The pages spoke about respect at first, and the division of power. I didn’t quite understand everything, but the “Source of All” was mentioned the most, with sentences about division of access scrawled out beneath.
Then there were laws about sharing, laws about elderships, laws about formation of magic and the varying combinations of such. It was intriguing stuff, but not particularly useful for my situation.
Nothing aboutdeals.
Then again, I was only about twenty pages in out of about three hundred. I began flipping through faster, trying to skim. But the more pages I turned, the more I realized that the right side of the book wasn’t getting any thinner.
In fact… the book was creating more pages.
Right,magicalbook.
Just like everything else in this realm, nothing was what it seemed. My dorm room spanned upwards of a hundred steps, but from the outside, it had only appeared three or four stories tall.
Finally, I stopped, marveling at how thick the book had become. Glancing at the top right-hand corner, I saw that I was on page two thousand four hundred and seventy.
My lips curled downward.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered to myself.
“I would tend to agree.” The deep voice came from right behind me, a warm presence wrapping around me in a cloak of reality.
I blinked, realizing he must have been standing there for quite some time for his heat to have seeped so deeply into my skin. “Uh…” I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting him to be an invisible figment, and gasped at the sight of a stunning male.
Holy Fae…
His blondish-brown hair fell in waves to his non-pointy ears. And he boasted a high-fashion look about him that models would kill for—the type of male who fit a suit perfectly and wore it with a regal flair that made others bow at his feet.
Yet it was his eyes that held me captive.
Because he possessed the most hypnotic multicolored eyes, framed by long, dark lashes.
Beautiful. Too beautiful. Almost distractingly so.
“Hello,” he greeted, that single word containing an incredible amount of sensuality. This was the kind of man who killed women with his beauty, his features almost surreal, and distinctly inhuman. He was just too pretty to be real. His perfect cheekbones, square jaw, and piercing gaze made me want to weep at his feet and beg him to do wicked deeds to me.
Shit. I swallowed. “I, uh…”
“You were busy reading,” he finished for me. “Yes. I’ve been watching.”
I almost asked him to tell me how long he’d been watching, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “It’s engrossing material.”
“I have no doubt that’s true,” he agreed, canting his head to the side. “You’re welcome to take it back to your room, Camillia. In fact, I strongly encourage it, as curfew passed by over an hour ago.”
My lips parted. “Oh…”Fuck. I’d read the rule about that in my quarters, just as I’d heard it when Ajax had mentioned it. “Shit.”
His mouth curled into a full grin, revealing impossibly perfect dimples on each cheek. “Want me to sneak you back in?” he offered. “I promise I’m quite skilled at it.”
“I…”Damn it. My first night—er, day?—in this place and I’d already broken curfew. “The Warden said the doors all magically lock…” I trailed off. He’d also warned that I didn’t want to know what happened if I stayed out past curfew.
Was this being one sent to punish offenders? He seemed far too amused by my predicament to be necessarily kind.
“As I said, I can sneak you back in.”
“Why would you do that?”
He lifted a muscular shoulder, causing his white button-down shirt to shift across his broad chest. “Does it matter?”
“If you want me to trust you, then yeah, it matters.”
