Page 21

W hat did a firehawk look like? It wasn’t in the one bird book I’d brought with me, and my parents had never talked about them. Of course, Fotab was the one who would have been most interested in them, and he’d only lived in elven kingdoms for a few years.

I squinted into the early pre-dawn light at my window. Winter was passing into spring, and I could see several songbirds—some I knew and some I didn’t—but no hawks. I had seen three different hawks during my time here, but none of them were in my book. Maybe—

A knock on the door to Aedan’s room cut into my thoughts. I grabbed the blue dressing gown and wrapped it around my nightdress before opening the door.

Like always, Aedan looked equally prepared to hold court or fight a battle as he bowed. “Good morning.”

I smiled. His new attempts at being polite, considerate, and kind were so deliberate and so obviously foreign to him. I would have thought royal elves would be schooled in polite persuasion, but perhaps ruling had always been more of a statement about power here. And if that was the case, his efforts to embrace a little humanity—or whatever the elves might call it—were even more attractive.

“Good morning,” I answered. “Typically, social visits happen after breakfast.”

“Yes,” he said, “but I’ll be a drekkan at that point, and I’d like to show you something first.” He glanced at my door. “Will you meet me in the hall?”

“Do I have time to get dressed?”

His eyes jumped to my window, and then scanned my clothes. “What you’re wearing seems perfectly decent, but if you’d prefer to change, I’ll wait. Time is short, though, so—”

I started to close the door. “I’ll hurry.”

In less than a minute, I’d dumped the dressing gown and night dress on the bed. I had two simple daygowns that were made from a soft, stretchy material with no buttons. I slipped into the peach-colored one, tied the gauzy laces behind my back, and headed to the door.

As soon as I stepped outside, Aedan’s lips twitched. “You’re coming bare foot?”

“Is that considered immodest here?”

His smile grew. “No, but not something the wealthy usually do.” I slipped my hand around his arm, and his smile broadened even more. “Typically, the nobles like to parade their footwear as signs of their rank and riches.”

I rolled my eyes. “No wonder everyone here is so difficult to get along with.”

He led me out of our hall and toward the courtyard. “What do you mean?”

We walked down a new corridor, one marked with a five-petaled forget-me-not. “Koan and Jolter have introduced me to a few people from Bridgetown, and they’ve all been really nice. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with them. They said that most of the people who live here, in the fortress, are higher nobles, and that’s why they’ve seemed more judgmental.”

“It is possible.”

“Seriously?” I walked faster to keep up with the king’s increasing pace. “Nobles using shoes as a symbol of status just confirms what they were saying.”

“Humans and fae do not use shoes to show their wealth?”

“Well—” A blush ran up the back of my neck. “I wouldn’t actually know. We didn’t interact with humans very often because my parents were sure they’d judge us for their marriage. For myself, I’d go barefoot anytime I didn’t need shoes. There is nothing more glorious than warm soil and sunshine on your toes at the same time.”

We’d cruised through several winding corridors and stopped in front of two double-wide doors. His green eyes lit up as he turned to me. “Perhaps we need another cultural experience.”

I grinned back. “Perhaps.”

“Have someone take you outside sometime when the sun is up, and I will find a place where you can show me this combination of soil and sunshine and bare feet.”

Something light and warm lifted in my chest. I liked spending time with Aedan, and hearing him invite me to do so was exciting in a way I’d never expected.

His hand clenched the door handle in front of us, and he almost bounced with enthusiasm. “I often come to the library in the mornings to try to find information on fae and how to remove my curse. It occurred to me this morning that you might enjoy it too… because you asked for history books before.”

These were library doors? I reached for them without even thinking. He put a hand up in front of me. “Does that mean you’d like to see the library?”

“Yes,” I huffed at him. “I thought we were in a hurry!”

He almost grinned, and a wild light filled his face like the feral smile from when he asked me to sing to his rose tree. “We are,” he said, “but the idea of a little suspense is suddenly very appealing to me.”

My jaw fell, and I blew out a huff of air. Was the Mighty Elf King teasing? I laughed and pushed my shoulder against his outstretched hand.

“Fine,” he growled, “but… close your eyes.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He slid his body between me and the door, blocking the entrance with a wall of muscle, a fine coat, and a sword on his belt. “Please?”

Please . Not any kind of insistence. How was I supposed to resist the great king’s please ? I closed my eyes and lifted a blind hand.

His warm fingers wrapped around it, and then another warm hand landed between my shoulders. “May I?” he whispered.

I nodded, sure my voice would betray the flutters in my heart when he touched me. It didn’t make enough sense. I should hate him. I should hate him for what he did to my family and for the way he’d trapped me in Sirun. But I couldn’t hate anyone who was trying so hard to be better, especially when he already hated himself for what he’d done.

And that effort to improve was attractive.

My thoughts and emotions spun in a wild frenzy as he guided me into the library. It must have been huge because we walked at least twenty steps past the entrance before he let go of my hands and back. He radiated enough power that I felt his presence directly on my side as he whispered, “This is good. I… hope you like it.”

I opened my eyes, prepared to make some joke about his suspense, but the words caught in my throat. My jaw fell, and I didn’t even care. I had never seen anything so grand. The ceiling arced at least a hundred feet above me over a room so huge I couldn’t see the end in front of us. Dozens of walls twenty feet tall protruded from the edges of the room, each lined from top to bottom with shelves of books.

Above those walls, two balconies sprawled the edges of the cavernous rooms with more layers of books. A spiraling staircase connected the three levels, and hundreds of thumb-sized lights floated throughout the entire space, casting a magical glow on thousands and thousands of books. My father would have wept at the sight.

I just stared. I spun a slow circle to try to take it all in, and then stared at the high domed ceiling again. Did those magic lights stay floating all the time, or had the king just put them there for me?

A hesitant voice came from behind my shoulder. “Do you… like it?”

I spun back to look at him. “Do I like it? I’ve never seen anything so—” I huffed a quick chuckle to try to hide the catch in my voice. “It’s… amazing. I don’t even have words. It… it’s just magical.”

He threw a glance at the domed ceiling, which was closer to the color of the early morning sky before sunrise than I’d first realized. “I added the magic light since it’s still dark. During the day, the ceiling lets in sunlight, and the entire space fills with the energy of the evidence of lifetimes of effort to create it.”

My head bobbed like an enthusiastic dog. “I can’t even imagine all the people who must have poured their hearts into making so many books… and the building too.”

With an anxious glance at the ceiling, he started walking away from me. “Come.” He paused and waved toward himself. “Please.”

My heart fluttered all over again at the way he’d corrected his request, and I followed him. He turned inside a huge alcove created by two giant shelves and gestured at the books inside. “The history of Hemlit. You’re welcome to any of them. And…”

His excited demeanor changed when he noticed the tears I was trying to keep back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I brushed my eyes with my fingertips.

“Callista.” He closed the gap between us, blocking the exit to the alcove. “Please tell me. I will do everything I can to help.”

I blinked faster. “Truly. I just… I seem to cry every time I feel any emotion lately, and this is all so… grand.”

His green eyes flashed uncertainty. “What… emotion is so grand?”

“I… I’m not sure.” What emotion was it? I’d never had a hard time thinking of words to describe anything, but this… this was new. “I think it started with being overwhelmed by the books. I’ve always loved them, and my father loved them, so they made me think of him. But then you shared these—”

I gestured at the history books and sniffed back another set of tears. “Koan said you wouldn’t let me have history books because you thought I wanted to study them to find a way to destroy you. But now you’ve just offered me the whole collection.” My heart lurched at the words. That was what had brought the tears. This piece of evidence that he did not think I was trying to destroy him any more.

“Oh, Callista.” His voice dropped into a hoarse, emotional tone. “You would not need any history book to destroy me. You’ve had that power for weeks.”

I searched his green eyes for any sign of deception or jest, but there was only sincerity. He extended his hand. “Come, please.”

I set my hand in his and smiled. His fingers wrapped around mine, and heat enveloped my hand, flowed up my arm, into my heart, and made my head light. I squeezed his hand, trying to make sense of all the sensations, while he led me to an outer wall on the far side of the library.

He let go of my hand, pulling all his wonderful, heady heat away with him. He pointed at a palm-sized flame carved into the stone on the wall. “I’d like to share this with you also.”

I raised a brow. “The flame?”

His wild smile grew across his face and lit up his eyes. “Yes. I want to give a flame to my favorite firehawk… and watch her set the world ablaze.”

My heart! Those words! And that fierce grin! As my lips turned to match it, he raised a hand to the flame, covering it with his palm.

For a few seconds, the entire wall glowed. Then, the light gathered into a door-sized spot right in front of me, and faded into a stone-lined corridor. Aedan kept his hand on the wall, but gestured inside with his other hand.

I stepped into the new hall. One step, then two—then I saw an entrance to another entire room. I backtracked until I stood next to Aedan again and studied what I thought had been an exterior stone wall. “It’s a secret room,” I breathed.

His smile broke free, and it took over his face, transforming him into an entirely different person. “Yes. It’s bigger inside. Come.” He tipped his head. “Please.” He waved inside again, and I scurried ahead of him.

I turned into the room. A wave of heat washed over me from behind, alerting me to his presence. This room was still big—at least as big as my parent’s kitchen, living room, and bedroom put together—but not nearly as overwhelming as the large library.

A dozen bookshelves lined this room, but most of the space in the middle was open. Two large, cushioned chairs sat at one end in front of a big desk. A few pieces of other furniture gave the room a cozy feel, despite it being more than half the size of the cabin I’d grown up in.

Aedan stepped up next to me. “This is my private library. The magic ties the entrance to my hand, so nobody else can come in… unless I allow it.”

He walked to a shelf behind the desk, and I followed. “These are the private chronicles written by the hands of kings—myself, my father, his father—for millennia. Histories that you will not find anywhere else. You…” His voice hitched before continuing in a lower tone. “You are welcome to read anything here.”

The enormity of such a gift took my breath away. But he wasn’t done.

He ran a hand tenderly along a shelf at his chest’s height, and stopped on a volume as thick as my palm. He pulled it out, and I gasped.

His surprisingly tender expression lifted from the book to me. “ You can see magic on it?”

I nodded. “A lot.”

“Fae?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“I suspect it’s in the words.” He handed the book to me. “My father and grandmother both referenced their Secrets book in their personal histories, and how they wrote it in Fae so nobody would be able to read it. Apparently…”

He coughed to cover the catch in his throat. Something about this was deeply personal—maybe painful—and I had the impression he did not allow himself to feel it very often.

“Apparently,” he tried again, “it was a family tradition to teach the Crown Heir to read and speak Fae sometime after adulthood, but before they took the throne. I fear there are many things about my family that I will never know because my parents were killed prematurely.”

“Killed?” Fagan had said he’d lost his parents, but… At the same time? And if so, then all this time, he knew—more than anyone else could possibly know—how I’d felt. No wonder he wanted to punish himself so—

He nodded. “Acantha believes it was the work of fae. Many in my kingdom do.” The weight of the implication dripped off his words. Many in his kingdom hated me because a fae had killed his parents and cursed him.

“I don’t think it was my mother.” It might have been a selfish comment to make as he shared his own pain with me, but it was the first place my mind went. He’d said she came a year after his parents’ death, but she’d never left our cabin in my memory before she died.

“I don’t believe so either.” He ran his fingers along the cover. “I worried, when I met her, but I’ve had a long time to think about it. She came looking for the king, and she expected to find my father. She came openly, and was more brazen than you, but I do not think she knew about his death.”

He lifted his eyes to mine. All the energetic smiles from earlier had vanished, replaced with sorrow, pain, and maybe a little anger. “Regardless, I do not blame you. And this is the only book I have written in Fae. I cannot read Fae, but I thought you might enjoy reading something in your mother’s tongue. And if you find anything terribly personal, I… I…”

I stepped closer and put a hand on his. I could not leave him alone when he opened himself up in such a vulnerable way to me. His skin positively burned—we were shorter on time than I’d realized. “I would tell you,” I said. “Or, if you’d like, we could read it together.”

He turned his hand over and gripped mine. “You… you would do that? After everything I’ve put you through?”

I squeezed his hand. His skin was almost too hot to touch. “After all the times you’ve saved my life? After all the things you’ve agreed to that I’ve asked for? After you’ve offered me… all of this?” I tightened my hold on his hand. I’d have to let go soon, but I wanted him to feel it through all the heat. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

He tipped his forehead down until it touched mine, sealing my words like a scalding torch. “Thank you,” he breathed.

“Let’s come back tonight,” I said. “It must be close to dawn.”

He let go of my hand and stepped back, a fresh look of horror on his face as he set the book on the desk. “Are you burnt?”

“No.” The heat cleared as soon as he’d moved away. “But I can tell you’re hotter than normal.”

He ran out the door and down the hall, then turned to see if I was behind him. Relief washed over his worried look, but he didn’t take time to say anything. We ran through the library and down the same twisty corridors we’d taken to get there.

It was a good thing I’d spent my life running and climbing in the forest around our home—the king ran as fast as a bear. If he shifted in these corridors, would his scale-covered drekkan body break down the hall walls? Could he delay shifting long enough to get outside or did he just have to run fast enough to beat the sun's rising?

When we reached the indoor courtyard where all the tunnels met, we saw Forten and Mena heading toward the kitchen.

“Forten!” Aedan yelled.

The cook turned and dropped into a low bow. Before he finished straightening up, Aedan panted, “Take Callista to her room. Please.”

Forten glanced at me and said, “Of course.”

And Aedan bolted down the tunnel marked with a daisy.