Chapter Twenty One
The library had a particular kind of quiet to it most afternoons — not silence exactly, just the low, papery hush of everyone too tired to talk much, buried in their own stack of books.
Rowan had claimed the armchair by the cold fireplace an hour ago and hadn't moved since, one leg thrown over the arm, a spell theory volume propped against his knee.
I'd given up on my own stack twenty minutes back and switched to watching Amber instead, which was infinitely more interesting than anything written in these books so far.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a small fortress of tomes, brow furrowed hard enough to leave a line between her eyebrows that I badly wanted to smooth out with my thumb.
She looked exhausted. Worn thin in a way none of the pumpkin pie or family bonding in the world was going to fully fix, not while we were still stuck down here with no actual exit in sight.
Seeing her look like that did something ugly and restless in my chest. I couldn't fix the trap. I could, at minimum, try to fix her mood.
"Find anything?" I asked, already knowing the answer as I dropped down onto the floor beside her.
She sighed, shoving her hair back from her face. "Nothing. Feels like we've read the same book a hundred times and learned absolutely nothing new."
Her shoulders slumped, and I hated it, hated watching all that stubborn fire in her get worn down by a stack of dusty texts that weren't giving anything back. I leaned in, bumping my shoulder against hers.
"Maybe we're just missing the part that says, step one, escape magical prison, step two, live happily ever after."
That got a soft laugh out of her, small but real. "If only it were that easy."
"I'm nothing if not persistent." I leaned a little closer, close enough to catch the scent of her hair, cinnamon and something warmer underneath it that I'd apparently never get tired of. "But in the meantime, I think you need a break."
She raised an eyebrow, though the corner of her mouth had already started curving upward. "A break? We've been stuck here for weeks, Orias."
"Exactly my point." I scooted closer, close enough that our knees pressed together, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her. "You deserve a distraction. And I happen to know a devastatingly handsome one, conveniently sitting right beside you."
"Devastatingly modest, too."
"I contain multitudes. I have said this to you many times, but you are a brat who does not listen."
Before she could fire back, I kissed her.
Soft at first, just my lips against hers, one hand coming up to cup her jaw.
I felt her exhale against my mouth, the tension bleeding out of her shoulders as she kissed me back, slow and unhurried, like we actually had somewhere to be other than this exact spot on the floor.
"See," I murmured against her mouth. "Already an improvement."
"You're a dickhead."
"And you very clearly like me." I grinned and leaned back in, deeper this time, and she met me halfway, fingers sliding into my hair and pulling me closer with an eagerness that had my pulse climbing fast. She shifted forward, practically climbing into my lap without either of us fully deciding to let that happen, and I wasn't about to complain about it.
I heard the page-turning stop across the room. Didn't care.
Her mouth opened under mine, and I took full advantage, one hand sliding down to grip her waist while the other tangled in her hair, tilting her head exactly the way I wanted it.
She made a small, needy sound against my lips that went straight through me, and I was seconds from suggesting we relocate to somewhere with slightly less risk of an audience when we shifted weight wrong and stumbled backward into the shelf behind us.
"Oof!" Amber gasped, breaking the kiss as the whole shelf shuddered against my back.
Then — thud.
We both froze. I glanced down to find an old, leather-bound book lying face-down on the rug, cover cracked and pale with dust, dislodged from somewhere near the top of the shelf.
We burst out laughing at the same moment, the sound bouncing off the quiet room. "Nice one," Amber said between giggles, already leaning down to grab it. "Your horny behavior's wrecking the place."
"Entirely your fault, my sweet little witch. If you weren't so distracting I wouldn't feel compelled to maul you every time we're in the same room."
I crouched beside her, reaching for the book at the same moment she did, and the second both our fingers touched the cover, a jolt of magic shot straight up my arm, sharp enough to make me flinch back with a curse.
"Whoa." I stared down at it, pulse still buzzing from the shock. "What was that?"
Amber's eyes were wide, hand still hovering an inch from the cover. "Did you feel that too?"
"Definitely felt that."
Across the room, Rowan was already on his feet, book abandoned in the chair, crossing toward us with the sharp, focused look he got whenever something actually interesting happened for once. "Felt what?"
"This." I picked the book up more carefully this time, feeling a faint, steady hum under my palm, like the thing had its own pulse. "It's not like the others. Feels alive."
Rowan crouched beside us, close enough that I could feel him practically vibrating with the same restless curiosity. "Open it."
I brushed the dust off the cover, revealing a title etched in faded gold, letters in some old script none of us could fully place.
The second I cracked the spine open, the faint glow of magic flared bright enough to make the whole room feel charged, air tingling against my skin like the moment before a storm broke.
Amber leaned in close, breath catching. "What is it?"
"No idea." I flipped through pages dense with spell diagrams and handwritten notes crammed into every margin, each one humming faintly under my fingers like it wanted to be read.
Amber twisted around before I could get further. "Dad! Cian! Get in here!"
A minute later, Yakob and Cian appeared in the doorway, both going still the second they saw what I was holding.
"We've never seen that book," Cian said, moving closer, disbelief thick in his voice. "Where'd it come from?"
"Fell off the shelf," I said.
"We knocked it off the shelf," Amber corrected, a wicked little smile tugging at her mouth that made it very clear she wasn't remotely sorry about the how.
Yakob leaned in, eyes narrowing as he studied the pages. "There's serious magic in this one. I can feel it from here."
I stopped flipping when one page caught my eye, words practically glowing off the paper like they wanted to be found. At the top, in heavy black lettering: The Spell of Balancing.
"Amber. Look at this."
She leaned in, reading over my shoulder, voice going tight with disbelief as she got through it. "To restore what has been lost, and make whole what has been broken. A spell to bring harmony back to the forces of nature and magic."
My heart slammed against my ribs. "This could actually be it. Which is genuinely ridiculous, given we found it because I was trying to... to um do yoga."
Cian and Yakob exchanged a long look, hope flickering behind both their expressions in a way I hadn't seen from either of them since we'd arrived.
Rowan's jaw was tight, focus entirely on the page. "What does it need?"
I scanned further. "Ingredients. Some of it's familiar — herbs, enchanted stones. Some of it's obscure as hell. There's a timing note too." I read it aloud. "Best performed under the light of a full moon, to boost the potency of the magic."
"Full moon's in three days," Amber said instantly, already halfway to her feet, checking the moon calendar tacked up near the kitchen doorway. "That's what the chart says."
Something in my chest went tight and hopeful all at once, the first genuine spark of it since we'd crossed into this place. "Then we prepare. Gather everything on that list and get ready to do this properly."
Cian grinned, eyes bright. "This could be our way out."
"Best lead we've had in years," Yakob said quietly, hope and caution warring plainly across his face.
Amber turned to me, eyes shining. "We can actually do this."
"Yeah." I squeezed her hand, felt Rowan's hand land steady on my shoulder from behind, all four of them crowding close around the one real chance we'd stumbled into by pure, ridiculous accident. "We can go home."
For the first time since crossing that treeline, the air in this place felt like it was buzzing with something other than dread.
Hope. Reckless, fragile, and entirely worth chasing.