Elara's sleep was a thin, troubled veil. She drifted through fractured dreams of screaming libraries and shadows with glowing amber eyes, jolting awake at every unfamiliar sound the ancient castle uttered. The deep, resonant hmmmm of the stone was a constant, a vibration that seeped into her bones, a reminder that she was sleeping in the belly of a beast. When the first faint hints of a strange, silvery dawn began to bleed through the window, she gave up entirely.
She rose, her body stiff and aching with a profound exhaustion that coffee and a normal morning could never fix. The grey gown Lyra had provided was soft but alien, its unfamiliar weight a constant reminder of her displacement. She paced the length of the room—five steps from the bed to the hearth, seven from the door to the window. A gilded cage, indeed.
A soft knock-knock came at the door, followed by Lyra's entrance. She carried a new tray. This one held a simple breakfast of more of the dark bread, a handful of strange, blue-veined berries, and another cup of the shimmering, star-like water.
"You did not sleep well," Lyra observed, her tone stating a fact, not offering sympathy. Her keen eyes missed nothing, from the shadows under Elara's eyes to the restless way she held herself.
"It's a bit hard to sleep when your entire world has been ripped away," Elara replied, the words coming out sharper than she intended.
Lyra merely placed the tray on the table. "The King requests your presence."
The piece of bread Elara had just picked up fell from her fingers, landing with a soft thud on the wooden tray. Her blood ran cold. "Requests?"
"A formality," Lyra said, smoothing the front of her own simple dress. "You will come with me. Now."
"Why? What does he want?"
"The King does not confide his desires in me," Lyra said, a hint of impatience in her voice. "He issues a command. I facilitate it. That is the way of things. Do not keep him waiting. His curiosity is a fleeting thing, and his boredom is… perilous."
The warning was clear. This was not an invitation. It was a summons. The fragile sense of security the room had provided shattered completely. The cage door was swinging open, and the beast was calling for its new toy.
With a heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, Elara followed Lyra out of the room. The corridors of the keep were just as imposing by day, though the glowing moonstone veins were softer, their light a pale echo of the twin moons. They passed few others—a silent, efficient Fae like Lyra carrying linens, a hulking Lycan guard standing so still at an intersection he might have been a statue, his grey eyes tracking their movement with detached interest. The low clank of his armor shifting as they passed was the only sound he made.
Lyra led her not back to the terrifying grandeur of the throne room, but down a new series of passages. The air grew warmer, heavier with the scent of old parchment, polished wood, and something else… something wild and green. They arrived at a pair of immense double doors carved from a rich, dark wood. These were less intimidating than the throne room's obsidian, but no less grand.
Lyra pushed one door open and stepped aside, gesturing for Elara to enter.
"I will await you here," she said, her expression unreadable.
Taking a shaky breath, Elara stepped over the threshold.
The room was a library. But it was like no library she had ever seen. It was vast, with ceilings that soared into shadowy heights. Bookshelves carved from the same dark wood as the doors reached up to the ceiling, so high that rolling ladders were needed to access the upper levels. Ladders that looked disturbingly similar to the one she had been on back in Blackwood. A bitter coincidence.
But it was the contents that stole her breath. The books were bound in leather, metal, and what looked like scaled hide. Some were chained to the shelves. Others pulsed with a faint, internal light. And in the center of the room, sunlight—actual, warm, golden sunlight—poured through an enormous, domed glass ceiling, illuminating a sitting area of plush chairs and low tables.
And there, standing by a shelf with his back to her, was Kaelen.
He was not wearing the regal clothes from the throne room. Today he was dressed in simple, dark trousers and a loose white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It made him look almost… human. Almost. The sheer scale of his presence still filled the room, a silent pressure that made the air feel thin.
He held a massive, ancient-looking tome bound in what appeared to be black dragonhide. He didn't turn as she entered, but she knew he was aware of her. His stillness was that of a predator sensing a vibration in the air.
"You are familiar with these?" he asked, his voice a low rumble that seemed to resonate with the thousands of books. He finally turned, and those molten amber eyes pinned her in the shaft of sunlight. He gestured vaguely with the book at the vast collection.
Elara's mouth was dry. She swallowed, forcing her voice to work. "B-books? Yes. I was a librarian."
"A librarian," he repeated, as if testing the taste of the word. He placed the heavy tome on a table with a soft thump that echoed in the quiet room. "A keeper of stories. Of knowledge. A fitting profession for a creature of your… fragility. Knowledge is a weapon that does not require strength to wield."
He took a step toward her, and Elara instinctively took a step back, her shoulder brushing against a bookshelf. A faint shhhff of leather on wood sounded.
He stopped, his head tilting. A flicker of that same perplexed expression from the day before crossed his features. "Why do you retreat? I have given you no reason to fear me today."
The absurdity of the statement was so vast it momentarily overrode her fear. "You haven't—?" she began, her voice rising in disbelief. "You had your guards threaten to 'remove' me! You called me a 'creature' and 'filth'! You haven't given me a reason?"
He listened to her outburst, his expression unchanging. When she finished, he was silent for a long moment. "I did not allow them to kill you," he said, as if this were the most logical and complete answer in the world. "I provided you with shelter. Sustenance. Garments. I have even brought you to my private collection." He gestured around the magnificent library. "These are reasons not to fear. They are acts of… provision."
Elara could only stare at him. His morality was utterly alien. Not killing her was considered an act of kindness. Providing basic necessities was a grand gesture. How did one even argue with that?
"Where I come from," she said carefully, choosing her words like stepping on unknown stones in a dark river, "not harming someone is the baseline. It's not considered a gift."
"Your world must be very simple," he remarked, not with malice, but with genuine curiosity. He closed the distance between them in two silent strides. He was so close now she could see the individual flecks of gold in his amber eyes, smell the scent of old parchment and cold, clean night air that clung to him. "Here, life is a currency. Survival is a prize. I have invested currency in you. I have granted you survival. Therefore, you are mine to… understand."
He reached out, and Elara froze. But he didn't touch her. Instead, his fingers hovered near a strand of her hair that had come loose from its messy braid. He didn't touch it, merely observing its texture, its color, as a scientist might study a new species of insect.
"You are a paradox," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "You break so easily. A strong wind could snap you. A fall from that ladder would have ended you." He finally lowered his hand, his gaze intense and searching. "And yet, you do not break. You question me. You feel fear, but it does not paralyze you. It makes you… leak, and then it makes you fight. How?"
"It's called having a spirit," Elara whispered, her voice trembling despite her best efforts.
"Spirit," he repeated the word, tasting it. "A fascinating concept. An intangible force that grants resilience to the fragile." His eyes narrowed slightly. "I have more questions."
He moved away from her, towards a large table scattered with maps and scrolls. "Come here."
It was not a request. Heart still pounding, Elara forced her feet to move. She stood on the opposite side of the table, the sunlight between them.
He unrolled a scroll. It wasn't a map of a place she recognized. The continents were all wrong, the script flowing and alien. "The mechanism of your arrival. Describe it."
She did, haltingly. The sound, the light, the feeling of falling sideways.
He listened intently, his fingers tracing a symbol on the map she couldn't understand. "A rift. Unstable. Untraceable. Not a sanctioned portal." He looked up at her. "You were aimed. Like an arrow. The question is, by whom? And why?"
The way he said it made it sound like she was a weapon that had been fired at him.
"I'm not an arrow," she said, a spark of defiance igniting again. "I'm a person. I didn't ask for this."
"What you asked for is irrelevant," he stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "You are here. The 'why' is the only thing that matters now." He rolled the scroll back up with a definitive thwump. "You will remain here. In the library."
Elara blinked. "Here?"
"It is a place of knowledge. You are a keeper of knowledge. It is a suitable environment for you. You will not… deteriorate here." He said it as if he were placing a delicate plant in the correct soil. "You may look at any book that does not glow. Do not touch the ones that do. The consequences would be… messy."
And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving her standing alone in the vast, sunlit library. The door closed behind him with a soft but final click.
He had not threatened her. He had not shouted. He had simply dissected her, studied her, and placed her in a new, more interesting jar. The King's curiosity was a weight more terrifying than his wrath. Because his wrath was simple. His curiosity was a maze, and she was trapped in the center of it, unsure of the rules, and certain that the minotaur waiting for her was a wolf in king's clothing.