Towards the back of the ancient library, one of the oldest rooms in the castle and the one with hardly any visitors, Silas sits at a wooden desk with a chipped surface. Next to him, in one of the rickety chairs with no cushion, Hallie squirms back and forth as she tries to get comfortable.
They're surrounded by stacks and stacks of bookcases. If the king wants to add anything new to the library, he must build a new one entirely. Each stack is full from the floor to the top shelf and along the back wall, somewhere in the maze of books, the stacks reach the ceilings. The only way to access them? The uncertain and wobbly ladder that slides back and forth when someone climbs on the rungs.
Even in the middle of summer, there's no warmth in the dust-layered windows and a worn rug torn by the rats that disappear underneath the floorboards. No one in their right minds comes back here, there's nothing but old scriptures and logs dating back to the start of the kingdom—information no one, not even the crown prince, should be interested in.
That's why Silas made a show of giggling with Hallie to make the librarian, a witch of language, believe they weren't in here to read. It worked, she hasn't come looking for them, and they've remained as silent as they possibly can while they flip through the different wooden-bound books.
Back at the start of the kingdom, even leather was a rare commodity.
Silas takes great care with the books so he doesn't rip any pages or damage the weak covers. If the librarian discovers something is amiss once they're back on the shelves, directly on the dusted frame that's developed over the years, she'll share that information with the king. She's a mean, grumpy old woman—someone Silas has never gotten along with and more than once, she's tattled on him for this thing or the next. Small incidents that his father brushed off but this, looking for ancient texts, would be memorable.
Hallie crosses her legs, one over the other, and finally finds a comfortable position. "They could have put couches back here," she grumbles.
"Those are reserved for the more popular seating," Silas says. "If we want to let the world know what we're looking for, then we'll go screaming about what we're doing. Otherwise, we'll stay back here in the chairs that likely housed the first king."
Hallie, a proper princess, snorts. "I doubt anyone of value sat in these chairs. The prisoners, maybe. Right before they lost their heads." She forces one last adjustment, and the chair groans underneath her as if offering a loud promise to break if she keeps moving.
Taking that as her cue to stop, Hallie turns the page of the ancient book in front of her. They picked whatever they could off the shelves, anything that appeared to be of value. Ancient logs, lineage, documents on the original witches. Bloodlines have to be in here somewhere, Silas will not stop until he's discovered what it takes to bring everything back to normal.
With a force as strong as Roux, and Binx, they'll be able to stop the king and all his terror.
Silas slams his finger against a page as he reads a line of text. "The first king slaughtered the original witches after they expended their magic," he reads aloud. "It's unknown whether they had any offspring or relatives, but it states that most witches, at the time of the king's rise, kept their bloodlines secret in fear of beheadings."
"That's lovely," Hallie says sarcastically. "Your ancestors were real bitches."
"They didn't teach that in our history lessons. They told us that the original witches faded into the afterlife after long-serving the first king. They lived good lives...contradictory to what I've read here."
Silas chews on his lap and leans back in his chair which, like Hallie's, releases an unsettling groan that ripples through the library. Any sounds like that are useful against the librarian's suspicions. She hasn't stopped him before from using this as his...destination to unwind, but she hasn't always been friendly about it, either. That's part of the reason she frowns at him when he enters such sacred ground.
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Aligning the Forgotten ✓
Fantasy[Book 3 of the Grounding the Storm series] Renit's worst nightmare has come true. Roux isn't at his side, and he's banished from his throne and his crown, leaving him nameless and on the run. While trying to escape his father's cruel reign, he has t...
