Page 116 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Hopefully still dead,” I said flatly. Orla replied with a tight nod. “Caitria is demanding the Barony guards hand me over by nightfall, or her army will attack Willow’s Grave.”

Iseult frowned at the lengthening shadows slowly enveloping the empty market shadows.

“We’ll be gone by then,” Orla insisted. “Come on.”

Iseult met my eye for the briefest of moments, but her tight expression was unreadable.

A block away from market, the path fanned out into a larger walkway that ran along a shallow river flowing away from the Great Willow. An arched bridge of sand-colored stone stretched over the water. Decorative columns capped the bridge railing on either end, and a cat-like gargoyle sat atop one of these on the opposite bank.

“There!” Orla rushed ahead and then stumbled to stop in front of the statue. “The library has to be around here somewhere, then.”

We scanned the buildings, but they’d all been vacated.

“What do the libraries in Skalterra look like?” I asked. The beige stone faces of these buildings looked like any other building in Willow’s Grave. Painted signs advertised glassware, meat pastries, and opal jewelry, but there was nothing about libraries or books.

“I’m not sure,” Orla admitted. “In the Second Sentinel, we had the Scholar’s Hall, but that was it.”

“No libraries in Tulyr either,” Iseult added.

I sighed. It was easy to forget that while my companions were all from Skalterra, most of them had scarcely left their homes before this. They were as lost as I was.

“We’ll find it,” I assured them, though I didn’t feel as certain as I sounded.

Another crash echoed from the north, and we hurried to run along the block, checking in windows and trying locked doors to no avail as the sun sank lower and the shadows grew longer.

Night was coming, and we still hadn’t found the library.

“It has to be around here somewhere,” Iseult growled. “That shopkeeper said it was across the bridge with the cat gargoyle. There’s the gargoyle. So where’s the library?”

“What about that building?” Orla pointed to a structure that was definitely large enough to be a grand library, but lacked a visible entrance. It looked more like a warehouse to me.

“No windows and the front door is locked,” Iseult said. “I tried it twice.”

“Go down the alleyway again.”

I jumped at Ciarán’s sudden command in my head.

“You’re supposed to be focused on finding us a way out of the citadel,” I snapped back.

“We can’t leave until you have that journal. Now, down the alleyway, Blue.”

I marched forward, slipping between the warehouse and the neighboring cloak shop, but the alley was just as empty as when we’d first checked it.

“See?” I made sure to get a good look at the empty stone walls so that Ciarán could see how useless his instruction was. “Nothing.”

“Touch the wall.”

“Say please.” I rolled my eyes, but pressed my palm against the wall.

“Don’t roll your eyes. It makes me dizzy.”

The electrical buzz of magick tickled the skin of my hand, and I yanked away from the stone, glaring at the wall.

“It’s magick, I think,” I said, no longer joking.

“Get the Skalbreaker.”

“Iseult?” I called. “Can you come check out this wall?”