An alliance sealed by a kiss

Chapter 5

In less than two days, Cynthia, who was strolling in the courtyard, accidentally discovered a place where she could spend her time, that is, inside the sky-high tower in the southwest of the royal palace, there was a grand and atmospheric library, with a collection of books as vast as sand. Even dozens of meters high walls, are densely arranged with a variety of books, ancient scrolls, parchment books. The contents covered a wide range of subjects, history, humanities, geography, astronomy, plants... miscellaneous books could all be found here.

Of course, the books that outsiders could access were just some ordinary collections. Scrolls about magic and forbidden arts left over from the Elven Age were heirloom treasures that would inevitably not be placed on ordinary bookshelves.

Cynthia estimated that with the speed at which she read the books, if she wanted to read all of them, it would take her at least ten years. She herself loved to read, and wouldn't be bored if she spent an afternoon alone with a book, so this was the perfect place to relieve her boredom.

However, this library also had one shortcoming - due to the passage of time, the giant chandelier with a diameter of six or seven meters, embedded with gold and crystals, which fell from the dome, had long since become useless, and was just a vanity piece of hanging decorations. Really play a role in lighting, is the wall of the meter a lamp oil, as well as during the day from the windows into the light.

When the sun set in the west, the lack of sunlight would make it so dim between the bookshelves that you would need to hold up an oil lamp to recognize the letters on the spines. So Cynthia would stay here until late afternoon at most, and then leave.In the blink of an eye, half a month had passed.

The sky was rarely overcast today. Toward evening, the rounded sunset sank inch by inch behind the dark silhouette of the palace. The tumbling cumulonimbus clouds coalesced into a thick mass in the moist wind, completely swallowing the orange-red sunset glow in the sky. The wind and clouds surged, and the sky and earth changed color. Muffled thunder roared in the sky, a rare majestic rain fell from the sky, bean-sized raindrops hit the window edges, the outside of the glass, snaking out a water trail with mud and ash.

Cynthia, who was about to return to her room, was unlucky enough to be caught in the rain.The tower in which the library was located, with its many doors and multiple gallery bridges, was yet a short distance from the atrium, and the way back to her room was almost completely devoid of shelter.

Cynthia had sneezed twice while reading earlier. Worried that she was catching a cold, Margo had gone back to her room to fetch her clothes before the rain came down, and now only Shana was left at her side.

The two waited for a while, but the sky had a tendency to get darker and darker, and the rain increased rather than decreased.

Shana smartly suggested, "Princess, I remembered that there are storage rooms on the upper floors of this tower, and there must be rain gear inside. Why don't you read here for a while, and I'll go fetch an umbrella. Margo might meet the rain halfway and have to turn back to her room to fetch the umbrella, so she definitely won't be as fast as me. "

Cynthia warmed her hands with her black tea and smiled, "Okay, you go ahead. "

Shana got the order and left quickly, also thoughtfully covering the door in case anyone disturbed Cynthia.

The air quieted down. The only sound left to the ears was the thunderstorm.

Where Cynthia was, was a long table by the window. One side was a wall and three sides were bookshelves. Even as the wind blew and rained outside, the oil lamps that dotted the walls baked a warm yellow light into the space, filling people with a sense of security.

Cynthia leaned on the edge of the table with her cup of tea, facing the direction of the window, her eyes meticulously tracing one of the angelic portraits on the stained glass as she drifted off.A cluster of silver-white lightning lashed the earth hard, and thunder rumbled. Between the flashes of white light, a shifting black shadow was suddenly projected onto the glass window in front of Cynthia.

Cynthia, startled, twisted around and looked up, surprised to find the large, heavy chandelier swaying with a slight creak.

There was no wind in the room, and the doors and windows were closed. It has always been stationary, how could it swing up for no reason? It was almost as if something had just hung upside down and stirred it as it leapt to the ground.

Cynthia frowned as a shudder of unease crept through her heart.

In fact, she had had this strange sensation more than once in recent times. Sometimes when she slept at night, it would still feel like something was hiding in the shadows, peering at her with malice. Consciousness had been hovering at a shallow level, constantly having horrible and illogical dreams, not intimate and ambiguous icky dreams, but real nightmares.

Cynthia is also a bit distressed by her own paranoia.

In Faerie times, light magic was the nemesis of magical creatures. Once struck, they would burn to ashes in that brilliant light. It was just a bit of a shame that humans couldn't inherit that bit of magic. However, humans had also discovered the weakness of these demonic monsters, which was that they deeply feared fire and light. These two can't kill them, but they can make them retreat and not dare to attack.

Just basking in the light of the fire was tantamount to having a talisman. Fran Eden, with its abundant light, was the place these things feared the most. And the palace was so heavily guarded that not even a fly could get in, let alone a demon taking advantage of it to slip in or even spy on her.

After half a month of peace and quiet, even Margo, who was initially convinced of the legend of the "cannibalistic monster of Abil", gradually relaxed her vigilance, certain that it was just a nonsense.

What he saw with his eyes open and what he felt with his eyes closed, his reason and his intuition, all pointed in two separate directions. For those who hadn't actually been physically threatened by something monstrous, they tended to put less faith in their own evanescent intuition, and were more likely to blame it on a delusion.

Cynthia's long eyelashes drooped slightly as she tightened her grip on the porcelain cup. Could it be, really, that she was overthinking things?

"Boom, clatter!"