Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Chapter 16: I May Have Lied

Guinevere pushed open the Library door. She hated that I had asked them here. I was ruining the one place outside of her home that she loved.

I knew that.

I did it anyway.

You might say that emotional manipulation is one of my strengths.

"Are you okay?" Alexandria's soft voice slipped through the air, the same way her hand slipped into Guinevere's.

"I'm fine."

It was a lie.

Of course it was a lie.

I'm fine is always a lie.

Their footsteps clicked on the floor, Nicholas and Christopher taking in all of the books that they hadn't seen in years. They had missed books so much. Sure, Guinevere had brought home books every night for them, but it wasn't the same as being surrounded and enveloped in them the way a library allows.

"Your Library is beautiful, Guinevere," Nicholas said.

"It's not mine."

But Guinevere was wrong. It was hers, had been hers from the moment she walked in through the doors on her first day of work. She had been terrified. A stuttering mess. And that's when I knew that it would be so much harder to win this stupid game of mine than I thought.

Because I knew that I would start to care.

"It might as well be." Alexandria ran her fingers along the desk Guinevere sat at every day. "Do you know if she's here or if we're just to wait for the other shoe to drop?" She turned to Nicholas. "I still don't understand why you trust her."

Sometimes you can't explain how the traces of love still echo in your heart.

Guinevere opened her mouth to say something, but we'll never find out what because it was at that moment that I decided to make my entrance.

There had been a lot of careful planning that went into this moment, let me tell you. Originally, I was actually going to send them to my old place of residence then make them walk all the way over to the Library.

But that seemed too cruel, even for me.

I waited for them at the top of the steps, my Hermione at the Yule Ball moment. I'd done up my hair, put on a black and white dress that made me feel like me, and not some frumpy Librarian who wallowed in hot chocolate and the company of a girl centuries younger than her.

Amaryllis was not one of my better personas. But I have to say, she did grow on me.

"Hello all." My voice echoed from the stairs. I waved my hand, a short, choppy gesture that was not becoming. I'm not sure why I did it.

The quartet glanced around -- of course they did, where did they expect me to be coming from?

"I'm up here." I did not wave this time. This time I had an audience to impress. My wave was not impressive. Instead I stared down. It was very intimidating if I do say so myself.

Alexandria certainly thought so. I watched her grip tighten on Guinevere's hand.

Nicholas was the first to make eye contact with me. "You've changed," he noted, taking a step closer to the stairs.

And that's when Guinevere saw me, and her hand dropped out of Alexandria's. "No," she whispered. "No, no, no, no! Amaryllis?"

I shuddered. That name had meant so much to me once, but I'd spent too long in it, made too many attachments, and the light had seeped from it. But I grinned. Finally, finally, this was all ending. "Hello, Guinevere. Alexandria, Nicholas, Christopher."