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“Sorry for hitting you with the stone,” she called.
“I deserved it,” he muttered, setting a foot on the first stair.
“You see,” Gwyn began again, closer now, and gods, she was following him. How did he politely but firmly extract himself from this? “I was up here tossing that thing around because Merrill wants me to rewrite an entire chapter with a different thesis—”
He kept his steps brisk, wings folded close to avoid the walls of the narrow stairwell.
“I think changing that chapter’s thesis will actually contradict her overall thesis in this book, but she doesn’t agree. She never agrees, even when it’s to her own advantage.”
How long was this stairwell? He didn’t normally mind talking to her, but he wanted to be alone, Mother damn him, and—
“I needed to not be in the library for a while, so I came up here to see if the starlight would clear my head—help me figure out what to do. Not only about Merrill and her book, but about what I’m even doing down there. And I was tossing the stone while I thought, and maybe yes, I was avoiding wandering the hallways tonight while Bryaxis is getting settled, but . . . then you appeared. At precisely the wrong moment. Sorry.”
Finally. The entrance to the hall with his bedroom. He paused at the archway. If Gwyn continued down the stairs, it’d take her back to the library. “Good luck with your work,” he said blandly. “Stay away from the bottom of that pit.”
The priestess didn’t say anything as he started into the hall, and mercifully she didn’t follow.
But right when he was about to turn into his room, he heard her say drily, “Good night to you, too. Thanks for the advice.”
He shut out her words. Shut out any other words in his mind as he opened his bedroom door, his shadows slinking in with him. He should have offered to escort her back to the library—the Mother knew Bryaxis would have plenty to prey on with Gwyn—but he could barely manage to close his bedroom door. Barely manage to send his armor retreating into the Siphons on his hands. Or think of anything at all before he collapsed face-first onto the bed and passed out completely.
Gwyn
The shadowsinger had been in fine form.
Azriel was a male of few words, but that had been pathetic, even for him. Granted, she hadn’t expected him to be chatty, but some form of pleasantry would have been appreciated.
Gwyn clicked her tongue as she fitted the golden key into the small door set within the pair towering above her. The library doors were closed. For the first time since she’d been here, the colossal doors were closed.
Clotho had given them each a key to this tiny entry, with the request that they lock it after themselves each time they came and went.
No one had the nerve to ask whether the locked doors were to keep Bryaxis in or keep others out.
Gwyn slid through the narrow door, locked it, and then leaned against the ancient wood. At this hour, the library was dim and quiet, most of the priestesses asleep. Even Merrill had abandoned her research by this point in the night to crawl onto the pallet beside her desk.
Gwyn fished the Invoking Stone from her pocket, along with a coil of white ribbon. Her white ribbon, sliced in the training ring levels above. She carried it with her everywhere, tucked into her pocket with the stone. “Some help you were,” she murmured to the stone. “You nearly cracked his skull open.”
Her Invoking Stone seemed to flicker in amusement as she slid it back into her pocket, nestling it amongst the folds of white ribbon once more, Azriel’s cedar and night-chilled mist scent still lingering in her nose.
She hadn’t told him the rest of why she’d dared to venture upstairs. That while she’d known Nesta likely wasn’t in residence, as the events of the Naming Day would have kept her at the river house, Gwyn had gone looking for her friend anyway. She’d felt a tingle on the charm bracelet earlier in the day, there and gone, and then Merrill had been so awful tonight that . . . She’d just needed her friend. Needed to tell Nesta that of course she’d help her write down everything she needed to and organize the information for future generations to clearly understand.
Gwyn had encountered only empty halls and rooms. They had pressed on her, vast and yet too small at the same time, and she’d needed air, needed starlight, so she’d found the first available balcony and gulped down enormous breaths.
When she’d finally calmed herself, she’d needed to think. And, as usual when she needed to think, she’d needed to sing. She’d picked a song at random, drawing from the well of ancient melodies Hana had uncovered through years of research, and she’d loosed it into the starry night.
A starry night that now seemed miles away from this mountain, this particular silence and gloom. The darkness stretched ahead into the library, interrupted only by golden bowls of faelight shaped like cupped hands.
The dormitory lay five levels down. Five levels, and the only way to reach it was by walking the ramp around and around the giant pit in the heart of the library.
Where Bryaxis lurked.
Clotho hadn’t provided many details beyond, Bryaxis has come home. She will not harm any of you, so long as you do not venture down into her lair.
Gwyn eyed the river of darkness between her and the dormitory, swallowing hard. How certain was Clotho about that? She trusted the priestess almost blindly, but this . . .
Gwyn pushed off the door and began the walk toward the spiral ramp, her steps too loud, too rustling.
Did Bryaxis even sleep? Was the creature squatting there now, gazing upward and listening to Gwyn’s approach? Did the creature know the exact taste and shape of her fear? Gwyn’s mouth dried out as she reached the railing at the top of the ramp.
