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She sighed through her nose. “No. The magic books here … they were supposed to be guardians of the library itself. At least, that’s what I enchanted them to do, centuries ago. To attack those who tried to steal the books, to defend them.” One such book, Ithan recalled Bryce telling him, had helped save her when she fought Micah. “But the volumes took on lives and desires of their own. They became … aware.” She glared at the misbehaving book. “And by the time I tried to unweave the spells of life on them, their existence had become too permanent to undo. So I needed monitors such as Lehabah to guard the guardians. To make sure they didn’t escape and become more of a nuisance.”
“Why not sell them?”
She gave him a withering look. “Because my spells are written in there. I’m not letting that knowledge loose in the world.” Roga had been a witch before she’d defected to the House of Flame and Shadow and called herself a sorceress instead. He could only imagine what she’d seen in her long, long life.
“So what do they say? The Parthos books?”
The clacking keys resumed. “Nothing. And everything.”
Ithan snorted. “Cryptic, as usual.”
Her typing stopped again. “They’d bore most people. Some are books on complex mathematics, entire volumes on imaginary numbers. Some are philosophical treatises. Some are plays—tragedies, comedies—and some are poetry.”
“All from human life before the Asteri?”
“A great civilization lived on Midgard long before the Asteri conquered it.” He could have sworn she sounded sad. “One that prized knowledge in all its forms. So much so that a hundred thousand humans marched at Parthos to save these books from the Asteri and Vanir who came to burn them.” She shook her head, face distant. “A world where people loved and valued books and learning so much that they were willing to die for them. Can you imagine what such a civilization was like? A hundred thousand men and women marched to defend a library—it sounds like a bad joke these days.” Her eyes blazed. “But they fought, and they died. All to buy the library priestesses enough time to smuggle the books out on ships. The Vanir armies intercepted most of them, and the priestesses were burned, their precious books used as kindling. But one ship …” Her lips curved upward. “The Griffin. It slipped through the Vanir nets. Sailed across the Haldren and found safe harbor in Valbara.”
Ithan slowly shook his head. “How do you know all this, when no one else does?”
“The mer know some of it,” she hedged. “The mer aided the Griffin across the sea, at the behest of the Ocean Queen.”
“Why?”
“That’s the mer’s story to tell.”
“But why do you know this? How do you have this collection?”
“I’ll refrain from making the comparison to a dog with a bone.” Jesiba closed her laptop with a soft click. Interlaced her fingers and set them upon the computer. “Quinlan knew when to keep her mouth shut, you know. She never asked why I have these books, why I have the Archesian amulets that the Parthos priestesses wore.”
Ithan’s mouth dried out. He whispered, “What—who are you?”
Jesiba burst out laughing, and several of the books on the shelf shuddered. Ithan was barely breathing as Jesiba snapped her fingers.
Her short hair flowed out—down into long, curling tresses that softened her face. Her makeup washed away, revealing features that somehow seemed younger … more innocent.
It was Jesiba, yet it wasn’t. It was Jesiba, as if she’d been trapped in the bloom of youth. Of innocence. But her voice was as jaded as he’d always heard it as she said, “Lest you think me lying … This is the state I will always revert to—can revert to, at a mere wish.”
“So you’re … able to do magical makeovers?”
She didn’t smile. “No. I was cursed by a demon. By a prince who intercepted my ship and the books on it.”
Ithan’s heart thundered.
“We had almost reached the Haldren Sea when Apollion found the Griffin.” Her voice was flat. “He’d heard about the doomed stand at Parthos, and the ships, and the priestesses burned with their books. He was curious about what might be so valuable to the humans that we were willing to die for it. He didn’t understand when I told him it was no power beyond knowledge—no weapon beyond learning.” Her smile turned bitter. “He refused to believe me. And cursed me for my impudence in denying him the truth.”
Ithan swallowed hard. “What kind of a curse?”
She gestured to her longer hair, her softer face. “To live, unchanging, until I showed him the true power of the books,” she said simply. “He still believes they’re a weapon, and that I’ll one day grow tired enough of living that I’ll hand them over and reveal all their supposed secret weapons.”
“But … I thought you were a witch.”
She shrugged. “I was, for a time. How do you categorize a human woman who stops aging? Who always reverts to the same age, the same physical condition as she was when she was cursed? I’d cherished my years with my fellow priestesses at Parthos. When the witch-dynasties rose, I thought I might find similar companionship with them. A home.”
“You … you were a priestess at Parthos?”
She nodded. “Priestess, witch … and now sorceress.”
“But if you were human, where’d your magic come from?” She’d said Apollion granted her long life, not power.
