A Court of Stars and Shadow

Chapter 10

My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness but as the dark oak doors shut behind me fae lights flickered in front of me, lining the walls. A library loomed before me, so tall a metal spiral staircase was in the corner leading to half of the second floor. That half had a railing overlooking the first floor and I could see some couches and small round tables through the iron railings. The bottom floor though was stacked and stacked with books on the walls and a large long table loomed in the center of the room. There was a larger library than this in the house though but this one felt different; it felt like.... Magic.

Amren immediately walked over to one side of the wall and plucked a large book from the shelf. She plopped into the chair at one end of the table with a soft rustle of her clothes against the chair and gently placed the book on top. As I walked closer, I realized there was a chain wrapped around the book and Amren slipped a key from her pocket, not paying me any attention as she said "sit". I walked over to where she was and decided it would be smart to sit not next to her, but the chair next to that. Whether she noticed or not she didn't say. "What is this place?" she took a moment to answer, placing the key in the lock and unwrapping it from the book. I didn't miss the hand she placed on the top of the book holding it down as she did though; I didn't particularly want to find out why, but I had a feeling I was going to anyways. "this is a library" "obviously" she shot her eyes up to me at the attitude, she was not Cass, I had to be careful with the way I talked around her. "I mean, this library is different from the other one in this house." "yes, this library is different, it's where we keep our more dangerous books." The library from crescent city flashed into my mind, the book of breathings from this world that currently resides there.

"You think you can find a way to send me home in one of these books?" it was more a statement than a question, but my heart still stopped waiting for her answer. "Maybe. You'll remember that I searched for a way for" she blew out a breath "for a very long time and I never really found a concrete answer." I nodded, remembering the way she sacrificed herself during the war with Hybern, the way she released herself from her body. "If we adapt the spell you used to release yourself" I said slowly as she once again looked up to me where she was peering at a page "can we adapt it to maybe release me from this world?" she narrowed her eyes at me, the most emotion I would get from her then. "Maybe, maybe if I still had the book of breathings; but I don't."

I looked away from her and I don't know how she knew but she replied, "but you know where it is." It was my turn for my eyes to meet hers. "Yes, but there's no way to get it. You don't remember it?" "Most of it, but that's not why you're here." "oh?" "You're stuck here until we figure out a way to get you home. So, now that you are temporarily part of the court, and with that power of yours, you need to learn how to protect your mind, to protect our secrets from others." "Oh"

I don't know why I hadn't thought of it earlier, of course I needed to protect my mind, build a wall in there. Gods forbid I ever have to go under the court of nightmares or to the war camps, but I don't know how long I'm going to stay here, and if I am here for a reason... then I might just have to go to all those places. "you're teaching me?" "would you rather someone else? Feyre? Rhys?" "No, this is fine I'm just... no this is good."

"good. Rhys told me that you at least had some feeble shield already in place which is more than most, we just have to reinforce it. Now shield up"

"What!" I didn't even know how to do that.

"I said shield up" Amren said and as she flipped a page in her book my head began to throb. It wasn't like the daemati whose power I just knew, whose power was like a snake; this was different. I cradled my head in my hands, but she just kept pounding into it, pushing me to push her out. I glanced at her quickly, to see if she would see the pain in my eyes but her eyes roamed over the page, flipped it, and then scanned it again; no interest in me as if she wasn't liquifying my brain.

"Amren" I managed to hiss but she didn't falter from where she was reading. "Push me out" oh she had her reputation indeed. Fine, I could play this game. I remembered Feyre's training, the way she imagined walls being casted in her head, so did just that. I imagined my brain to be a city and I am casting a wall around it, high enough to protect it from any invaders. There, barely there but a thin wall of vines began to push out the throbbing. When I began to gain some ground, when I almost pushed her from my head, she pushed harder. She was toying with me. Grunting and scrunching my face I thickened the wall, overlapping and intertwining the vines until they were solid and Amren's power pushed and pushed against it but not being able to find any cracks in the wall the throbbing in my head stopped so suddenly I flinched.

"good your done for the day, go get ready for dinner, you smell" I would have said something in regard to that last comment, but I was too focused on her first words. "We're done?" "Yep, you can go" "but like we had a good two minutes of training." "Training in the mind is not the same as your training with Cassian, it does not take two people. You can go to your room and work on your wall by yourself. Work on keeping it up and strong at all times of the day, not just when you're under attack because your mind will be in their control by then. Soon enough we'll work on you having it up at night to but for now, you're going to train with me after your training with Cassian every day. By tomorrow I want you to come in here with your walls already up and a little thicker than today."

She finished and turned another page in that damn book. "Do you need help, researching?" "Appreciated, but no."

I took that as my cue to leave and stood up slowly, sparing one last glance at the humming library of magic books behind me before slipping out.

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Short one but there will be another chapter up soon!

xoxo

-S