“Still might be worth a look if we can’t find something in the Law section.” Benedict paused to let the bookwyrm scurry from his arms onto a shelf. It disappeared into the shadows deeper in the Library.
“Fine. We’ll keep that as our backup plan.” Beatrice didn’t wait for him. Hopefully the romance angle wouldn’t be necessary. There was no way she was going anywhere near the romances with heart-flutter-inducing Benedict at her side.
With his longer legs, Benedict caught up in just a couple of strides. He fell into step with her once again as they wound their way through the meandering paths between the shelves.
Eventually, they reached a part of the Library where the shelves straightened into crisp rows, which looked almost unnatural here in the rambling-scrambling Great Library.
Beatrice halted by the end of the first shelf and pointed at the far end. “I’ll start here if you start there.” That would put plenty of space between them.
“I see you are as pleased by my proximity as ever.” Benedict simply grinned and sauntered the length of the shelf.
“Just search over there. Way over there.” Beatrice stretched to see the titles on the highest shelf. Did any of these books look promising? She needed a fix for this fated mate bond mess as soon as possible.
For long minutes, they searched in near silence, only breaking it to ask the Library to fetch books from the higher shelves.
Beatrice flipped through a book that claimed to be a treatise on breaking bindings. She could barely understand a sentence because the word usage and sentence structure wereso incomprehensibly dense. How could she tell if there was something useful in here if she couldn’t understand it?
She slammed the book shut with a snap. Ugh, this was getting her nowhere.
A branch whipped from the bookshelf and gave her a hard rap on her hand before it waggled at her.
Oops. The Library didn’t appreciate her taking out her frustration on the book.
She handed the book to the branch and let the Library tuck the book safely back on the shelf. “Are you finding anything?”
“No. Mostly examinations of the more common bindings and ways to break them.” Benedict shut the book he had been flipping through with far more care before he slid it back onto the shelf. “But I’d have to read the books more thoroughly to be sure. It could be tucked into a paragraph or two, and I’d never find it in a quick perusal.”
Beatrice glanced down the length of the shelf, then at the other shelves behind her. They didn’t have time to read all of the books in this section before the month was out. “I guess we’ll have to keep going through them quickly and hope we stumble across a book that stands out to read in more depth.”
She would note the ones that needed a more thorough reading—like that treatise on breaking bindings—and give the list to Basil. If anyone could parse the difficult-to-understand books, it would be him.
Benedict nodded and pulled another book from the shelf. For another few minutes, they continued in silence, working their way toward each other.
When the two of them had searched until they were nearly next to each other, Benedict’s hand paused on one of the books before pulling it out. “I heard your family is close to the Wild Fae Primrose.”
Beatrice froze, her fingers gripping the pages of the open book in her hand, every nerve in her thrumming. Why would he be asking about Brigid? Surely it couldn’t be for a good reason. This was Benedict the Human Hater, after all. “No, not particularly. Why do you ask?”
“I just thought that someone like the Primrose would know a way out of this binding.” Benedict shrugged and tugged the book from the shelf. He didn’t look at her as he began flipping through it. “He certainly seems to wiggle his way around the Laws of Bindings. Someone that clever at loopholes and breaking bindings could surely help us out of our situation.”
A part of her relaxed, somewhat. Benedict had saidhe. That meant he didn’t suspect Brigid.
But he still could suspect Basil, Munch, Favian, or Sebastian. Plenty of people had theorized as much, until they met Basil and realized there was no way he went about stealing back humans, mild-mannered and library-loving as he was. And many fae were pompous enough to dismiss Munch as a possibility simply because he was human. Not to mention that he’d moved to the Fae Realm after the Wild Fae Primrose had already been operating. With Sebastian and Favian in the Court of Islands, most assumed they couldn’t be the Primrose.
“Maybe he could. But no one knows who he is to ask him.” Beatrice kept her tone neutral as she starting paging through the book again, although she didn’t really see any of the words.
If Brigid had thought of a way for Beatrice to get out of this, she would have said something by now. Certainly, she’d be thinking about it. But she also had the Faerie Market and her coming baby to distract her. Beatrice couldn’t depend on her clever sister figuring a way out of this.
No, Beatrice was on her own this time. And perhaps, a part of her wanted to be the one to find the way to break this binding, rather than depend on her sister or her brother-in-law. This wasanother chance for Beatrice to stand on her own two feet instead of once again being the baby of the family who needed to be coddled.
“I was sure your family knew the Primrose somehow.” Benedict kept paging through his book as well. When he reached the end, he started over at the beginning rather than putting it back on the shelf.
“What makes you think that?” She needed to know what had made him suspicious so that she could fix it.
“Well, you’re the only family of humans here in the Court of Knowledge, and the Primrose does seem to have an unusual love for humans, for a fae lord.” Benedict kept flipping almost as if to give his hands something to do rather than actually looking at the book. “And he began operating a couple of years after you and your family arrived.”
Both were logical deductions. Yet Beatrice needed to put him off the track. If Benedict was asking about the Wild Fae Primrose, he couldn’t have good motives. His family had made no secret of how they hated the Primrose and didn’t support King Theseus’s stance on the matter.
“We are hardly the only humans in the Fae Realm or even the Court of Knowledge.” Beatrice tried for a nonchalant shrug as she placed the book back on the shelf. She’d need to come back to it as she hadn’t really taken in any of the information. “Besides, everyone knows the Wild Fae Primrose is a lord. Perhaps I should be asking if you know the Wild Fae Primrose. I’d ask if youwerethe Primrose, but clearly that isn’t the case. You certainly don’t love humans enough for that.”
