Page 23 of Librarian

“Enough.” North cuts Pierce off. “If you’re on our side, tell us where Kyrith is.”

The Carlton heir’s face clouds over. “It’s hard to explain. We need to wait for the Arcanaeum to?—”

“She’s alive?” Lambert’s jaw drops, and he starts peering into the corners of the room, like Kyrie might jump out at any moment.

Pierce grimaces. “No.”

My heart shreds, haemorrhaging so hard I can’t believe the blood isn’t spurting out of me, coating the floor.

“Yes. Sort of. I don’t know,” he continues, falteringly.

“Yes or no isnae hard,” Jasper grinds out.

“It is when it comes to her! Look, Mathias sacrificed her again, and she bled out. Iwatchedher bleed out. But the Arcanaeum took her body to this crypt, and when I touched her, she drained me, and her wound healed…kind of.”

Magical transfer. Kyrith mentioned the bond between us allowed her to take magic from us and vice versa. A spark lights up inside me, but it’s habit to crush it before it can form.

Pierce sighs. “I think the building is doing something. I just…don’t have a clue what. It wanted you lot here, but it also hid the door to that crypt, and the Library isn’there, like it used to be.”

“Not here?” I hate how thin my voice is.

It’s Lambert who waves a metal-covered hand at the walls. “Come on. You can feel it. There’s no…Arcanaeum. It’s lifeless.Where are the books? The carts aren’t rolling around. It’s worse than when she was resurrected.”

Pierce hums. “Mathias is using its power for himself. Keeping himself from ageing. It took a lot of magic to restore his body. Now he’s complaining there’s nothing left. The doors creak. The windows are drafty. The place is falling apart.”

“And his phylactery?” I press. “Where is it?”

“If I knew, I’d have made a plan to destroy it by now.” He sighs, drawing his hood up again. “Come on. We need to get you down to the Vault and sneak past my mother somehow?—”

The door opens.

My heartbeat stutters, waiting for the moment we’re discovered by the crowd beyond.

But the foyer isn’t there. Instead, it’s a cramped stone room, and in the centre?—

“Boss!” Lambert shoves past all of us, the transmutation magic on his hand finally dissipating as he spots her supine body on the dais.

“Magic, no,” Jasper groans, following quickly behind with his grimoire already out. “Lass…”

The cat curled in a ball on her stomach raises its head, disturbed by the commotion as we pile into what is unmistakably a tomb. The door slams shut behind me, and it’s only then I realise that my feet have carried me forward.

Stars above. She’s so still. So pale.

Lambert’s hands frame her face, his eyes glassy with tears as he looks at Jasper like he can heal her.

“We just have to touch her, right?” he asks, as Westley abandons Kyrith’s body and pounces onto his shoulders, where he settles like a parrot. “Then she’ll wake up and tell us how to fix this?”

Dakari shoulder checks me on his way past, already grabbing for one of her hands. “Fuck. We never planned how we could get her out of here.”

I should cross the final distance, but I’m frozen, staring at the jagged cut exposed by the deep neckline of her dress. Jasper’s fingers are already tracing the edge of it, but it’s healing before my eyes.

The process speeds up noticeably as North takes her other hand, pressing it to his lips. “Wake up, Ice Queen. You’ve got to tell us what to do to help you.”

Shite, even he sounds a little broken.

In answer, her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.

I’m not the only one hanging on her each and every breath.