field was splashed on one of the walls, painted lanterns drifting through the inky backdrop. Pillars were wrapped with gold leaves, plush chairs and cushions crammed into the corners, and thick curtains and rugs finished the furnishings.
“Wow,” she murmured.
“I know. Truly something, isn’t it?”
“You stole all of these books?”
“No. No. That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say, ‘wow, oh my, sweet goddess above’ and ‘what an unparalleled collection you have here, Nightshade, won’t you please direct me to smutty romances?’”
“You don’t have guests very often, do you?”
“I do not. And certainly none of them have sworn to destroy me. Nevertheless—” He twirled around. “What can I get you?”
Viola pulled a face. “I don’t really read. ”
Nicodemus stared at her like she’d just uttered the foulest of insults. “You don’t read ?”
“I usually have more important things to be getting on with.”
“ More important —?! Don’t give me another reason to dislike you.”
“I have wordweave syndrome!” she protested. “Reading is a bit trickier for me. If I have to read, I might as well learn something in the process—”
“You don’t think you can learn things from fiction?”
“I think I’ll learn more from a history book.”
Nicodemus winced. “Yes, I’m going to do something you’re really not going to like, and I’m not remotely sorry about it.”
He twirled a singular wrist like he was shucking down his cuff, and a shadow sprung loose by the door, slamming it shut. Viola could hear it locking from the middle of the room.
“But you’re in here too,” she told him.
Nicodemus grinned. “At the moment.”
He took a step back, folding into the shadow of a nearby ladder, and his entire body shimmered black and disappeared without a sound.
“You can teleport? ”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” came a voice on the other side of the door. “But for all intents and purposes, yes.”
Viola rushed to the door, clutching her side, and hammered on the panel. “You can’t lock people up!”
“I am a villain, so I absolutely can.”
“Let me out!”
“I will, when you’ve read three chapters of something or it’s time for lunch. Whichever is sooner.”
“You let me out right now—”
“You’re locked up in a library, Windbright. Some people dream of this.”
“Well NOT ME.”
She yelled a handful of expletives at him, pausing only briefly when one of his shadows snuck under the door, locking the entrance to the adjoining study, and bit its thumb at her as it hurried away again—a gesture considered quite vulgar.
She let out a furious cry and kicked the door. Nicodemus cackled, his footsteps sounding down the corridor.
Smug git.
Naturally, the first thing she tried were the windows, but they didn’t open and once more she was too high up for it to matter if they did. Oh, if only she’d been born with a power. A stonemancer, maybe, who could punch through these walls with ease, or a floramancer who could tear through the foundations by manipulating dormant plant life.
Or throttle that exasperating shadowmancer with her vines.
Alas, her hands would have to do. Because as soon as she was getting out of here, she was strangling him.
She tried the door to the adjoining study, but it was well and truly locked, and she didn’t have the strength to break it down or the tools to pick the lock. Most unfortunately, it seemed like she was stuck here.
Frustrated, she threw herself down into a wingback chair, making herself wince again. Fine. She might have to remain in the library for a while, but he couldn’t make her read. She could pass the time until lunch doing something else. She and Seb used to play a game whenever they were bored, spotting shapes in the clouds and coming up with stories for them. She tried it now, but it was a poor day for cloud spotting. They seemed to have merged together in one great slab of white.
She turned to the paintings in the room searching for similar inspiration, but came up blank. She tried to exercise from her seat, concentrating on her legs and arms, but everything was connected to her middle, and after a few times of pulling her stitches, she gave up that, too.
The books blinked at her from the shelves.
Fine, she said to herself. I’ll read a few chapters, just to pass the time.
There was no need for him to know that she’d caved. She’d rather wait until lunchtime than give him the satisfaction. As soon as she heard someone opening the door, she’d throw the book to the far side of the room. No one would ever know .
She selected a random book from the shelf with a red cover and a gold engraving of a rose. She read the first page, didn’t hate it, and skimmed a little further ahead to see if it was worth her time. It appeared to be a melodramatic romance where everything could be solved with a single conversation. Already annoyed, she shoved it back onto the shelf and picked out another with a ship on the spine, but found it far too wordy.
Eventually, she settled on an adventure-romance about two demon hunters from warring tribes, forging an alliance against a demon king after both of their villages were destroyed in an attack. It had a lot of dialogue rather than pages of tightly-woven prose, making it slightly easier for her to read. Someone had folded a small sketch of the two main characters between the pages. It was a sweet, tender image of the two men holding hands whilst watching the stars. She hoped it was a scene from the book itself.
She settled back in the wingback chair, certain it wouldn’t hold her interest long.
The next time she looked up, an hour had passed. Wilde and Korrigan had just set off on their quest, mourning their villages and hating their dependance on one another, whilst attraction clearly fizzled beneath the surface.
A cat meowed at her feet.
Viola glanced down and found a large fluffy tabby cat with huge green eyes and a slightly bedraggled appearance, like he’d just been swept through a windstorm.
“You must be Lord Azrael,” Viola commented, leaning down to scratch his ear. “The greatest of all cats, apparently.”
The cat butted her hand and purred into her, as if he was in firm agreement. She scratched him behind the ear. Pain crackled at her side, and she drew back. The cat, seemingly registering her distress, leapt up onto the armrest and then flopped onto her lap, belly exposed.
“Oh, you are a good cat!” she exclaimed, rubbing the soft fur of his underside. She’d always liked animals—growing up on a farm, she hadn’t had much of a choice. Her family had kept a few cats over the years, all named after gods or saints. They weren’t particularly religious, but her father had always loved the lore.
“You’ll usually find there’s something to it,” he’d told her.
The last one—Umbralee—had been named in part for the goddess of death. She’d likely died with the rest of Viola’s family.
Not wanting to dwell on such a thought, Viola resumed reading her book and petting the cat, and that was where Nicodemus found her hours later—utterly absorbed and completely still.