Page 119 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Please,” Orla bowed. “Lady Lysanor, we are looking for Lady Lyria’s journal. Once we have the information we need, we’ll leave Willow’s Grave.”

“I’ll show you the journal,” Lysanor said with a smug lilt and finger raised to point at me, “if that one gives herself over to the army outside.”

“Done,” Iseult said, just as Orla cried out, “Absolutely not!”

All three of them turned to look at me.

It would work, of course. Iseult had been thinking it since discovering that’s what Caitria’s army was here for. I knew it from the moment we’d shared that glance in the textile plaza.

I’d been thinking it too.

We had a Saergrim to help close the Rift already. My mom was waiting in Keel Watch Harbor. They didn’t actually need me. They hadn’t ever. I was only here because I’d insisted on it.

I shook my head. “I have to go home. If I give myself up, the others will have to keep going without me. There’s not enough time—”

“Then no journal,” Lysanor asserted.

“I’ll never see my mom again!”

“Oh?” Lysanor’s wrinkled face contorted into one of false sympathy. “I haven’t seen my mother in fifty years because she was ripped apart by one of Balin’s rotsbane when he tried to open the Rift.”

“And now the Rift is open, which is what Balin wanted! We’re trying to fix that.”

“Did you let Galahad fill your pretty, young head with delusions of greater purpose and duty? He may be dead, but you’re all an extension of him and his addiction to dogma. Galahad—”

“I hated Galahad,” I seethed. Lysanor froze, and her eyes narrowed at me. “He used people like tools. He used me like a weapon, the same way you want to use me to appease the army outside. Galahad used me, cursed me, and when I tried to save him, he called me a liar and a traitor and got murdered for it.”

“Then why are you here?” Lysanor hissed.

“Because I don’t care about Galahad. I care about saving both our worlds.”

“Don’t insult me with fake heroics and hollow talk of saving worlds. Why are you here really?”

“I want to save my grandma,” I admitted.

Lysanor scanned us one by one, her nostrils flaring. “And if I show you Lady Lyria’s journal, you’ll leave?”

“Yes,” Orla said. “And we’ll lead the army away. Willow’s Grave will be okay.”

Lysanor shook her head and put a hand to her temple in defeat.

“You have thirty minutes. This way.”

Her robes whirled as she spun on her heel to lead us back towards the staircase she’s appeared from. Orla was the first to follow, batting away one of Lysanor’s orbiting balls of light as she did.

“I don’t like this,” Ciarán hissed in my head.

“Me neither,” I admitted. “But it’s not like we have any other choice.”

“Hurry, Blue.”

The stairs spiraled down beneath the marble floor, and Lysanor’s glowing orbs of Skal flame floated on the air to light the way. Bookshelves rose overhead as we descended, brimming with thick-spined tomes.

“There is no collection in all of Skalterra that boasts a record of history as complete as mine.” Lady Lysanor explained. “I’ve worked tirelessly for half a century gathering it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Orla offered. “Best library I’ve ever been in.”

“No need to condescend to me. I already know it’s impressive.”