Chapter 44
The distance to the Mystic Library of Amalach was short, and Dion walked next to me, but lucky for him, he kept a healthy distance.
All his lies felt like a never-ending betrayal, and the hurt deep within me almost tore me in two.
I had to harden myself because the circumstances were bigger than me and my breaking heart. Another ugly thought surfaced.
“But is it true the worlds are in peril?”
“Yes.”
I could see the muscle in Dion’s jaw tick at my question.
He was angry that I doubted everything—his problem.
My trust had been shaken. And yet I felt his magic constantly mingling with my Potential on a non-physical level.
It was automatic, most likely a side effect of the binding, and I wondered if it would always be like this.
Still, I’d rather swallow my tongue than ask him.
Stopping in front of a faintly glowing door, my curiosity won over my anger for a moment because this must have been the Mystic Library of Amalach.
I reached for the handle, but Dion yanked me away. “Don’t.”
My temper flared at his one-word order, which would have annoyed me on the best of days, and I narrowed my eyes.
“Dion!” I was about to lash out at him, but was distracted by a sensation that was familiar and yet so new.
Dion was pulling from my Potential, mixing it with his magic, leaving a warmth spreading through my body, promising me with every beat of my heart that I was safe.
Coveted. Protected. Cherished—great, now even the magic lied to me.
Shadows crept toward the glowing door, and after some moments, it swung open.
The bastard next to me grabbed my hand while I was still drowning in the sensations clouding my senses, and he pulled me through the door. Once inside, I yanked my hand back and glowered at him before turning my attention to the place we’d entered.
The building had looked fairly large from the outside, but the room we were standing in was small, with just a handful of bookshelves to the left and right. The walls were glowing, there was only a single tiny armchair available in a corner, and the whole place felt powerful yet strangely cozy.
“This place is as much a library as it is a librarian. While the knowledge of the library as a whole is vast, this room contains all the information that could be useful to us while filtering out the unnecessary.”
Nodding and appreciating the convenience, I couldn’t even begin to understand how it all worked.
“I’ll take the left,” I said and disappeared between two shelves. Being alone for a while was what I needed. I had to sort through all that had happened without seeing Dion’s stupid pointed ears all the time—they kept me from trying to think rationally.
Still, I needed to concentrate on the task at hand as well.
My eyes roamed over the rows of books, and I found myself confronted with yet another problem.
All the colorful spines displayed the same flowery script some of the tomes in the secret library in Kalcas had been written in.
It wasn’t hard to conclude the books were written in the fae’s tongue—Galantian, as Dion had called his language.
An angry sound escaped my lips, my temper rising once more at being forced to stand back and do nothing while the bastard named Dion strutted around all smug because he was able to interpret weird, stupid twirls and swirls.
While I was sulking, a book at my eye level right next to me shifted, and the script on the spine slowly transformed. I gaped at it open-mouthed, wondering if I was going crazy at last.
Or maybe it was the same magic the entire Mystic Library used for our convenience?
Perhaps the enchantment understood precisely which book I required, using the same weird librarian power that hand-picked the entire collection in this chamber.
Silently, I apologized to whomever I’d cursed during my angry fit.
Carefully, I took the tome into my hands. “The Fall of Amalach—A Catalyst for Ruin?”
I wasn’t sure if the book would contain any useful information, but since it was the only one I could read, I considered taking my reading to the armchair I saw.
However, the thought that it might be occupied by Dion and I possibly would end up on his lap with no chance of getting away settled it—I’d read standing up, no problem at all.
Suppressing a frustrated groan when I realized that the first pages were written in Galantian as well, and so I flicked through the book faster, almost tearing at the paper in my anger. I shook the tome as if to rearrange the script and glowered at the item in my hands.
Frustration burned hot in my veins, and I was about to give up in disappointment.
I pictured throwing the book into the fireplace to my right when I finally spotted a readable passage.
I groaned. Instead of mocking me, the magic of the library had chosen to spare me the information I didn’t need. At least, that was what I told myself.
Taking a calming breath, I directed my attention to the text.
“The losses during the Great Ivreian-Galantan War accumulated to great heights.
Whereas the fae soldiers were superior to their human counterparts, the sheer number of Ivreian fighters compared to the Galantan forces kept the scales balanced.
So, the High King Galrach of Galanta resorted to deception to turn the war in his favor, and he plotted to commit an unthinkable crime.
His plans involved sacrificing the City of Air, Amalach, and all her citizens while blaming its destruction on the Ivreian King Amarion.
Shortly before the start of the war, Galrach had united a divided Galanta under his rule by force, and he was certain that the High Fae would support his wish to divide the worlds more eagerly when being presented with the massive threat the humans obviously posed.
As a side effect, this would also cement his rule as High King of a united Galanta and his proclamation as Emperor of the Eternal Throne of Alaiann.
Galrach knew he couldn’t destroy Amalach himself without his plans being discovered too soon, nor could he send his army.
But he had the means, tried and proven from when he’d waged war on his own gentry, peerage, and nobility to unite Galanta under his rule.
It came in the form of a sentient weapon of mass destruction, so powerful and feared that the mere mention of one of the tool’s names* was enough to make the populace tremble.
The weapon was accompanied by only a handful of Galrach’s most loyal soldiers, and Amalach was leveled within hours while the High King hosted a celebration in his castle.
Most inhabitants of Amalach died, and only a few made it through the portals back to Galanta.
The destroyers of Amalach slaughtered anyone who tried to escape. ”
I’d heard this story before, when Larithia had mentioned most of it.
The following paragraphs spoke of the aftermath, how Ivreia and Galanta separated, and the demise of Queen Theandra.
It also explained how the destruction of Amalach resulted in the manipulation of history in Ivreia.
I came to the end of the readable text, gaining no useful information, only to remember the small asterisk indicating a footnote in the second readable paragraph.
I flipped a few pages back and leaned my face closer to the book to decipher the small print at the bottom of the paper.
As I read, I didn’t realize how my face lost all color, and my blood froze.
My hands shook, my whole body soon followed.
In a strange hope I’d misread, I studied the footnote once more.
“*During the destruction of Amalach, the weapon was given a new name and became fittingly dubbed Teachtaire Ollscriosta (trans. The Bringer of Destruction). It was formerly and later known as Crann taca an bhais (trans. The Right Hand of Death), Drochthuar granna an leirscriosta (trans. The Vile Omen of Annihilation), or simply Dia Dorcha (trans. The Dark God). Despite being called a sentient weapon, it was never an inanimate object, and the identity of the source of the High King’s triumph was never a secret.
It is widely known that Galrach forged his grandson and heir to the Eternal Throne of Alaiann into his deadly blade, the Crown Prince of the High Fae—”
Still shaking, I fought against my knees that threatened to give out.
I wasn’t able to finish reading the footnote a second time.
My shoulder crashed against the shelf to my right as I stumbled slightly, the sound like an explosion in the quiet room, but I didn’t care.
Instead, I forced my feet to move, trying very hard not to fall apart completely.
I stopped when I found Dion, who canted his head when he spotted me. He was actually smiling until he noticed me shaking—and my barely contained fury. How could he dare smile at me after everything? Either my voice would fail me, or it’d be too loud—I wasn’t sure yet which.
I shoved the book in his face. “Whenever I think it can’t get any worse, another one of your lies comes out!
And it wasn’t even you who told me! Why did I have to learn this from a damn book that a fucking library offered me so I could find this knowledge instead of hearing it from the fucking source?
” I yelled at him as he grabbed the tome from me and read the text until he visibly paled.
Shortly after, his face turned to ice once more.
His expression became downright cruel. “Naya, you have to listen to me.”
“Fuck you, Dion. You destroyed Amalach. This is your doing!” What had I done? This was worse than any nightmare I’d ever had in my whole life.
“Nayana, fucking listen to me,” Dion growled, dropping the book to the floor as if it were on fire and approaching me with his lethal grace. Moving as if he wanted to pin me somewhere with his body as he always did, he closed in.