Page 169 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

Thalon whipped his head to look at them. “Nothing?” His own plate shoved into Garrik’s chest, and he grabbed the empty one out of Garrik’s hand. “Happy Birthday, brother!” he shouted and slapped Garrik on the shoulder. “Camp sends their blessings.” Palm stretched wide, Thalon gestured across the table.

Beaming, Alora turned to Garrik. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Fire crackled behind where Jade and Eldacar sat eating, covering up the low growl reverberating from their High Prince. Garrik placed the plate on the wooden table and reached for a tankard on the edge. Something had changed in him. His eyes, a bit duller, his visage not of anyone who would be celebrating—but of some distant pain.

He stared into the bottom of his drink. That gaze didn’t shift, like the contents were revealing a secret he couldn’t turn away from.

“I tell them every year this is of no importance, and every year they decide to disobey me.”

Garrik threw the tankard to his lips, emptied it, and settled it on the table. He shifted on his feet, headed toward his tent entrance, and stopped at the threshold, peering over his shoulder.

“Eat. We move out in two hours. Thalon, find me when you are finished,” he commanded before letting the darkness of his tent swallow him inside.

“Males.” Jade rolled her eyes and continued sharpening a jagged sword in her lap, its twin laying at her feet. She rested at a safe distance from the fire, and Alora doubted she could even feel the warmth.

Face taunt and sporting a new blackening eye, Thalon’s heavy steps thumped across the dirt and grass after exiting Garrik’s tent. His golden sword stiff by his side, purple knucklesfisted the pommel. Without a single glance toward Alora and Jade, he stepped to the fire, angrily throwing a large bundle of parchments into the flames before summoning a portal, his odd shadow trailing behind in the sunlight, and disappeared inside.

Garrik stood, pushing three rings on his fingers before his arms crossed. He too had somehow obtained injuries on his face. With a busted lip, toweled by the darkness inside his tent entrance, he watched Thalon storm away. He wasn’t the same male she’d awoken to in the annulus that morning. Instead, he was twenty shades of ‘do not disturb me or face the fucking consequences.’

What happened in his tent?Alora threw a withered look at Jade, who merely shrugged as if she could read her thoughts.

The High Prince’s death glare found her sapphires before he too began to storm away, around the side of his tent. With a quick stop, he turned. That deep voice carried a lethal edge. “The war tent, five minutes.” Shadows whirled, and he was instantly gone.

Within an hour, word spread through camp. They would leave at dawn the following morning. Today, all training was optional; blades, magic, do as desired within the shield borders. Celebrations would be enjoyed throughout camp well into the night, according to Thalon. Dance, songs, displays of frivolous magic, and well wishes to their High Prince for another year of blessings would fill the day.

Alora decided that her day would be best spent amongst books. With the permission from Garrik, Jade was granted leave of her duties for the day as Alora’s shadow and would spend her time elsewhere.

The air was electrified, even inside Eldacar’s library. Through the towering shelves of books, pillars, and mounds piled on the wooden floor, she could feel it.

“You wish to dowhat?” Eldacar’s bewilderment forced him to push his glasses up with a finger.

“Yes,” was all she said, eyes gleaming at an ember in her palm, making Eldacar nervous around the aged books. “Is it possible?”

Eldacar shifted on his feet, tapping his chin in thought as he rounded a tower of piled books.

Many had been unshelved. The library grew with each town they passed through. And with every new Mystic arrival, Garrik would somehow always find his way to Eldacar with a new book or stack in hand.

Eldacar’s pointed finger traced down the bounds of leather, scraping delicately against the spines. Reading hundreds of titles on the shelves with scanning brown eyes as he walked along the lower level. They weren’t simply piles of pages and leather and ink; they were knowledge and discovery.

“I think I have just the one.” He gestured with a finger, beckoning her to wait a moment as he stumbled up the winding staircase and ran to the left on the mezzanine.

She’d spent many hours inside Eldacar’s tent, learning of her powers over the last months, and soon, she’d start to learn a new language. All her life, books had been there for her. The aging vanillin smell of parchment and leather was so pleasant she wished she could bottle it up. The perfect escape for restless nights and wondering minds after long, strenuous days of training.

One afternoon that she was given off from training to rest her sore muscles, she had escaped in here. Escaped the clanging of iron and barking orders of generals in the ring. Even escaped the crackling of fires and feet pounding into the dirt maze between canvases. And in her escape, she had questioned Eldacar, carefully roaming her enchanted eyes over the texts beforeplucking out an amethyst colored tome in the entertainment section. Fairytales. An odd choice for this library.

When she flipped through the pages, recognizing a familiar metal and leather scent, she’d asked about the library. How it was at all possible that, from the outside, a mere tent. But inside, three times larger than the canvas outside, a library sat. Eldacar had only sheepishly grinned, and his shoulders rose and head dropped low before he smiled and said,‘Garrik and his Smokeshadows graciously made it for me.’

Alora smiled at the memory as she found the winding staircase in her grasp. Winding up, up, up into the cloudy sky that cast none of its light inside to a rooftop terrace. She glimpsed Eldacar many nights sitting up with the stars, reading among them. There, he could sit at night and read not just books of magic but stories from faraway worlds. Plus, the height excited him, oddly enough. As if he could soar with owls and dragons, feeling the wind between his curly locks.

“Ah! There you are!”

“You found it?” Alora almost squealed watching Eldacar rush down the staircase.

“Now if I could only find that book on that dagger of yours.” He paused, glass-covered eyes scanning the shelves both up top and below. “But I think this one would be particularly useful to you. She’s got many secrets just for what you need.” Eldacar held the book tenderly as he tapped the red cover. “This one should be precisely what you require,” he said.

Alora’s eyes gleamed as her smile widened. Antsy hands lifted the book from him, and she began flipping through the pages.

“Would you help me?” she asked, white embers twinkled in her awestruck eyes.

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