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“Think, Alex!” he cried, his suddenly loud voice startling her as it echoed around the small room. “Think about what you’ve learned here! All the things you’ve done, the experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve met! None of those things would have happened if you’d known who I was. You would have wanted me to take you straight back to your world, and your time here would have ended before it even began.”

Alex wished she could deny his assumption, but he was probably right. Her anger deflated and she walked over to drop onto the opposite end of the couch. “It still wasn’t your decision to make.”

“Believe it or not, in the end it was entirely up to you,” Darrius told her. “The moment the Library Chose you, your will reigned over mine since I only have the rights of a headmaster—given, but not Chosen. Add to that your natural gift of willpower, and there was your immediate ticket home.”

“What do you mean?” Alex asked, not following.

“I spoke with the librarian after our first meeting,” Darrius said. “Tell me, how did you get out of the chequered room with your friends? Did you just go back the way you’d entered?”

“No,” she answered. “I opened a door in the wall.”

“A door that wasn’t previously there and one that led straight back into the foyer, correct?”

She nodded.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

“I just knew I could,” she answered truthfully. “I was tired; I didn’t want to have to cross the room again. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“So you willed it to happen.”

“I—I guess so,” she agreed. “But I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t deliberate. It just felt… right.”

“What happened the next time you entered the Library?” Darrius asked, before clarifying, “Not for study reasons, of course.”

“I went with Bear and Jordan,” she said, thinking back to the day she’d met Sir Camden. “We were curious about what it meant for me to be Chosen. We wanted to know what the possibilities were, so went looking for an adventure, as weird as that sounds.”

“And did you find it?”

Alex thought over her experience—the fight with the suit of armour, all the doorways leading to far-off places, befriending the knight. “Absolutely.”

“The next time?” he prompted.

“It was just before term started back,” Alex said, “straight after the Gala. I was bored. I wanted a distraction.”

“Did you find one?”

“I found a door back to my world, so yeah, I’d say I was pretty distracted.”

Judging by the look on his face, Darrius hadn’t expected that answer. “You found a door to Freya? Why didn’t you go through?”

“I wasn’t ready to leave,” she said quietly. “And—I don’t know—but it felt like I was still needed here. Like Iamstill needed here. It’s an inner knowledge, just like how I knew I could open that door in the wall—even if it didn’t make any sense.”

Darrius remained quiet for a moment as he thought over her words. But then Alex cut into the silence.

“Is that why there were so many doorways when Aven held me and D.C. hostage? Did I unconsciously will them into existence?”

“I believe so,” Darrius answered. “It’s also possible that the Library realised you didn’t want him to find what he was searching for, and it sought to stall him.”

“Then why was he able to find the right door in the end?” Alex asked.

“Because he’s Meyarin, and exiled or not he still holds some sway with the Library because of his ancestor.”

“Ancestor?” Alex asked. “What ancestor?”

“Eanraka. The Library’s first Chosen, and Akarnae’s first headmaster,” Darrius said. “The Meyarin royal family are direct descendants. Eanraka’s daughter, Queen Niida, is Aven’s mother.”

Alex opened her mouth to question how that could be possible considering how much time had passed, but then she remembered that a few thousand years was probably just a ripple in time for the Meyarins.