“That’s the mer’s story to tell.”
“But why do you know this? How do you have this collection?”
“I’ll refrain from making the comparison to a dog with a bone.” Jesiba closed her laptop with a soft click. Interlaced her fingers and set them upon the computer. “Quinlan knew when to keep her mouth shut, you know. She never asked why I have these books, why I have the Archesian amulets that the Parthos priestesses wore.”
Ithan’s mouth dried out. He whispered, “What—who are you?”
Jesiba burst out laughing, and several of the books on the shelf shuddered. Ithan was barely breathing as Jesiba snapped her fingers.
Her short hair flowed out—down into long, curling tresses that softened her face. Her makeup washed away, revealing features that somehow seemed younger … more innocent.
It was Jesiba, yet it wasn’t. It was Jesiba, as if she’d been trapped in the bloom of youth. Of innocence. But her voice was as jaded as he’d always heard it as she said, “Lest you think me lying … This is the state I will always revert to—can revert to, at a mere wish.”
“So you’re … able to do magical makeovers?”
She didn’t smile. “No. I was cursed by a demon. By a prince who intercepted my ship and the books on it.”
Ithan’s heart thundered.
“We had almost reached the Haldren Sea when Apollion found the Griffin.” Her voice was flat. “He’d heard about the doomed stand at Parthos, and the ships, and the priestesses burned with their books. He was curious about what might be so valuable to the humans that we were willing to die for it. He didn’t understand when I told him it was no power beyond knowledge—no weapon beyond learning.” Her smile turned bitter. “He refused to believe me. And cursed me for my impudence in denying him the truth.”
Ithan swallowed hard. “What kind of a curse?”
She gestured to her longer hair, her softer face. “To live, unchanging, until I showed him the true power of the books,” she said simply. “He still believes they’re a weapon, and that I’ll one day grow tired enough of living that I’ll hand them over and reveal all their supposed secret weapons.”
“But … I thought you were a witch.”
She shrugged. “I was, for a time. How do you categorize a human woman who stops aging? Who always reverts to the same age, the same physical condition as she was when she was cursed? I’d cherished my years with my fellow priestesses at Parthos. When the witch-dynasties rose, I thought I might find similar companionship with them. A home.”
“You … you were a priestess at Parthos?”
She nodded. “Priestess, witch … and now sorceress.”
“But if you were human, where’d your magic come from?” She’d said Apollion granted her long life, not power.
Her gray eyes darkened like the stormy sea she’d sailed across long ago. “When Apollion found my ship, he was ripe with power. He’d just consumed Sirius. I don’t think he intended it, but when his magic … touched me, something transferred over.”
From the way she said touched, Ithan knew exactly how she viewed what he’d done to her.
“It took me a while to realize I had powers beyond the stasis of eternal youth,” she said blandly. “And fortunately, I’ve had fifteen thousand years to master them. To let them become part of me, take on a life of their own, as the books did.”
Horror sluiced through him. “Do you want to … start aging again?”
It was a dangerously personal question, but to his surprise, she answered. “Not yet,” Jesiba said a shade quietly. “Not until it’s time.”
“For what?” he dared ask.
She looked over a shoulder at the small library, at the feisty book that had at last simmered down, as if sulking. “For a world to emerge where these books will be truly safe at last.”
39
Bryce found the Autumn King in his study, his red hair aglow in the morning light. Contemplating the Starsword and Truth-Teller on his desk.
What she’d said the other night must have struck a nerve, then. Good.
“So close,” she purred as she shut the door and approached the desk, “but so far. So unworthy.”
Flames danced in his eyes. “What is it you want, girl?”
She swept around the desk to stand beside his chair, peering at the weapons from his angle. He frowned, as if her mere proximity was distasteful. “Did my mom ever tell you what happened that night she was trying to get me to safety? When your goons caught up to her and Randall?”