ADAIN
I find that the guards get bored after a few hours in the library. There are four of them, sometimes five. You'd think I'd be used to them shadowing me by now, after so many weeks of it, but it only grates on my nerves all the more with every passing day. Books are my escape, my teleportation to different realms.
“If you want to understand, read.”
Yet no matter how much I search the stacks, I find barely a mention of faeries. The history books talk of demons and witches, terrible beasts that were a blight upon the land before they were vanquished. They talk about The Burned Ones, twisted creatures with fiery eyes wearing crowns of thorns, whose skin was scorched by the touch of iron. But I know now that so much of it is a bunch of nonsense. Sometimes it makes me want to throw the books across the room.
But instead I read them, flipping page after page, trying to find grains of truth within the lies. And at least it gives me something to do.
"How cute." A young, feminine voice breaks my focus. I look up from the page to see Vessimira leaning on the edge of the table, smirking.
Rogemere's daughter is a few years older than me, shares his arched brows and permanent expression of disdain. She's wearing a dress of silvery blue silk that drapes over her shoulders in two columns in the front and one in the back, cinched at the waist with an iron chain. Loops of smaller chains hang around her neck, resting against her exposed skin. Delicate iron bracelets jingle at her wrists. I wonder how I didn't hear her arrive.
"You look like one of my father's puppets," she says, flicking a finger towards the book I have open in front of me and the haphazard pile of others beside it. "They don't let you play outside anymore, Your Highness?"
"What do you want?" I ask, frowning at her.
She glances at my guards, stationed at various corners of the room. Then she pulls out a chair and tosses herself into it. "So boring!" she says. "All these books, and none of them are even interesting."
"How do you know?" I ask. "Have you read all of them?"
She laughs, high-pitched tinkling. "Of course not. What a giant waste of time. The University has a real library. Hundreds of books and scrolls. Floors and floors of them. Oh...but you wouldn't know."
I return her look of mocking sympathy with a glare.
She lowers her voice and leans closer, "I can help you, if you want."
I look at the closest guard, then back at her. She shrugs one shoulder, smiling. "Don't worry about them." She snaps her fingers and says, "Somnodallum."
There is a puff of purple smoke around the guard's head, and his upper body slumps and sort of folds, like his bones have turned soft. His eyes are closed, his jaw slack. Yet he stays standing. I whip my head around to find the other guards in the same state.
Before I have time to react, Vessimira calls out, "Enna! Come!"
A serving girl with arms full of books and a bag over one shoulder hurries into the room, body sagging from the weight she's carrying. She must have been waiting right outside the library door. At Vessimira's impatient gesture, the girl puts the books and the bag down on the table in front of us, then drops into a curtsy.
"Your Highness," she mumbles. I notice a hollowness in her eyes, a sickly pallor to her skin.
"Oh, shoo, Enna," Vessimira says, rolling her eyes. She waves her hand towards the door.
"Yes, m'lady," Enna says. She walks away like it's an effort not to collapse.
"What did you do?" I ask as soon as her handmaid's gone. For some reason, my voice comes out a whisper.
