Looking back on it, Blue wasn't certain why she'd allowed herself to get mixed up in this business. Although Zi had asked for her help in acquiring the spellbook from Vana Vale, Blue had not truly anticipated entering the famous fairy city. Under the cover of night as they were, her heart was in her throat as she followed after Fae in the shadow of the great stone wall that surrounded the city. The sight of it in the daylight had sent anger surging through her, but the presence of it now was chilling.
Her hood was drawn, as Fae had instructed her, to hide her ears from view. Really, it should have been Zi sneaking in with Fae, but the young sorceress was not exactly subtle and a covert mission was too delicate to risk. So it was Blue who would, with Fae's help, sneak into the city, locate the library and steal the spellbook that Zi needed.
Stealing was not usually Blue's sort of thing. People assumed her a thief frequently, but her parents had raised her better than that. However, after hearing Fae's account of her own treatment by the residence of Vana Vale, she felt less guilty about relieving them of one of their many possessions for someone else's benefit. It wasn't the stealing that had her rattled. It was something else, something that she was ashamed of, something she should have been able to overcome. It was fear.
Many people in the realm were suspicious of nelfkins, and Blue had gotten used to that over the years. It made her angry but it hardly ever scared her. Most folks were all bark and no bite, she thought. But fairies weren't most folks. She'd heard stories all her life of what fairies did to nelfkins on the rare occasion that the two peoples crossed paths. The monster under every nelfkin child's bed was a fairy.
The word fairy itself came from the word fear. Blue mused on this in silence, a step behind Fae, when they came up to a wooden door in the wall. Fae raised her right hand in a fist and rapped on the door.
When the guard peered out at them, he ushered them inside without much thought before thinking to give them a closer look. Fae had said this would happen. The hope was that the guard would let them pass into the city without objection or further inspection, thinking them a fairy woman and her child. It was not common for fairies to be outside of the walls at this hour but the guard at this gate was young, Fae said, and less inclined to ask prying questions.
Fae knew a lot of things about this city, considering she'd been cast out of it. Blue had liked her from the start, but still found her physical appearance somewhat intimidating. She had a fairy's sharp features, if not their cruel nature. Her instincts told Blue to stay away from her.
The young guard gave them a second look and confusion crossed his face when he got a closer look at Fae. The fairy reacted immediately and struck the guard down with the blow from the hilt of her sword to the back of his head. He crumpled, unconscious, and Fae relieved him of his own sword, which she handed to Blue.
“I feel like a rat entering a maze,” Blue muttered under her breath as she clumsily buckled the sword belt around her waist. In order to keep it on her hips, she had to buckle it on the very last notch.
“Rats don't know about the trap waiting for them in the center,” Fae replied. “You're with me, and I know the trap very well. Just follow my lead.”
They stole across the dark city quietly. The library was hardly the most impressive building within the confines of the wall, but it was nothing to be sneezed at either. Blue had never seen buildings so grand, though they were not what Blue would consider beautiful. The library could have fit her mother's house inside it many times over.
Within the city, there were not many guards. The fairies seemed assured of their wall's defense, and considering how easy it had been for Fae and Blue to sneak past it, Blue marveled at how the city avoided being robbed more often. Perhaps their reputations afforded them more defense than even Blue would have guessed.
Nonetheless, they kept to the shadows to avoid being seen by anyone who might happen to be out. When they climbed the stone steps of the library, they kept their tread light but were quick about it. They were prepared for a guard or a locked door, but when they reached the entrance to the library, even Fae was surprised to find the door slightly ajar, as though someone had just gone through it.
They entered the library with trepidation, now expecting to meet someone in their search for the spellbook Zi had specified. Blue nearly gasped when she took in the sheer volume of books and scrolls all around them. She had never seen anything like it in her lifetime, nor could she have ever dreamed that such a thing might exist. Part of her felt instantly at home regarding the rows of shelved, cataloged literature. Her fingers itched to touch the aging parchment of every volume she could see.
Against her chest, the blue crystal from her father felt vaguely warm.
“A spellbook that's not fairy magic wouldn't be here in the main part of the library,” Fae explained, careful to keep her voice to a whisper. “Follow me, do not let your eyes off me for a second. This place is covered with magic and you'll get confused if you don't stay focused on me.”
Blue already felt dazed, but she did as Fae instructed, following close behind her and doing her best to keep her gaze locked on Fae's back.
Gilded letters on leather bound spines caught her eye and she paused long enough to read a fanciful title – Etiquette of the Highborn. She scoffed to herself and turned her gaze back to Fae, but found herself surrounded by huge shelves, filled with books, but with Fae nowhere to be found.
“Damn it,” she hissed to herself. She'd only looked away for a moment, surely Fae was just in the next row of shelves over. Blue ran to the end of the row she was currently in, hoping to catch up with the fairy, and then to the next row and so on and so forth, until at length she realized she was hopelessly lost inside the library and had no idea how to even get back out.
The crystal was getting too hot against her skin for comfort, so she drew it out from under her shirt and let it rest against fabric instead. She noticed that it was glowing, softly. Since the first day she had touched the crystal, it had never glowed but once. Now, it was glowing, as though there was something in this place that it was responding to.
Quite by accident, she eventually found herself faced with another door, this one also ajar. This time, Blue wondered if Fae was the one who'd gone through it and left it open for her. There was no way of knowing for sure but going through the door made more sense than wandering brainlessly around the main room, where Fae had expressly said she did not believe the spellbook would be kept.
She tried to walk quietly, as Fae had done, but in this huge building with its tall ceiling, her footsteps seemed to echo all around her. It was darker within this part of the library, not as many windows to let the moonlight in, she supposed.
She became of a whispering voice, panicked, somewhere up ahead of her. She followed it, straining to make out what the person was saying. She heard the sound of books hitting the floor, and she ducked into a row of shelves, her heart beating faster as another's footsteps, clacking against the stone floor, came closer.
“Where are you?” a distressed voice asked from the next row over. It sounded like the voice of a man. “Please, I'm trying. My head...”
The owner of the voice moaned, as though in pain. More books hit the floor. Blue flinched when she realized how close the person was to her.
She looked to the source of the noise and her eyes focused on a book just to her right. The runes embossed on the spine, she realized, were the same as the runes Zi had shown to her. It was the book she'd been sent after, sitting right in front of her as though it had merely been waiting for her, and she reached out and pulled it free without thinking.
Through the empty space in the shelf, she caught sight of another person, peering at her from the other side.
At first, she nearly laughed with relief, thinking the person looking back at her was Fae. But a second look revealed the truth. The other person's features were decidedly more masculine than Fae's, though still refined and possessed of an almost ethereal beauty. Their eyes were shockingly blue instead of black and the person's hair was cut short.
“Oh shit,” she breathed when she realized she was looking into the face of a fairy man.
The fairy looked back at her with bewilderment. Apparently, he hadn't been expecting to find someone in the bookshelves, though from the way she'd heard him going on, he had seemed to be looking for another person.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” he demanded, his voice loud now and filling up the room. Blue cringed back from the sound, clinging to the spellbook. She'd done it now. She'd located Zi's damned book, only to be caught by a fairy of Vana Vale.
When she did not immediately answer, the fairy's face twisted into a snarl. He opened his mouth to speak again, but then moaned once more and pressed his palm against his right temple as though his head was aching.
He reached out and knocked more books off the shelf, clearing the finely polished surface and then blindly mapping it with his hands while he clenched his eyes shut against the headache he seemed to be plagued by.
Blue saw his fingers stumble across a little trap door with the shelf's seams. A small compartment opened up and something dropped from it into the fairy's waiting hands. The item, a red stone on a fine, gold chain began to glow, so bright that Blue was obliged to look away from it.
The fairy's shock was visible on his face as he took in the crystal, his hands trembling so badly that Blue feared he would drop it.
Then he was looking at her again, his anger returning, and once again he spat out, “who the fuck are you?”
Another voice answered him instead of Blue.
“She is none of your concern,” Blue heard Fae speak and she saw the tip of Fae's sword pressed against the fairy man's pale neck. “I'm afraid you're going to have to give me that crystal, brother.”
TBC
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