A Thousand Year Obsession ✔

47. Recognize The Signs

47. Recognize The Signs

When Merlin said the Great Sorcerers' Secret Library, I'd expected, well, the library of a great sorcerer. Instead I was granted a little box-like room about fifteen feet width and length lined from cracked stone floor to cobwebbed ceiling with dusty, rickety wooden bookshelves. I could barely even last a minute inside the dank darkness before the dust in the air got to me and sent me hacking and choking back out the practically rotten door.

Merlin and Eliza waited, wide eyed and expectant, just before the library. Neither moved when I stumbled back through the door invisible to their eyes, greedily swallowing mouthfuls of cold, fresh night air. The forest around the three of us cast ugly, menacing shadows, like fingers reaching out to curl around our throats and squeeze the life out of us. Though, I'm sure staying in that library would've done the job for them.

"Well?" Merlin asked.

I didn't answer right away, straightening my back and turning to the secret library, a distasteful scowl resting on my lips.

"It's definitely not all it's cut out to be." I rasped, roughly clearing my throat and rubbing my fingers along the insides of my collarbone.

On the outside, the library looked like a tree, an ordinary old oak tree, but on the inside . . . well, I guess it still looked like a tree.

Merlin frowned at my answer and moved towards the tree, running his fingers over the decade old layers of bark. He couldn't see the door. He couldn't touch the door. And he couldn't go through the door.

Only I could. But only I was the one who needed to find answers.

"Were there . . . any traps?" Merlin glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows drawing together.

"Well, unless you count an overly excessive amount of dust a trap, then no."

His lips pressed together tightly. "But that just doesn't make sense."

I huffed. "It's not like there's much to hide, anyways. It just a bunch of ratty old books."

"They're more than just books." It was Eliza that spoke, and both Merlin and I spun around towards her in surprise. Those were the first words she'd spoken since the river, and certainly not the words we'd expected to hear. I looked at Merlin, but he glanced away quickly. And when I looked back at Eliza, her eyes were focused solely on the old doorknob set in the tree, the doorknob she shouldn't have been able to see.

"They're memories, Morgana, memories of worlds and times long lost to us. Such things worthy of the most impregnable protection." She whispered.

My lips parted but I didn't say anything, simply watched her as she drifted towards the tree, her movements smooth as if she were gliding through water. It was like I was seeing an entirely different girl, a side of herself she'd hidden away, refusing to show, a side she knew would come out when we came to the library. That was why she'd been so quiet. She didn't want anyone to see this part of her, this beautiful, graceful, elegant part of her. And I couldn't help but wonder why.

She reached towards the knob, but then suddenly she hesitated, her breath catching. She spun around, her sharp green eyes catching on Merlin's.

"She deserves to know." She breathed, but Merlin shook his head.

"No, Elli--"

But Eliza just pressed her lips together and turned back to me. She inhaled deeply and brushed her curls out of her eyes.

"I'm not who you think I am, Morgana."

Her gaze flit to Merlin, and it seemed they'd been having an unspoken argument the moment Eliza contemplated telling me what I 'deserved to know.' But something told me it was about something else entirely.