Page 93 of Kingmakers, Year One

I don’t believe for a second what Leo said about Dean using me to get close to him. Dean hasn’t asked me about Leo one time, or about any family members we might have in common. If anything, he’s avoided the topic. And I’ve caught Dean looking at me enough times to know that he’s been interested in me for a while.

No, if anything, it’s me who used him to feel better last night. And me who used him to make Leo jealous this morning. I feel guilty about that, and I don’t know how to tell Dean that it was only a moment of weakness, that he and I won’t be dating. If that’s even what he wants.

I eat the roll and one of the apples while walking over to the library tower.

I don’t even have to walk through the doors to know that the library will be empty. The weather outside is warm and balmy, and all the other students are taking the opportunity to play in the sunshine or recover from their hangover in the sea breeze.

As I ascend the spiral stairs leading up the interior of the tower, I can almost feel the weight of ten thousand books creaking and groaning over my head on their ancient shelves. The air feels thick with the thoughts of so many people long dead, their words whispering out of the pages.

I pad across the oriental rug, spotting Ms. Robin in her usual position behind the main desk, her head bent over a half-dozen unfurled architecture schematics, the ink so faded that it might as well have been written in spilled tea.

She squints down at the yellowed paper, her nose barely an inch from the page, one long, slim finger trailing under a bit of script as she tries to read a minuscule annotation.

I clear my throat so I won’t startle her.

She jumps anyway, her thick glasses sliding down her nose.

“Anna!” she squeaks. “I didn’t hear you coming up.”

“What are you working on?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She rolls up the long scroll. “Nothing interesting.”

“You’re always working on something.”

“Well . . . Ms. Robin hesitates, as if embarrassed to say. “I’m doing a dissertation on the floor plans of ancient monasteries. I have a theory about the aqueduct systems built on the Roman model . . .”

“Is that why you came to work at Kingmakers?”

“Yes,” she says. “The archives here contain maps and documents you can’t find anywhere else in the world. And they’re almost totally unstudied by mainstream academia. It’s quite tragic, actually. The wealth of knowledge here is secret, for obvious reasons. And what I’ll be allowed to publish is limited. But I’m extremely lucky to have been provided this access. It’s not easy to secure a position here. The previous librarian held this job for thirty-seven years! I don’t know if I’ll be here that long . . . but who knows. It is incredibly peaceful. I’ve never gotten so much work done.”

She smiles, showing a row of very pretty white teeth. I haven’t been this close to Ms. Robin before, and I see that what I suspected is accurate. Beneath the straggly red hair and thethick glasses and the cardigan that looks as if it were knitted by a novice, she’s quite beautiful.

“Is this your first year here, then?” I ask her.

“Yes. I started this fall, the same as you.”

“Is your family connected to Kingmakers?”

“Luther Hugo is my uncle,” she says. “He’s the one that got me the job. Only, he didn’t exactly tell me what sort of school it was. I feel stupid now, not realizing. I guess I’m not very good at picking up on hints.”

She pushes the heavy glasses up on the bridge of her nose, shaking her head at herself.

“Don’t feel bad,” I tell her. “A lot of the kids here were raised without a real idea of what their families did. Not me, but plenty of the others.”

“You always knew?” She peers at me with her head slightly tilted.

“Yes. But my mother didn’t. She thought her father was a businessman and her brother was a politician, mostly.”

“It’s themostlythat gets us,” Ms. Robin laughs.

She has a soft, mellow laugh. Ms. Robin has a strange charisma—you don’t see it at first. But the closer you get to her, the more it pulls you in.

“Anyway,” she says, “I’m sure you didn’t come here on a Sunday afternoon to hear all about me. What can I help you with?”

I tell her the book I need for my Contracts and Negotiations class, and she helps me locate it, way at the top of the tower, in one of the shelves that requires a rolling ladder to reach.

I say, “I’m surprised you know where everything is already.”

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