He took my hand, placing it against his chest so I could feel the powerful thrum of his heart. “I’m right here, Blue. Don’t get lost in some imagined future that might never come to pass. Right now is all we have, so let that be all that concerns us.”
He leaned forward, kissing me deep and slow with the taste of a better future on his lips. One where we were happy, where we loved each other from the core of our beings to the very edges of the universe. And it filled me with so much joy, that I remained there, holding onto it and making a silent vow to myself that I would fight for that future with everything I had.
I breathed a sigh of relief, resting my forehead to his for a moment before we broke apart and he turned back to the book. We sat quietly for a while, reading through the pages and though I was fascinated by the descriptions of the Phoenixes of old, we found nothing of use and I was just on the verge of suggesting we look at another book when Orion turned the page and a spell was laid out in front of us.
The power of the Phoenix tribe.
It is fabled that the flames of the Phoenix live in all of its Order, meaning the same fire burns in one Phoenix to the next. The result of this is a powerful energy which can be made stronger by the addition of one or more Phoenix flames.
This power sharing is also power enhancing, meaning the gifts of their kind can be amplified together. This technique could be used to fight off deadly Fae diseases or even break curses.
“Fuck yes,” Orion whooped, smacking the table and a smile split across my face.
“Tory,” I breathed.
“The two of you can fight it off together.” Orion beamed so bright his dimple popped out on his right cheek. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”
“Because we’re idiots,” I laughed and threw myself at Orion, hugging him as his solid arms folded so tight around me, I almost couldn’t breathe.
When we’d read the page back to back and concluded Tory and I needed to try burning the curse away one day at a time until it eventually succumbed to our combined flames, Orion closed the book and got to his feet.
“Let’s get back to The Burrows,” he said. “You can start straight away.”
I got to my feet too, heading over to the exit to ring the bell for Arnold with a much better idea in mind. “We’re in the Library of the Lost, we can spare a little bit of time to explore.”
Orion shot over to me, a glimmer of his old self back in his eyes as he took in those words. “Are you sure?”
“The curse could take weeks to burn through,” I said. “It’s not gonna make any difference if we spend a couple of hours here.”
Orion’s face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning and I grinned at him, bouncing on my toes as excitement poured through me too. “We deserve a bit of fun.”
At the word fun, a beast’s grin pulled at his mouth and his fangs glinted at me, making my stomach swirl with butterflies.
Arnold appeared with a loud moo, startling the hell out of me and I cursed him as he led us back into the tunnels and out of the labyrinth. We returned to the main library through the large doors and the two of us immediately darted off down a set of narrow bookcases where golden butterflies were dancing in the air and red flowers trailed above us on vines, blooming then closing again.
The magic in this place was surreal and I was soon lost in a maze of stacks, each turn making me gasp at the beauty of the place. There were water fountains that bubbled with tiny transparent dolphins leaping out of the water before swimming away into their depths, whole sections where grass grew up around our knees and we had to wade through it towards giant toadstools where we could climb up ladders and sit on their cushy surfaces. Another area had a treehouse with hidden doors in the trunk where books were nestled among nests of moss and twigs. Owls even hooted in the trees and an eagle came down to watch us as we lazed in a giant hammock hanging between two of the huge branches, both of us coiled together as we read a mortal book about a pair of twin girls, one of whom had been claimed by the royal Vampires who’d taken over New York City and the other had teamed up with the last slayer on earth who happened to be hot as hell.
A group of Sphinxes plucked books off of the shelves and lay down in the grass, looking enraptured while Orion murmured to me that their kind could step right into the pages of a story. They didn’t just see it in their head, they lived every word, the whole thing playing out in their minds as if they were the main character, and that sounded pretty awesome. It must have been incredible to experience your favourite books first hand, to fall so deeply between the pages that it seemed as if those worlds really existed.