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I shook my head and smoothed down my skirt while I tried to hide my awkwardness. “Nothing important, just a personal project. The list?”
He finally gave it to me, watching me read it so intently that it took me a moment to process the titles. When the first one clicked into focus, my heart stopped then beat ever harder as I trained my eye down the list of all the references I’d found in the last six years on eternal fire and infernal fire, variations on unquenchable fire that was capable of destroying even the fibers of reality.
I looked up at the dark-haired man, skin pale, eyes bright and gleaming, so much blue, so much black. The Scholar was interested in never-ending fire. What would a diabolical creature like him do with this kind of information?
“Why are you researching eternal fire?”
His brow quirked only for a moment before returning to implacable pleasantness. “You know your references. Eternal fire isn’t in any of the titles.”
I looked down, feeling caught. Horace had kept my findings on infernal and eternal fire sealed, because such specific knowledge could be a real danger in the hands of someone who wanted to cause large-scale permanent destruction. I’d been working through old tomes, translating ancient Cyrillic texts, following the clues that had led me to all those pieces of a puzzle that I still hadn’t been able to put together. Yet.
After I’d accidentally started the impossible fire in Singsong’s undercity, what was now called Song’s Square of Immolation, several scholars had come to Singsong to study the phenomenon, asking all kinds of questions.
I needed to find out how I’d done what I’d done, creating flames that burned with holy and infernal fire in the same conflagration that were still impossible to put out even after six years. The two fires weren’t supposed to coexist. It was more than dangerous; it was cataclysmic and could destroy anyone and anything, no matter how strong or immortal. Very powerful people wanted to know how to harness that fire, how to use it as a weapon.
I was done being a weapon. The worst thing was that I couldn’t control it or even replicate it. I hated not knowing, not understand, because one thing I understood was the killing of monsters. I’d consumed everything in that square, every monster that wanted my blood, but I didn’t know how.
All my studies hadn’t brought anything helpful to light. Why had Horace entrusted this knowledge to someone from the undercity? He must have been particularly irritated with me for leaving his children to enjoy the fruits of their disobedience if he’d betrayed my personal research. No, Horace wouldn’t let something personal influence his work. So this creature must have convinced my boss that he had good intentions.
I shrugged lightly and tried to keep my voice level. He’d asked me how I knew the contents of these texts when there were millions of books in the library. I couldn’t let anyone know that I was involved in the creation of the impossible fire, or I’d never be free again. “Horace mentioned it. It will take me all day to retrieve these, perhaps tomorrow morning as well. They should be ready at eleven. I will have to get documentation of Horace’s permission and set new preservation spells before they’re available for removal.” Taking documents out of the library wasn’t encouraged, but Horace had given this person special permission. Yes, Horace definitely trusted this monster, but why?
The Scholar’s pleasant expression didn’t change. “Very well. You guard your books as well as a dragon.”
“I couldn’t say, never having met a dragon.” Why did I say that? I shouldn’t say anything to him that wasn’t absolutely essential. I should have said, ‘good afternoon,’ and left the study room.
His eyebrow moved ever-so-slightly, and his lips tilted up at the corners, almost amused. “Then you must trust me.”
There was something so utterly bewitching as he said that, as if he were about to compel me to trust him. What was he? He had the pale skin of a vampire, but those eyes didn’t fit. His eyes were elemental, wild, endlessly shifting. They would glow as he tapped into his magic, whatever magic he used, light, dark, or neutral. No, definitely dark. And that was definitely the end of this conversation, but for some inexplicable reason, I asked, “And you’ve met a dragon?”
That eyebrow again, and his lips were definitely amused. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen before, with bits of pale streaking the darker azure. “I have done some extensive scholarship on the subject. Perhaps you’d like to discuss it some time, along with eternal fire.”
I knocked a chair sideways as I gathered up my papers and tried to work through the implied threat. It could be nothing, but every time someone came here to research eternal fire, I felt hunted.
“I’ll have those for you tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day.” I left before him, taking long steps in spite of the slim pencil skirt and low heels that made me feel like a proper librarian. Proper librarians didn’t hunt creatures in the darkness and accidentally light hundreds of them on fire with a mixture that was universally declared impossible to exist in the same space at the same time. It was bad enough that he was handsome, brilliant, and appealed to me with his buttoned up suit coat and good manners, but that he was also following smoke to find the fire, well, I would be keeping as much distance between us as possible, and not only so I didn’t accidentally kill him.
“Thank you, Miss Morell. I appreciate you taking the time to assist me, particularly when I interrupted your lunch break so rudely. I owe you a favor for that.” His words followed me, wrapping around me, dragging me to a stop.
His words made my heart beat faster, both from what was spoken aloud and implied. I cautiously glanced over my shoulder at him. He had kept his extraordinarily mild expression, but there was something predatory in his eyes. It made me want to run, but it also stirred something in my belly, something primal that loved the chase, loved it when a predator thought I was a prey before I caught and devoured him.
I shoved down those incredibly unhealthy instincts and cleared my throat. “You owe me nothing. I’m just doing my job.” I turned and walked away, holding my breath all the way down the hall.
Chapter
Three
After figuring out where each volume was in the vast reaches of the sealed sections so that I could plan the most efficient retrieval order, I immediately set out to get those documents closest together on the second floor in the hall of mysteries. Eternal Fire was one of the mysteries that couldn’t be satisfactorily studied first-hand, since it would consume anyone who made an attempt.
Heaven and Hell had waged war on earth, bringing two worlds into ours, one light, bright, and deadly, the other dark, devouring, and deadly. Humanity would have been wiped out entirely if the demons and angels were allowed to remain any longer, but they were taken away, leaving remnants of the two realms, both light and dark, mingling with humans in a cacophony of chaos.
I’d seen ogres, goblins, vampires, werewolves, and other creatures from the dark, with various amounts of humanity to temper their natures, as well as elves, fairies, and centaurs, with a mix of humanity to temper theirs.
I’d read enough original documents from that time of upheaval that I knew something had bound the angels and demons from this world, from this plane, and left a mess behind, but what it was exactly had to be a matter of faith. I’d heard from a clever and devious goblin that it was orchestrated by the infernal legions, but I’d been raised in the House of Mercy, where I’d been taught a very strict set of beliefs regarding God’s holy order.
The likeliest truth was that the war had been triggered by our own Civil War, and then ended when the people on earth had started working together, light and dark, to protect the weak and innocent from the pitiless war. No one was left on earth who had an entirely evil nature, or entirely good for that matter.
Still, creatures could bury all sense of goodness and light if they wished. My last career I’d hunted down the worst kind of monsters, serial killers, kidnappers, torturers. I’d seen it all, far more than anyone with a soul wanted to see. Still, each of those monsters had some piece of light, however small, or they wouldn’t have been left on earth, hard as that was to believe. We could all of us step towards the darkness or the light.
Me, I was done fighting the darkness, because it left its mark on you. I wanted nothing to do with it or any of its minions, particularly irresistibly handsome men who were studying eternal fire. The sound of my name on his lips distracted me for twenty minutes as I went through the parchment files. He had never called me by name before, and even if it wasn’t my real name, it had left its mark. He was ridiculously dangerous, because the more interesting I found him, the more shaky my grip on peace and happiness became.
