Page 80 of Lady of Shadows

CHAPTER 24

CALLAN

“Do you spend your entire day in here?” Scarlett asked, plopping a small stack of books onto the table.

Callan looked up, a little surprised. They had met in the library nearly every day in the weeks that had followed the Courtyard incident. The surprise was not that she was here, but that she was here so early in the day. Normally, she met him in training clothes later in the afternoon. She had explained she trained with Eliza in the mornings and had magic lessons with Sorin after lunch, so they had begun spending a couple hours before dinner together researching in the library. She wasn’t in training clothes today, though, either. She wore gray fitted pants with a soft blue sweater and a black cloak around her shoulders. Her hair was out of its usual braid and flowed down and around her shoulders.

She sank into the chair across from him, pulling a pear from her cloak pocket and taking a bite. “Are you sure they allow food in here?” he asked her with a raised brow.

“It’s a pear, Callan, not a four course meal,” she answered, pulling another from her pocket and tossing it to him.

He caught it with ease as he said, “You are early today.”

“Sorin has a meeting this afternoon with Talwyn so our magic lesson was canceled today,” she answered tightly.

“Talwyn is coming here?” Callan asked, stiffening.

“I do not know where they are meeting.” She pulled the book from the top of her stack and flipped the cover open.

“That would probably explain the three extra guards trailing me today,” he grumbled, returning to his own book before him.

“More than likely,” she said with a smile.

“I am surprised he does not have a dozen guards with you,” Callan muttered under his breath.

Scarlett looked up from her book and gave him an impish grin. “Oh, he does. They’re getting me more books.”

“Your guards are looking for books?”

“Levels below us,” she answered with a wink. “They were getting on my nerves.”

“Some guards,” Callan said with a huff.

“Maybe they learned from Finn and Sloan,” she crooned.

He looked up from his book and gave her an unimpressed smirk. She was staring at her own book, her hair falling like a silky sheet over her shoulder. He’d always loved her hair down, out of the braid that meant she was all business. She’d always seemed more relaxed when her hair was down.

He was about to comment on it when he noticed the book she was reading. “You can read that?”

She brought her eyes to his. They were pure icy blue today, made even bluer by the pale blue of her sweater. “I can. It is the Old Language of the Fae.”

“You learned it that quickly? I have been studying it here and there and find it incredibly complicated.”

“Apparently I was born knowing it,” she said with a shrug.

“Are all Fae born knowing the Old Language, then?”

“No. Only some,” she said, returning her eyes to the book.

“The most powerful ones,” he supplied.

“I suppose so,” she replied shortly.

He chose to take the strong hint in her tone and drop the subject. They sat together in silence for the next half hour, each left to their own books,when she sat back, tapping her fingers on the table. “Have you learned any more about what Deimas and Esmeray supposedly wanted across the sea? What supposedly set off the Great War?”

“That is incredibly random,” Callan said, sitting back in his own chair.

“Just something I’ve been thinking about. I mean, it’d have to be pretty big if they went towarover it.” She began twirling a piece of her silver hair around her finger absent-mindedly while her shadows curled around her arms.

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