13. Steam and Surrender
For a man with a kingdom to rebuild and a war only half won, Atlas spent a truly remarkable amount of the day refusing to do either.
Instead, he showed me his world.
True to his word, he didn’t go to the training grounds.
Instead, he rose from the breakfast table, held out his hand, and informed me that since I had crossed worlds to reach him, the very least he could do was let me see what I’d crossed them for.
And so, the morning developed into something I had no name for, because peace had been a stranger to me for so long that I’d half forgotten what it felt like.
He took me through the heart of the castle, and the castle, it turned out, went on forever.
There were galleries hung with portraits of long-dead kings who all shared the same proud, infuriating jawline as the man beside me.
There were corridors of pale stone that opened without warning onto courtyards full of fountains and climbing roses.
Onto balconies that looked out over a city slowly stitching itself back together beneath the morning sun.
Everywhere we went, people stopped and bowed, and their eyes slid to me.
The small mortal walking at their king’s side, with a curiosity they were all far too polite to voice.
But it was the library that undid me.
I actually stopped in the doorway and forgot how to speak.
It rose at least three storeys, a vast circular chamber ringed with shelves that climbed clean up into a domed ceiling painted with constellations I didn’t recognize.
Ladders on silver rails. Reading nooks tucked into alcoves.
More books than I had seen in my entire life gathered into one impossible, golden-lit room.
Oh, and the smell of them, old paper and leather and dust, made something ache pleasantly in my chest.
“You like it,” Atlas observed, watching me rather than the room.
“Like it, I love it!” I breathed. “I could live in here. I could genuinely just move in and never leave, and you would never see me again.”
“Then I would simply move in with you,” he said it so easily, so matter-of-factly, that I had to look away before my face did something embarrassing. “I am told I am excellent company, and I read aloud beautifully.”
I chuckled at that. “You are not excellent company. You’re insufferable,” I lied teasingly.
“And yet,” the words had barely left him before he moved.
One moment, he stood a careless arm’s length away, then the next, his hands framed my hips from behind.
He tugged me back flush against the hard line of his body.
His mouth came to rest against the shell of my ear, and his voice dropped to something low and dark and devastating.
“… you crossed an entire world to find your way back to me.” Then came a pause, his lips grazing the sensitive skin just beneath my ear, sending a shiver racing along my spine.
“Insufferable, am I? And still you came all this way, little bird. I think you like me a great deal more than you will ever admit.”
Heat bloomed everywhere his breath touched.
It would have been a far more effective retort if my body hadn’t betrayed me so thoroughly. But I gathered what dignity I had left, turned my head just enough to catch his eye, and gave him my sweetest smile.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Your Majesty. I came for the library, of course.”
Then I slipped out of his grip and stepped away toward the shelves, entirely too pleased with the low, frustrated sound he made in the back of his throat.
I drifted down the nearest aisle, trailing my fingers along a row of cracked leather spines.
The old habit rose up before I could stop it.
That familiar, hungry pull I’d felt in every looted bookshop and abandoned library across three years of running.
Then a title snagged me, and I tugged the book free.
It fell open to a painting of a creature I knew far too well. A Gryphon, rendered in flaking gold leaf, every feather and talon labeled in a flowing script that rippled and rearranged itself as I watched, into words I could read… like magic.
My breath caught.
A bestiary.
An entire book of them. Creatures I had spent three years learning to survive by trial and terror, and an enormous amount of luck, lay out here in neat, beautiful, meticulously catalogued pages.
“Okay, so I don’t know how it just magically changed into English, but do you have any idea how much this would have come in handy?” I whispered, turning to a page on a manticore.
Atlas came to stand at my shoulder, and I felt rather than saw his smile.
“Ah. Yes.” There was something warm and knowing in his voice. “Your field guide was very informative indeed. Though it did have its mistakes.”
I went still. Then I turned to look up at him, narrow-eyed.
“Yes. I noticed you corrected them.” I let the pause stretch. “As well as my thoughts on you.”
His mouth twitched.
“Well, you didn’t think very highly of me now, did you?”
“You took my journal, hunted me through an apocalypse, and made yourself at home in my dreams entirely uninvited.” I arched a brow. “I called you a great many things in those margins, Your Majesty. ‘Insufferable’ was one of the kinder ones.”
“I am aware. I read every word.” And the soft, unbothered way he said it, as though my furious scribbled hatred had been something to treasure, made my chest do something complicated.
“More than once,” he whispered, and I tried my best not to show him how much that affected me. To know that there he had been, waiting to capture me and reading every word I had written, and more than once.
The fact gave me goosebumps.
I looked back down at the bestiary, and the ache that rose up caught me off guard with how sharp it was.
“I still feel a little lost without it, if I’m honest,” I admitted.
“Which is ridiculous. It was a battered notebook full of bad drawings and even worse language. But I wrote in it every night for three years. Even if I had nothing to say, I’d write a word or a sentence, just so I could remember.
It was the one thing that was always mine.
” I huffed a small laugh. “Now it’s a whole world away, and my hands don’t quite know what to do with themselves at the end of a day. ”
For a moment, Atlas said nothing. Then, gently, “Why did you keep it?”
I glanced up, surprised. In all the time he’d had the thing, in every dream, every argument, and every careful correction inked into its pages, he had never once asked me that.
“Because it was the only weapon I had,” I admitted.
“When the Rift opened, I couldn’t fight.
I couldn’t even shoot a gun. I watched my uncle get taken, and I ran, because running was the only thing I knew how to do.
” The old guilt turned over, familiar and dull.
“So, I started writing instead. Everything I saw. Every creature, every weakness, every stupid little thing that worked. I told myself that even if I never learned to fight them, even if I didn’t make it, then maybe the next person would.
They’d find my notes, and they’d know how to survive better than I did.
It kept me going, kept me writing.” I shrugged, suddenly self-conscious beneath the weight of his attention.
“My dad always said information was the greatest weapon there was, and for a long time, it was the only one I had.”
When I looked up, the warmth in his eyes had deepened into something that reddened my cheeks.
“You turned your fear into a weapon for strangers you would never meet,” he breathed. “Do you understand how rare that is?”
“It wasn’t brave, Atlas, it was just all I could do.”
He shook his head. “No, it was both.” He reached out, tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering at my jaw.
“Then let me give you more than a notebook. Let me teach you. Every creature in my world and in yours, their natures, their weaknesses, the way they think. I will have my finest warriors train you to fight them properly, if that is what you wish.” A pause, and then, dry as old wine, “Though it would seem you managed that part well enough on your own and need to give yourself more credit. I saw it for myself, remember.”
A laugh burst out of me.
“Easy, was it? You try bringing down a Chimera with a tin of scouring powder and a fire extinguisher.” I grinned up at him. “My entire arsenal was speakers and cleaning products. I once took out an entire flock of harpies with a Bluetooth speaker and a particularly aggressive playlist.”
“I know.” And there it was again, that note of something close to wonder.
“When word first reached me of how you fought, how a mortal girl with no training and a bag of human odds and ends was felling creatures that had cut down soldiers twice her size, I didn’t believe it.
I assumed my men were exaggerating.” His thumb traced the line of my jaw.
“They weren’t. Your skill. Your nerve. You fought like something out of the old tales.
You would rival my most elite warriors, and you did it with a bottle of perfume and a great deal of sheer, stubborn will. ”
Understanding dawned. “Hence the nickname.”
His smile was fond, and dangerous, and entirely mine.
“Hence the nickname.” He repeated, then pulled me in and whispered, “My little warrior.”
He kissed me, and the bestiary still cradled open in my hands, the library, the castle and the whole waiting world simply fell away.
We didn’t move on quickly after that.
In truth, we didn’t move on at all for quite some time because Atlas had developed a sudden and very specific interest in the far back corner of the library. A dim, forgotten stretch of shelving that smelled of centuries of dust and nothing else.
“There is a section back here,” he murmured against my lips, walking me slowly backward into the stacks, “that has long been in want of a little excitement.”
“Is that so?” I breathed.