His eyes dance with amusement. “You know I don’t actually like leaving you, but I can’t avoid my responsibilities either.” The humor leaves his face, and his hand rubs small, gentle circles at the small of my back. “Even if our time together is limited.”
Limited because I don’t want to marry him. Limited because he needs to choose a bride by the next new moon.
I bow my head and shut my eyes against the pain of it. I never imagined my heart would ache for a faerie, yet here I am.
“I can’t have you looking so distressed on Litha. That won’t do.” Before I can appease his worries and pretend that I’m fine, he takes my arm and leads me back into the palace.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve asked so little of me in your time here. If you want to see the library, I’m going to take you to it right away.”
My heart races, and I don’t bother to hide my smile. I didn’t expect him to take me tonight. Maybe I could snag the book while everyone else is distracted by the party.
“You know,” he says as we walk, “you were reading the first time I saw that terrible closet you called a bedroom in Fairscape.”
“You remember that?” I know I remember. I hadn’t known Sebastian long and was mortified that Jas brought the handsome apprentice down to our cellar. I didn’t want him to see the reality of our lives.
“You were curled in the corner of the bed, completely absorbed in that book, as if it didn’t matter that you lived this brutal existence and had only a tiny room to call your own. It didn’t matter that you had to work so hard for everything. When you were reading, you were somewhere else. You were someone else.”
He’d noticed so much more about me than I ever realized.
“My mother taught us to read and to appreciate the power of stories,” I say. “After she left, stories were the only thing that helped Jas when she missed our mother. Stories helped both of us work through that.”
He cuts a curious look to me. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked about your sister lately.”
“I . . .” I watch my feet as we walk. Right. Since he thinks I returned the mirror, he has no way of knowing how obsessively I use it to check on her. “I guess I try not to think about it.”
“Hey.” He squeezes my hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted you to know I’m still working on it. My spies have narrowed her location down. I have soldiers heading there now. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but . . .”
I stop walking. I’m not sure when I gave up hope that Sebastian might be able to rescue her. So typical of me. “Really?”
His expression is grim. “The king is cunning. He wouldn’t have taken your sister if he didn’t believe she was valuable, so he won’t give her up easily. Though I feel like we’re closer than we’ve been before, until Jas is home safe and under my protection, everything can change in a heartbeat. He’s too powerful.”
The king is powerful. I’ve seen it for myself. Whereas I’ve never seen Finn use his powers. Is Finn’s magic suppressed somehow because he’s not on the throne where he belongs? Is that why he didn’t heal after fighting the Wild Fae traitors?
“Do the king’s powers come from the throne?”
Sebastian frowns. “The king’s powers are his own.”
“If another took the throne, would that power transfer to him?”
He shakes his head. “You’re thinking of the crown, but Mordeus hasn’t been able to find it. In fact, he can’t even sit on the throne without the crown, and until he gets the crown, he can’t tap into the power of either.”
The missing crown. Could Finn have powers but choose not to use them? Is he saving them for when he recovers the crown? None of this makes sense to me, and I know I’m missing some vital piece of information.
“Here it is.” Sebastian pushes open the tall wooden doors that lead to the queen’s library. The one I’ve already seen and explored several times.
“I’ve been to this one,” I say, going for breezy. “It really is amazing, but if you’re all about spoiling me tonight, how about taking me to a bigger one?”
He shakes his head and laughs softly. “There isn’t another—bigger or smaller. But if you love books so much, perhaps I’ll have the palace architects construct a new library wing.” His smile wavers, as if he too is thinking of how few days I have left here.