Chapter 9
Cyra
The library was unexpectedly bright considering we had to be underground.
I looked straight up and saw paneled windows in the ceiling far, far above us, but the windows couldn’t be letting in nearly this much light.
It was probably some kind of magical illumination like I sometimes encountered in the Citadel.
All around us, the floors of the library rose in circles around the center area, and I tried to imagine where on the Priory grounds we were in relationship to the main entrance and worship hall.
Even if most of this space was underground, there were only so many ways to keep it hidden, which seemed to be a priority.
“Are you looking for something in particular, my lady?” Phaedrus asked, breaking me out of my stupor.
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m not sure what. I was following my seeker power since it seems to know what I need.”
Phaedrus frowned. “I’ve never known seeker power to work like that, but you’re the exception to most of the rules, so I suppose anything is possible. Lead the way and I’ll do what I can to help.”
I nodded to Phaedrus and started walking again as my seeker power renewed its tugging.
Despite the insistent pull of the magic, I had trouble keeping my focus as Phaedrus followed me through the hallways.
I’d never in my life been in a library anywhere close to this large.
The stacks of books seemed never-ending, with floors reaching up far above us, containing what I imagined must be millions of books.
I’d just turned down a new corridor when the smell of old paper and leather binding gave way to the sweet scent of hot cinnamon and musk that I knew so well. I jerked to a stop and swung around, expecting to see Bressen, but my search came up empty.
“Lady Cyra? Are you alright?” Phaedrus asked next to me.
“I thought I smelled…” I trailed off, still looking around for Bressen.
Phaedrus sniffed the air, and a knowing look stole over his face. “You smell something…or someone you desire,” he said. He walked toward an area enclosed by glass walls. The glass door to get in stood slightly ajar.
“Someone must’ve left this open by accident,” Phaedrus said, reaching for the door.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
Phaedrus paused with his hand on the doorknob and smiled. “This is the room that holds the Priory’s collection of erotic literature.”
I felt myself blush, but Phaedrus didn’t seem at all embarrassed by the subject, and my interest piqued. I stepped closer to look into the room. Like everywhere else, the space was stacked floor-to-ceiling with books, the only difference being that it was enclosed.
“You keep it restricted?” I asked, nodding to the door.
“Not at all,” Phaedrus answered. “This door is never locked. Anyone with access to the library itself can get in here. We just had to wall off the area, and we keep the door closed because some of the books can be rather…potent, and it’s easy to get distracted if you’re around them for too long.
That’s where the smell comes from. Several of the more powerful magical texts can stimulate a person’s desires just by being around them. ”
“What do you…,” I started to ask, but then rethought my question. “Does everyone smell something different in there?”
Phaedrus smiled. “Yes. I, for instance, smell citrus and lavender.”
I opened my mouth then closed it again. I wanted to ask Phaedrus why he smelled those things, but I didn’t want to pry. He read the question in my face.
“It’s how my current lover often smells,” he offered.
His words struck me, and I looked at Phaedrus for the first time as a woman might.
He appeared older than me, somewhere around middle age, perhaps a bit older than Jasper.
In perimortal years, that meant he was likely several hundred years old, but I noticed now that he was a fairly striking man.
His robes hid the finer contours of his body, but I could tell he was broad-shouldered and fit.
His jawline was sharp, and it narrowed into a pointed chin with a tuft of short, just-graying hair.
His crystal-clear blue eyes were almost as haunting as my own silver ones were, and they stood out brightly against dark skin the color of cacao.
It was only now I realized how attractive he was.
“Do you want to go in?” Phaedrus asked, drawing me back from my perusal of his features.
I shouldn’t. There was a reason I was here, and it wasn’t for this. The seeker magic was a persistent tug in my chest, urging me on toward what I’d come here to discover, but this room pulled me toward it as well, just in a different way.
I found myself nodding, and Phaedrus opened the door to let me in. Bressen’s scent was faint out in the hall, but it flooded my nose when I stepped into the room, and I sucked in a breath as I felt an instant tightening between my thighs. Potent indeed.
I let my eyes scan the books on the shelves as I walked slowly down the first aisle. Some were in the common tongue while others were in unfamiliar languages.
“Those are all novels and stories of a sensual nature,” Phaedrus explained. “The books on this side are instructional.” He pulled a book off the shelf from the other side and handed it to me. The title read, Teachings on Desire.
I opened the book, and my eyes flared. “It’s…illustrated,” I observed as I flipped through the pages. My gaze snagged on one image, and my eyebrows shot up. I was probably not flexible enough to try that position.
“We have several copies of that book if you’d like to keep it for a while,” Phaedrus suggested seriously. There was no sly tone to his words. It was simply a keeper of knowledge offering that knowledge to another, and it was perhaps that alone that made me accept.
I closed the book. “I think I will,” I said. “Some of this may be relevant to…my healing magic.”
Phaedrus raised a gentle brow at my attempt to justify taking the book, but he didn’t say anything. I was about to turn to go when a cry sounded from somewhere deeper in the stacks, and instinct had me running toward it with Phaedrus on my heels.
“Lady Cyra! Wait!” he called after me, but I didn’t stop as I followed the sound of the cries, turning down another row where the stacks broke. Ahead of me the space opened up, and I tore into the clearing to find…
I pulled up short as I took in the man and woman before me.
The woman, who appeared to be in her forties or early fifties, was just slipping her priestess robes back on over her head, while a much younger man retied the sash that held his own robes together.
The man was tall and built like a soldier while the woman was almost as petite as Maziren.
They couldn’t have been more opposite, yet it was obvious what they’d been doing, and I was well aware I’d just done exactly what Axenus had done yesterday, followed sounds of seeming distress that turned out to be a couple fucking.
Phaedrus came up next to me as my eyes drifted to a wooden crate at one end of a table next to the couple. The crate sat by a large book while a number of smaller objects lay scattered around it. My eyes widened as my brain finally recognized what the objects were.
“Are those…stone cocks?” I asked.
“Ah yes, they are,” Phaedrus said, as if the sight of a dozen or so stone genitals sitting on a table made perfect sense to him.
“What?…Why?” I asked incredulously.
Phaedrus didn’t answer but instead addressed the man and woman who’d just noticed us. “Velania, Marcus, I don’t believe you’ve met Lady Cyra yet?”
The priest and priestess froze in the fixing of their garments as their eyes landed on me, and a second later, both sunk quickly to one knee.
“My lady,” Marcus said. “Please forgive us. We didn’t recognize you. We were just…um…” He trailed off, at a loss to explain what they’d just been doing.
“Please, stand,” I told them. I still wasn’t used to people bowing before me. “It’s quite alright. I’m no stranger to…giving in to one’s passions.”
They rose, and Velania bobbed a small curtsy. “Thank you for understanding, my lady.”
“We found the dick for the statue of Rubin the Bold that’s in the Great Chamber at the Citadel,” Marcus said in what he seemed to think was an explanation. “And we, uh, decided to celebrate.”
I looked at Phaedrus, hoping he’d fill in the details, and he obliged.
“As near as we can tell from the records,” Phaedrus said, “several thousand years ago, one of the High Priests of the Priory decided all the naked statues around the city were indecent. He ordered the genitalia of the male statues chiseled off, and they were replaced by stone or bronze grape leaves. About fifty years ago, an acolyte who’d been tasked with cleaning out one of the Priory’s many storage rooms came across half a dozen crates containing all the missing cocks. ”
I just stared at Phaedrus, and he gestured to the priest and priestess. “Velania and Marcus have been working on trying to match the missing cocks with their original statues so they can be restored.”
My brows shot up. “So you were working?” I asked the couple.
“It’s a hazard of working in this area,” Marcus said sheepishly. “Those of us who are in here a lot tend to end up having sex with each other periodically.”
“And you can’t take the box somewhere else?” I asked. “Surely it doesn’t need to stay here.”
Velania glanced at Marcus, then smiled at me. “Those of us who work in here usually want to work in here.”
I gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement. I couldn’t really fault her or Marcus for having a healthy love of sex.
“In any case, we finally found a source that had a drawing of the original statue,” Velania explained as she pushed a text toward me and pointed at a drawing in it.
“As you can see, Rubin’s member curves a little to the left in the image.
From there it was easy to find the correct appendage in the crate. ”
I pursed my lips to hide the smile that threatened. “Congratulations. It’s good to know Rubin the Bold will soon be reunited with his cock.”