28. Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Istep past the entryway and into Micah’s humble castle of sorts, and I know instantly that the house is alive with magic.
I can feel it, taste it, and almost swim for my life inside it like a raging river, and yet, incredibly, at the same time, it’s a gentle song floating in a calm sea. It’s the first time I understand that magic can be many things, and the magic in this house is all of those things.
As for the view, steepled ceilings tower above me, and the space is cozy and picturesque, larger than it seemed it could be from outside, the living room filled with overstuffed furniture in browns and blues.
A wide hearth frames the room, consuming the right wall, the bricks are as welcoming as the blue and orange flames licking at the encasing.
The kitchen is directly behind the sitting area, the island is wide and long and created of glistening marble.
Micah shuts the door behind me and appears by my side. “It’s alive,” I whisper, pulling my gaze from the room to look at him.
“Everything in this world is, but when you enclose it in walls, even spellcasted walls, the magic becomes even more heavily concentrated and powerful.”
“Is it safe?”
“The magic in this house protects those inside it. In fact, there is no other place from this point forward in your life where you can fully allow your guard to come down.”
My home outside of Elysium will never be safe again. Maybe it never was in the first place. “In this house? Or in this world?”
“Treat outside as a human would a forest filled with wild animals and a sea swimming with sharks, and you’ll be just fine.”
When he puts it that way, the world I’ve grown up in sounds dangerous, and maybe that’s the point.
It is, and perhaps that’s why I gravitated toward criminal law.
I felt a deep-seated need to do something proactive, to fight who I thought to be bad actors that were human, not demons.
Now, I wonder just how often I ran into a demon I didn’t see, as I wasn’t of age.
My gaze lifts to the winding staircase to the left and closer to the kitchen than the door to our rear, to the two towering wooden doors at the top, and it’s clear magic is in this place. There is no way those doors fit in the house I observed from outside, and yet, here they are.
“What’s that up there?” I ask, glancing over at Micah.
“You said I need something to offer you other than food. That place is my offering.” He disappears, and my gaze swings to the top of the stairs, where I know I’ll find him, and I do.
“Come join me,” he says, his eyes positively wicked with a mix of amusement and challenge.
He wants me to just wish myself there, or at least, I think that’s how it works, and the truth is, I loved the feeling of traveling with him.
It was an adrenaline rush, much like I imagine skydiving must be, but without the sensation of falling.
I crave the ability to recreate that on my own, but I don’t seem to understand the process well enough to actually make it happen.
In the back of my mind, I am reminded of Micah preaching about me believing in my own magic to own it, which is impossible to do when I’m still half certain I’m trapped inside a never-ending nightmare. So, do I believe? No. No, I do not believe in my own magic. I barely believe in his.
So, like a normal magicless human, I walk in his direction, and I don’t stop until I’m attempting to head up the stairs only to hit an invisible wall, bouncing rather roughly off of it. “What the heck was that?” I demand, moving to stand directly underneath him and glaring up at him.
“The house protects what’s up here with me,” he states. “But I spellcast a tunnel for you.”
“It wouldn’t let me pass.”
“Use your magic.”
I don’t even entertain that idea. “So, I can’t come up?”
“You can. You know how.”
I purse my lips. “This is getting old.”
“Come to me, Ember,” he commands, and suddenly I’m there, up there, with him, standing in front of him.
My hands fly up, the only shelter I have in the storm of unexpectedness he’s always creating. “What just happened?” I demand. “Because I didn’t do that myself. Can you just pick me up and move me around with your mind?”
“You did, and I cannot. The house wants what you want. It helped you.”
“The house wants what I want,” I repeat, all but choking on the ridiculousness of the words. “That’s almost the strangest thing you’ve said to me. And creepy.”
“We’re standing in the center of a gravitational hotspot, which magnifies the power of magic. And what’s creepy are yellow-eyed demons. If your powers really are bound, which I believe they are, you need a force such as this one to free them for your own use.”
“In other words, you’re telling me this house granted me a wish?”
He doesn’t react to my smooth ability to be a smartass, remaining highly focused on his explanation.
“The magic that resides in this house latched onto your own magic and helped you use it. And to be clear, if you had no magic, that wouldn’t have happened.
By the time we leave here, using your assets will be as second nature as a simple conversation.
You’ll use your assets that easily.” He motions behind him. “Want to see what’s behind the doors?”
“I worked to get here,” I say without hesitation, wanting to know what is so precious that it’s protected behind invisible walls. “I want to know why.”
His way-too-perfect mouth quirks at the edges. “But did you really?”
“I walked clear across the living room before the magic delivered me to you.”
He laughs, a deep chuckle I feel in my belly, and I have this nervous idea he might actually know how he affects me, he feels it even, and I don’t know how to stop it from happening.
And do I want to stop it from happening?
“Ah, yes,” he says. “I forget all the miles you walked through snow, with no shoes. Up a hill, no doubt.”
“You understand human jokes very well.”
“I’ve lived my lifetime with humans,” he says. “If I didn’t, how sad would that be?” He rotates to face the door.
I step to his side with an odd sense of belonging in this exact place that I do not understand.
Knowledge is power, and at this point, I have none.
I barely know him. In fact, I know little about him, and that needs to change, but for now, I focus on the mysterious room.
The double doors tower before us and above us, the gold glistening much as the silver front doors had, but there’s an additional yellow glow, almost as if sunlight beams through the corners of a curtain, delivering the hues of a new day.
They begin to slide open, and somehow, I know this isn’t by way of Micah and his magic.
It’s the house.
And the way it seems to live and breathe on its own really is creepy, and yet, somehow intriguing.
I’m a contradiction these days. No, I think I’ve lived my life as a contradiction, and I didn’t even know it.
I need to take control, and the only way I know to do that is the same way I did it in law school—with knowledge. I need to learn.
My adrenaline surges as the doors spread wide, and there is a silent invitation for our entry, though I cannot see beyond the threshold.
Micah steps forward, and I’m right there with him, keeping pace and gasping as we bring a library into view, and it’s a spectacular space, like none I’ve ever seen.
There’s mahogany-adorned seating lining textured walls decorated with expensive paintings, but it’s what is on my left that blows my mind, where well-filled bookshelves wrap like a cylinder that climbs up and down as far as my eye can see.
I rush to the shiny wooden railing, and my lips part incredulously.
The structure, indeed climbs what feels like miles high and miles low, the spines of the many volumes of books, tightly filling every single row.
Micah assumes the position next to me, and I rotate to face him.
“Am I dreaming? How is this possible? I saw the outside of the house. There’s no way a library of this incredible magnitude fits in here. ”
“We’re without the boundaries of Earth in Elysium.”
I blink, my lips parting and pressing together before I finally manage words. “I don’t quite know where to put that or how to process it.”
“Well, now you have the resources to understand what baffles you. In these books, you will learn everything you would have learned living among your own kind.”
“What is this place, aside from an obvious library? Why does it exist?”
“Each Overseer protects a portion of our chancery of knowledge.”
“How many Overseers are there again?”
“Eight of us and eight libraries, which assures no enemy ever obtains all of our knowledge, nor is all of our knowledge ever in danger. This is the Bastian Library, named after one of our great warriors, as are all of the eight libraries.” He motions to the tables against the walls.
“As you can see, there’s plenty of space to get cozy and read.
It gets chilly in here even when it’s warm outside.
” The floating fireplace between the various tables flickers to life.
“That should help. Pick your spot. And if you’d like, I can recommend the books to start with. ”
“Can I just go get lost in the books and walk the aisles?”
“You can get lost here for as long as you wish. I certainly have, but then I’ve had my share of time to absorb it all.”
Seeing an opening to start to get to know him, I expect to be shut down on his age, he seems to guard it closely, but I try anyway. “How long exactly?”
“Three hundred years,” he announces.
I gape quite literally. “Three hundred years?”
“Yes. Translation, I’m very good at staying alive, and I plan to make sure you are as well.”
I laugh without humor, with pure incredulity, pressing my hand to my face and then letting it fall. “I guess this means I can call you old man.”
“And I can call you kid.”
The mood between us shifts, the air thickening, and the realization that I seem to be alone with him in an unknown world, as in literally alone, and the only thing standing between me and the serpent is him. I trust him. My God, I want him. “Ember,” I amend softly. “Ember. Just Ember.”
The warmth in his eyes of moments ago simmers a degree hotter.
“Ember,” he repeats, his voice husky in a way I’ve never heard until now.
“You enjoy the books,” he adds. He holds out a hand, and a book appears in his grip.
“This one. I think you’ll find it interesting.
I’ll give you some time to look around without me standing over your shoulder. ” He disappears.
I stare down at the ancient-looking, worn spine of the book resting in my palm and walk to a table near the fireplace, wondering why there are so many seats here.
Does the library allow visitors? Are there Nephilim who live here?
That doesn’t fit what Micah has told me up to this point, but I make a mental note to ask him later.
For now, I focus on the book in front of me, running my hand over the gold seal on the front.
I flip it open and read, And so, it began.
I start reading, and it becomes clear this is the history of the Nephilim.
I flip through the pages, noticing the blue page in the center.
Turning to that page, it reads, Part Two: The Aza.
It is written that there is only one true Mordechai Angel, Aza, the one who has the power to protect or destroy but must choose either path.
Choice is free will, and free will is a gift or a curse, determined by who yields its power.
Influence and temptation are mighty swords, as is the pleasure of the flesh.
This Mordechai must choose allies cautiously, must align with the true light, or darkness will fall.
The direction this wind blows will be as mighty as the outcome that will frame all that humanity will know and all that it will be.
Slaves, soldiers, friends. Enemies, life—or death.
For without the one true Mordechai Angel, Aza, all shall perish who do not bow to the darkest knight of them all, the one true Mordechai Demon known as Sabon.
A cry will go out across the Nephilim nation so that all will know the Samyaza, known by many as the Aza, has been born.
Bile rises in my throat for no good reason, and my hand trembles.
The Aza. Who is the Aza? That’s when Micah appears in the seat across from me, and he’s brought two steaming hot mugs that now sit on the table.
He glances at the page I’m reading, his gaze lingering there for a whisper of a moment, the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, before it lifts to mine.
“I see you skipped ahead.” There’s a casualness to his tone, but beneath the surface, I sense an undercurrent of something darker, harder.
He lifts his cup to his lips and sips, setting the cup down and asking, “Do you read the last page of the book to decide if you’ll read the rest? ”
“Why did you give me this book to read?”
A stack of books appears on the table next to him, and I’m acutely aware of him working to create comfort in me around magic. “You know the history of the human world, which is necessary since we’re their protectors. But you don’t know the history of your own world. You need to know it.”
I draw in a stunned breath and allow the air to trickle slowly from my lips, the words I resist with it. “You think I’m the Samyaza and Jeremy is the Sabon.”
“I don’t know where Jeremy fits into this, but as to you, the answer to your question is yes,” he surprises me by saying easily. “I believe you’re the Aza.”