Benedict hadn’t understood it either until recently. But he’d had a lot of time in that dungeon to contemplate various things. When he wasn’t tormented by illusions, that was.
Forcing a nonchalant swagger, Benedict meandered his way through his parents’ manor house, set far in the countryside of the Court of Knowledge. Here, a quaint village provided homesfor the servants and for villagers hard at work in the industry of making paper, etching leather, mixing ink, and creating all the other things needed to make and bind books.
Most of the Court of Knowledge was formed of rolling hills with a few streams and small forests. A rather idyllic place to learn, study, and be about the court’s duty of gathering and providing knowledge.
After a short stroll down a mossy path, Benedict reached the outpost library stationed in his family’s village. Upon entering the small, circular library, he waved to the single apprentice librarian who ran this outpost, strode between the shelves, which were embarrassingly empty given his family’s lackluster support, and reached the Anywhere Door set into the back of this particular outpost.
Unlike all of the homes given to the librarians who worked at the Great Library itself, the manor houses belonging to the nobles didn’t have Anywhere Doors. Instead, the nobles preferred the grandeur of sprawling mansions, as if to show off their importance and wealth as opposed to the quaint cottages of the common fae.
His mind fixed on the Hall of Anywhere Doors, Benedict opened the Door and stepped through. In a moment, he went from the single-roomed outpost to the white-marbled Hall. He strode the length of the Hall and through the double doors into the calm of the greenly lit Library’s atrium.
In the warmth of daylight, the paths between the shelves looked nothing like they had the night before during the Revel. They were once again warm, inviting, and flower-filled rather than darkly sinister as they had been during the Revel.
The librarians in their gray, green, and black coats bustled between the shelves while, for the first time in a year, orderly lines of patrons waited before the desks beneath the Library’s Tree for one of the librarians to assist them.
For a moment, Benedict halted and simply breathed in the heavy, flowers-and-paper-scented air. This Library was home. Not the fancy manor house with his parents and brother spouting their nonsense. Here was where Benedict truly belonged.
He couldn’t allow Claudius to ruin this place of peace, safety, and knowledge. Benedict would do whatever it took to save the Library.
A flash of a peach-pink dress caught his eye, the ruffles swishing as she moved. Beatrice’s wavy, blonde curls flowed down her back over her gray librarian coat, and a magenta bookwyrm currently perched on her shoulder.
Perhaps the Library had known exactly what it had been doing last night, bringing him and Beatrice together. Unfortunately, only he and the Great Library believed it.
As if sensing his gaze, Beatrice looked up. When her eyes latched on to him, her smile curved downward into a scowl.
If she scowled at him, he had only himself to blame. His parents didn’t want them to be mates because of the superficial, discriminatory reason that she was human. But Beatrice and her family were opposed to this because of the very real, very horrible tormenting he’d done to her when they’d both been young.
Plastering on his customary smirk, Benedict sauntered deeper into the Library, headed in her direction.
Instead of darting off, Beatrice held her ground, her arms crossed and that bookwyrm still perched on her shoulder as if it, too, prepared to protect her. “What do you want?”
“We’re fated mates.” Benedict leaned his arm against the bookshelf beside her. “Perhaps I wish to spend time with you.”
“Fat chance. What are you planning? Snail slime in my hair? Spiders in my pockets?” Beatrice rolled those bewitchingly blue eyes.
He tried not to flinch at the mention of spiders and instead kept his smile in place. “Wouldn’t that be a little juvenile?”
“Juvenile is about the maturity level I’d expect from you.” Beatrice’s eyes flashed as she glared up at him. “Though even that might be giving you too much credit. Perhapsinfantilewould be the better term.”
“Ouch.” He pressed his free hand—the one not propped languidly on the bookshelf—over his heart. “Perhaps I’ve matured more than you think in the time I’ve been away.”
There was far too much truth in those words, much as he tried to disguise them with his light tone and easy smile.
But Beatrice either didn’t hear the truth or refused to see it. She huffed and looked skyward, as if she wanted to roll her eyes again. “Hardly. If anything, spending time in the Court of Revels would have degraded any level of sense you might have possessed at one time.”
In that, he would agree, though certainly not in the way she meant.
“Then you agree I had sense at one time.” He grinned, leaning slightly closer to her. She had a faint floral scent wafting around her, and that scowl on her lips was luring him in.
“I said sense youmighthave possessed. Although, even that is giving you too much credit.” Beatrice stomped her foot, huffed, and spun away, as if she’d decided she was done with this conversation.
He blinked, her movement breaking the mesmerizing pull she had on him and reminding him that he shouldn’t push her boundaries. The fated mate bond didn’t give him any rights to her, nor did he deserve any, given the way he’d acted toward her years ago.
“Wait.” Benedict reached out a hand, but he stopped short. Both because he knew she wouldn’t appreciate him grabbing her arm and because the bookwyrm gave a faint hiss.
Beatrice half-turned toward him, although she remained poised to continue her retreat. “What?”
“Look. I know you’re going to be looking for a way to end this binding.” He held out his hand, although neither of their hands glowed since they didn’t touch. “So am I. It would only make sense that we look together.”
