“I’m not going to keep you from your assignments.”
“You already have,” Char said and glanced at the door. “We should probably close that. I don’t want Master Agnew to realize I have you in here.”
“What would he say if he realized you had some woman inside of the outpost?”
“You aren’t just some woman, are you?”
“I suppose not.”
“You’re Jayna Aguelon, sorceress.”
She laughed softly, closing the door and locking herself in with Char. “I’m not so much a sorceress.”
“No. You’re something else.” Char watched her for a moment before tearing his gaze away and looking around at the books. “Now for us to figure out where we might find what you’re looking for.” He shrugged. “I can’t say what we might find here, and I can’t tell you whether there’s anything you’re looking for here, but I can help.”
“That’s all I’m asking for,” she said.
“You’re asking for more than that,” he said.
“I wasn’t. But . . .” She shrugged. “If you think we might find something that would help me with other aspects of what I’m doing in the city, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”
“You have been opposed to it,” Char said. “I’ve tried to offer you information about your friend, but you haven’t wanted to know anything about her.”
“That might have changed,” Jayna said softly.
“Why?”
Jayna forced a smile. “I don’t want to go into it now, but let’s just say that I think I’ve learned something about her.”
Char watched her for a long moment before shaking his head. “I don’t know where we’re going to find what you’re looking for, but if it’s going to be anywhere within the outpost, it’s going to be here. Unfortunately, nothing here is organized all that well, so it’s going to take time.” He glanced over to her. “You have some time, don’t you?”
Jayna took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Did she?
There was something going on. Dark magic. Someone hunting sorcerers, or dark magic users. A dark sorcerer trying to instigate something in the city and get the dular agitated. The enchantments made to look like the Ashara were involved in all of it.
And given what had happened, Jayna felt that figuring out whether the Ashara were truly involved was the most pressing need. She needed to help Eva understand herself and whether there was anything for her to be concerned about when it came to all of this.
“I have time, but do you?”
“For you, I always make time.”
He held her gaze then looked away, and Jayna felt a stirring of guilt and regret mixed with a bit of longing. She wasn’t sure how to handle these emotions, or how to react to them.
She and Char had always been friends, from the moment they had come to the Academy. They were never more than that—other than one late night where they had kissed. They had both wanted only friendship.
But the way Char had looked at her just now . . .
She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t have time for those sorts of emotions, not with everything that was going on around her. But every so often, she found herself casting a glance in Char’s direction, wondering what things might have been like had she found a way to remain in the Academy. They could’ve come to the outpost together. They could’ve trained together. They could have been together.
Now, given what she had done, the way she had pursued power and the reason behind it, they would never be.
It was one more thing dark magic had stripped from her.
15
Many of the books in the library were old, some of them impossibly so. She had to pull out each book one by one and look at the cover before shoving it back into the shelving. There was something almost cozy about the library. Maybe it was just that she was surrounded by books again, something she had not had the luxury of since leaving the Academy. Or perhaps it was just working with Char, and the reminder of what her life might have been like had she remained.
“It would help if these were organized in some way,” Jayna said.
The air inside of the room had grown hot and even more humid than usual; she wished the sorcerers had enchanted it in a way that would have regulated the temperature a bit more.
That wasn’t to say that there wasn’t some sort of preservation spell placed upon the library. Knowing what she did about the library at the Academy, and the way the sorcerers protected the books there, she knew there would be something in place. She just didn’t have any way of cooling herself. There were no windows. No airflow. It was simply hot and still. Sweat streamed off her brow, and she wiped it away, turning back to Char.
“I’m sorry our way of organizing things doesn’t satisfy you,” Char said.
“This isn’t your way of organizing things. Not at all. This is somebody else’s.”
“Fine. It’s not mine, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
Jayna just chuckled. “It doesn’t? I would’ve thought that a lack of organization was wrong—and that this would’ve bothered you a lot more than it seems to.”
“I’ve learned to deal with it. I’ve learned to deal with a lot of things,” he said.
Jayna arched a brow at him. “Would you stop?”
“Only if you stop.”
“I’m just telling you that I’m having a hard time trying to find anything here other than the history of Nelar.” She pushed another book back into place after having barely glanced at the cover. “Not that the history of Nelar is altogether uninteresting. Given what I’ve learned, I imagine that everything we might find here would be incredibly intriguing, but I don’t know if that’s how I want to spend my time searching.”
“You’re looking for something on the founding of the Society. Maybe there’s something in the history of Nelar that could reveal that to you.”
“Only if the Society was founded here,” Jayna said.
She paused, holding on to one book. It was a little thinner than some of the others, and the lettering embossed on the cover didn’t give her any hint as to what it was. She had to pull it fully off the shelf, flip it open, and skim the contents long enough to take in what was there before she realized that it was simply an inventory of supplies found within the outpost.
She pushed it back in irritation—one more book that seemed out of place and had no logic behind why it was here, or what purpose they had in keeping it here.
Why not organize this section?
“Could the Society have been founded in Nelar?”
Char glanced over to her. Sweat streamed down his brow, though he didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Maybe he had grown accustomed to it during his time at the outpost, but he was wearing the heavy robes of the Society, much more than Jayna’s jacket and pants, and she was still hot.
“Have you forgotten so much of what you learned at the Academy?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything I learned there,” she said.
“You must have. Otherwise, you would’ve remembered that the Society was founded in Yolith.”