Chapter 19
He wasn’t there.
Ryn wasn’t sure whether to collapse from relief or apprehension. And she didn’t have time for either, because the librarian, bless him, was lecturing her in blissful unawareness of how close he’d come to witnessing a character out of legend.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “Genuinely. Brantley, are you going to report me for this?”
He grunted under his breath. Honestly, if she had to be caught, Brantley was probably the best of all possible options.
He was a fierce protector of his books and the peace of the library, but he also believed just as fiercely that knowledge should be freely open to all, and not only to scholars.
For as long as she’d known him, he spent his days off reading to children and working on his own collection of battered tomes that he loaned out of his tiny rooms over the local tavern.
“I won’t, Miss Ryn, so long as you leave quietly. It’s not fair what they did to you, but I can’t be losing my job either.”
“Thank you,” she said earnestly. “You don’t know how I appreciate it.”
“And if there’s anything you particularly want, you ought to just ask,” he said sternly. “I have loaning privileges, and I know you would exercise the greatest care.”
It was possibly the most generous offer she had ever heard him make, and Ryn felt herself tear up a little at the knowledge that there was someone at the university who did not disdain her.
Even if he was not actually real. Though in truth, she was beginning to feel less and less certain of anything.
Had the curse ripped these details from her head in order to recreate this place from her memories?
Or could it somehow have actually transported her and Xavi all these many miles in the blink of an eye?
And how could any of this possibly prove that she would make a suitable bride for a king?
The university held many painful memories for her now, but what was the purpose of reliving her past regrets?
Also, when had she started calling him Xavi instead of Xaviel?
But just as before, the answers to these questions were not as important as escaping unscathed.
They still had to behave as though all of this was in deadly earnest. Which meant she had to get out of the library without anyone else noticing her, but somehow also find Xavi before he left half the university in a dead faint.
Though that might be a poor choice of words under the circumstances.
“I’ll just slip out the side door, then,” she murmured, moving past Brantley with a nod of acknowledgement. “And thank you so much for the offer. I’ll be sure to…”
A chorus of shrieks and howls of terror erupted from the far side of the library, pulling Brantley’s head around as if it were on a string.
“Who in the name of all the seven devils is causing trouble in my library?” he growled—but quietly. An outraged librarian was still a librarian.
“I’ll see myself out,” Ryn whispered hastily, heading in the direction of the exit with a wave of her hand that Brantley never saw.
He was already moving towards the disturbance at the fastest walk that his librarian code of behavior would allow, fighting the currents of lesser scholars fleeing from the sounds of terror.
It was Ryn’s chance to escape. No one would notice her in the midst of the uproar, and she could be outside the university grounds before most of these scholars even figured out what they were screaming at.
But she couldn’t leave Xavi. Not when he had no knowledge of where he was, or even how to survive in the human world. Though why she should feel so protective of an immortal shapeshifting warrior, she had no idea.
“Get over it, Ryn,” she muttered to herself. “He’s over a thousand years old. He can get himself out of a library.”
No, the problem was not likely to be his ability to survive. She just wasn’t entirely certain that he could keep his darker impulses in check.
True, he’d never actually harmed her. Never actually lied to her either. In fact, one could argue that he’d done nothing more than give her exactly what she asked for. And he’d seemed genuinely hurt when she suggested he might resort to killing anyone.
But watching him destroy that snake… She shivered. He was capable of so much destruction. And he’d followed her into these cursed trials because his sense of honor would not allow her to go alone.
So how far would he be willing to go to protect her? And what responsibility did she bear to ensure that her own actions did not result in violence?
Ryn bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, but it left her no closer to answers. So, with a muttered oath, she joined the scholars fleeing the ongoing disturbance, making her way out of the library building before pausing to decide on her next move.
And she did need to keep moving. It was one thing to pass unnoticed in the midst of a crisis, but the moment everyone felt safe, they would start noticing things again, and her traveling clothes would stand out amongst their black robes like a partridge among starlings.
She would circle the library. Just once. Wait for Xavi to escape. If she didn’t spot him, then she would…
Do what? Confound it all, she was no good at this sort of thing. She was good at books and remembering pointless facts and annoying everyone around her with her narrow obsessions. Not planning heists or daring escapes.
Keeping her head down and staring mostly at her toes to avoid eye contact, Ryn threaded her way through the gathering crowd of curious scholars, her steps forming a wobbly rectangle around the windowless stone block that housed the university library.
She occasionally glanced over her shoulder for any sign of Xavi, but she honestly had no idea what she was looking for.
He’d clearly changed shape into something that startled and terrified the other library patrons, but he could be an entirely different shape by now.
She most definitely should have given in to curiosity much earlier and asked him how many shapes he had mastered.
Was the number limited? Did they require practice?
Or could he change into any living creature once he’d seen it?
Did they have to be animals? Or could he become a plant if he wanted to?
His gryphon suggested he might also be capable of birds, but what about fish?
“Oh, look!” someone said, in that high-pitched, cooing tone usually reserved for babies and animals of overwhelming cuteness.
Ryn stopped and looked and then let out a whispered curse that would have made her aunt faint on the spot.
It was a cat.
Or rather, it was a creature that appeared generally cat-like.
She’d told Xavi that smaller cats were allowed in libraries. But as an ancient warrior from a very different culture, he’d probably never encountered a house cat before, so his idea of “smaller” was a terrifying but also criminally adorable ball of silver fluff with giant paws.
And it sat in the middle of the crowded walkway, calmly licking its fur.
“Xavi!” she hissed under her breath. “Stop preening. We have to get out of here.”
The kitten looked up and yawned, highlighting a mouthful of teeth that clearly did not belong on any ordinary feline.
“What is that?” someone asked. “It doesn’t look like any cat I’ve ever seen.”
No, of course it didn’t. That’s because it was a storm kitten.
And it was attracting quite a number of admirers, who seemed oblivious to the fact that it was actually a tiny death machine with razor claws and Xavi’s unmistakable eyes.
If they ever got out of here, she was going to…
“What is going on here?”
Ryn’s eyes slammed shut in horror. She knew that voice. And it was possibly the last one she would have wanted to hear in this exact situation.
“Why are the scholars of the most respected university in all of Abreia standing around cooing and flapping like a flock of inebriated pigeons?”
Professor Hapscombe. The man who’d shattered her dreams. And he was flanked by the rest of the history professors—Elwith, Reller, and Zondavi—all of them moving importantly through the crowd, looking down their noses like a gaggle of depressing, bearded geese.
Geese that she still wished had been willing to give her a chance.
It was a distinctly disheartening thought, after everything she’d been through, to realize that she still hadn’t shaken the desire for their approval and respect. For them to recognize the value of her work.
Or maybe what she truly wanted wasn’t nearly that mature. Maybe all she was waiting for was their acknowledgment that she—and by extension her father—had been right all along.
But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting Xavi out of there before they spotted him and started asking questions. And the only way to distract them from something that so obviously didn’t belong? Give them something else that didn’t belong.
“It’s mine!” she shouted, and shoved her way through the crowd, snatching up the kitten and holding it tightly to her chest before turning to smile innocently at Professor Hapscombe.
Whose face, predictably, turned a most unattractive shade of red.
“You.”
Oddly enough, Ryn derived quite a bit of satisfaction from that tone of loathing. It said that he had not yet forgotten her. That the thought of her still bothered him.
“Yes, it’s me,” she returned, with a sigh that was as contrite as she could make it. The kitten squirmed against her chest, but she only held it tighter as if to say, don’t move, darn you.
“You were banished months ago. Who allowed you back on the university grounds without my permission?”
Who died and made you provost…
Was what she wanted to say and didn’t. Because, in truth, it had been months, and when she left, the current provost had been quite old and rather sickly. How embarrassing if it turned out that he’d actually died in her absence.
“I came back to retrieve a few things I’d forgotten,” she said meekly. “Some books I loaned out to my peers, and of course, my cat.”