Page 133 of Of Blood and Banes
My palms grow sweatier, my fingers weakening. If I weren’t wearing Marge’s gloves, I would have instantly slipped.
“I will…break…down…these…walls…”Daeja grunts, followed by thuds as if she’s trying to shoulder her way through a door.
“Don’t! You break them, you risk the room collapsing!”
“Kat, jump to me!” Cole calls.
Breathing out of my mouth, I glance down behind me. Cole’s arms are outstretched to me. Fifteen feet down. Maybe a little less. But enough of a fall that all of us are nervous it might lead to a broken ankle. Or worse.
“Fall! I’ll catch you!” Cole pleads. “Trust me!”
Sucking in a quick breath, I let go of the shelf. And fall back. The rows and rows of empty shelves zip past me, until my backhits something solid. Cole grunts and wraps me in his arms. The two of us fall back until a tremor works its way through his body and out of mine.
I curl up and flop onto the floor next to Cole. “Are you alright?”
His eyes are closed, teeth clenched as he’s lying on his back. The tile beneath him is cracked. He blows out a tight breath through his lips and inches up onto his forearms. “Yeah…I think so.”
I jerk forward to slide my hand behind his back to help him up.
“I see you trust him more than you did me the first time we flew.”
I toss Daeja a look.“That was also at double the height.”
“Over water,”she retorts.
“Are you hurt?” Cole whispers, his fingers brushing the tips of mine.
Marge taps her staff to get our attention and breaks the lingering gaze between us. “You broke her fall. Any broken bones I’m sure she would have felt by now.”
Cole gets up first, the tension in his jaw and posture telling me he’ll be feeling that one for the next few days. He offers me a hand and helps me rise.
“What did you find?” Marge asks.
I fish out the page from my waistband. Then flip it over, only to find both sides are blank.
Marge rolls her eyes, and I sigh. Cole silently asks to look at it, and with my permission, he folds it and pockets it.
“Can you pass along to A’nala and Nadja that we’ve found the library, but nothing else?”I ask Daeja as the three of us exit the library.
“Too embarrassed to admit you almost fell to your death for a blank piece of paper?”
“…Don’t sound so concerned.”
She nudges me with her muzzle as we close the door to the library. Sniffing at me and assessing me in her own way. If I felt pain, though, she would have likely already felt it.
She nods, then tilts her muzzle to the sky, before turning her attention back to me moments later.“A’nala says they’re still searching the kitchens, though it sounds like they don’t have much hope in finding anything. Nadja reports Bristol, Archie, and Melaina are still searching the northern quarter. They’ve found the King and Queen’s rooms but haven’t found anything yet to garner excitement.”
Marge hobbles over to the next door farther down, attempting to twist the handle before stepping back and prodding it with the end of her staff. Cole joins her, twisting the handle and opening it with ease.
Marge narrows her eyes at him. “I must have shaken some of the dust loose.”
“Or maybe your muscles are loose.”
I smack Daeja’s shoulder playfully with a snort, even if Marge can’t hear it.
Cole nods at Marge, fighting a small smile. “Definitely.”
The three of us enter the room, Daeja standing guard outside. A humming sizzles underneath the marbled floors. A massive set of three windows, sparkling with dusty, colorful stained glass, stretch above us to the beamed ceilings at least a hundred feet high. Streaks of color bounce off the floor and warm the room in a muted collision of light and color. In front of the windows are a set of shallow steps dressed in thick carpeting.
