Page 54 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

“Oh, I was listening, all right,” Lin said. He turned the notebook around and bookmarked the spread with his index finger for her to see. “But what I’m seeing looks like it was scratched out by a chicken having a seizure.”

Verda snatched her notebook back and used it to whack his shoulder.

For their afternoon meeting, she had borrowed a smaller private Reading Room off the seventh-floor main corridor, where few librarians or patrons ever went – and she praised her own foresight for having done so. Her pride wouldn’t be able to withstand anyone else overhearing Lin’s unfortunately true assessment of her handwriting. “Trust me, if I could do it myself, I wouldn’t be here with you right now. So, can you do it or not?”

Lin held up his empty hands – in surrender or mockery, who could tell with that annoyingly chagrined smile, as if he found her both pitiful and amusing – and said, “Of course I can. I think, given your timeframe and any testing, it should take about three weeks.”

Three weeks? If each spell took three weeks to construct and become viable, then Verda would be barely done by the day of the successorship test. She spread her fingers on the tabletop, leaned in close. “What can I do to help speed up your process?”

“Hmm, well, dinner at Artivisi’s tonight sounds good—”

“Aside from that.”

Lin laced his fingers under his chin. The cheer evaporated from his face, replaced by an uncharacteristic seriousness, as he, too, leaned in close. “Tell me what you’re going to do once you’re Head Librarian.”

Verda hadn’t expected that. She straightened up and shifted uneasily, her notebook lying forgotten on the table. No one had ever asked her that before – not even Agreha, whose companionship was very welcome but who had assumed from the beginning that escaping an arranged marriage was the be-all and end-all of Verda’s stay at the Library. Talking about her plans felt just as difficult as keeping Aarakarsh’s carbonized books intact during an excavation. Her old habit of twirling a lock of hair whenever she found herself unusually lost for words came slithering back.

“I have a younger brother,” she said at last, keeping her eyes on a window to the west, which overlooked the glinting waters of Crescent Bay. “Ivinder. Our father describes him as mute, but that’s not right; Ivinder just doesn’t use words to express himself. He’s extremely bright, but our father just can’t see it. He denied him the chance for even private tutoring when the rest of his children were educated at the Library.

“Before I came here, I took charge of Ivinder’s education… if I could simply go back to our estate and live as before, I would. But I can’t. If I could become Head Librarian, however… I’d make the Library and its school so much easier to access for people like Ivinder.”

There was a long, unbearable silence that followed. When Verda finally dared to look at Lin, his chin was still pillowed on his fingers, but now his expression was thoughtful.

“What?” Verda hazarded, a defensive note coloring the word as her eyebrows scrunched.

“That kind of care you have for your brother,” Lin said, his stare pointed at the carbonized scroll to his right. He didn’t seem to be looking at it so much as a memory deep inside his brain. “I can sort of understand it. Can’t relate to it, but I can sort of understand.”

“You have a brother?” This was the first time Verda had ever heard any thing about Lin’s past. How novel.

“Brothers,” Lin said, looking up at her now with a pain that he clearly had to build a smile around. A pain that, for some reason, was mirrored in Verda’s heart. “All older. But I daresay that your relationship with yours is a lot better than my relationship with any of them.”

“Not all of them,” Verda hastened to add without exactly knowing why. “I have older brothers too. And sisters. They mostly ignore me.”

“Lucky,” Lin muttered. Verda pretended not to hear. Louder, he said, “Still, to build the kind of burning ambition you have around your brother – that’s wildly admirable, Verda.”

Verda felt struck by lightning. “You said my name,” she breathed.

Lin pinned her with that stare, which now contained a wicked twinkle. “Should I say it again?”

Verda flung her notebook at him in disgust and stomped away.

That said, Lin had the spell ready for her in two weeks. It was a thing of beauty and precision: four overlapping logomantic circles and graceful and symmetric script inscribing the exact temporal and spatial bounds of the spell.

And best of all, it made the scroll’s writing glow through the carbon, allowing the text to be seen by human eyes for the first time in two thousand years.

* * *

Verda’s thoughts slammed back into her body, in the present, as Lin released her hand. To her shock, his good hand brushed away a lock that had sprung free of the neat, thin plait Agreha had twined around her head that morning in an attempt to tame the wavy locks beneath it. She’d always noticed how long and slender his fingers were whenever she watched him write a spell. And now, here they were: so close, she was unsure if the warmth she felt emanated from his fingertips or her cheek.

If she had no self-control, she would have nuzzled those fingers by now.

Lin lowered his gaze to hers, that pain-laced smile playing on his lips. “So, how do you propose we disable the golem, Snowflake?”

That nickname again. In the past, it had always put her in a bad mood, largely because Lin could have any number of infuriating reasons for choosing it. Chief among them being the implication that she thought herself special.

Verda drew her knees up to her chin again, suddenly sullen. “Why do you call me that?”

“What?”