The book in my hand has turned into a massive, hissing serpent, so big I can barely keep my hands around it. I’m desperate to get away from those fangs and that darting tongue, but I think of Jas and hold it tighter. I knew the book could shape-shift. I should have considered what form it might take when I tried to steal it.
It snaps at my face, but I refuse to loosen my grip. It’s a book. Just a book. A book cannot hurt you.
Then it strikes. Pain is like a gong echoing through me as its teeth sink into my shoulder. Every vein in my arm burns as its venom pumps through me.
The library doors fly open, and light pours from the ceiling as half a dozen sentinels rush toward me. I must have triggered a silent alarm.
“Drop the book!” a sentinel calls as he draws his sword.
The serpent releases its massive jaws from my shoulder, and if possible, the skin throbs more than before. I block out the pain and loop the creature around my neck, lunging for the shadows, willing myself to disappear, but even in the rows of darkness between the stacks, my magic fails me.
I turn back, ready to run, and find myself face to face with the tip of a sword.
“Drop the book now, milady.”
I can see the confusion in the sentinel’s face. He’s been commanded to protect me by his prince, no doubt, and commanded to protect the book by his queen.
“I can’t.” I remember what it felt like to cast a room in darkness with Finn at my side, and I conjure that feeling. I ignore the blinding pain in my shoulder and focus on darkness. On the cool soothing of pitch-black night.
The room goes dark, and the sentinels shout in confusion. Not even moonlight from the skylights makes it through my shield of darkness.
I run in the direction of the windows, and suddenly I’m free-falling. All I can do is keep my hands around the serpent and soften my knees. My jaw clacks and my head jerks back as I land in the sand, but I ignore the pain and run away from the palace as fast as I can, leaving chaos in the castle behind me.
Once the ocean laps at my feet, the serpent shifts in my grasp. I grip tighter, but it’s no longer looped around my neck.
A little boy tugs on my hand. He has silver eyes and dark hair—a child of the shadow court. Tears stream down his face, and I feel the compulsion to kneel before him and hug away his sorrow. “Take me home, Fire Girl. Please take me home.” He clutches his chest with his free hand, and blood oozes between his fingers. “You’re killing me.”
The book. This is the book. Do not let it manipulate you.
Easier said than done when the throbbing in my shoulder proves it isn’t just anything. I snap a thread on my goblin bracelet. I speak before Bakken is fully corporeal. “Take me to the Unseelie Court.”
“I told you I cannot save you from mortal peril.”
Sentries storm the beach, coming straight at me, and I catch sight of Sebastian among them. I uncoil my power from deep within me and throw a blanket of darkness over them, trapping them. “What mortal peril?”
The goblin smirks. “Payment, Fire Girl.”
The boy is bloody and growing paler by the minute. “She’s killing me,” he sobs.
I don’t dare let go, but I know Bakken won’t do anything without payment, so I grab a lock of hair with my free hand. “Cut it.”
With a smile, he does. The sentries are breaking free from my darkness, but then we’re gone, and I’m standing before the king. In my grasp, not the hand of a little boy, but a heavy, ancient book.
The king’s silver eyes go wide with shock and pleasure, and I thrust it at him. “Take it.”
He retrieves it on a magic breeze and strokes the cover. His eyes float closed, and he pulls in a deep breath. His skin glows, and I can feel the power reverberating from him. Did I look like that when I touched it?
“Let’s drink,” he says. He snaps his fingers, the book disappears, and suddenly he’s holding a bottle of wine and there’s a glass in my hand. He smiles at me as he fills both glasses, and he hoists his in the air. “To my beautiful thief.”
With shaking hands and a throbbing shoulder, I tap my glass to his, but I don’t drink. My adrenaline is waning.
“Oh come now. You know I won’t tell you the next relic until you drink with me. It’s our tradition.”
Unwilling to play games, I drain half the glass in one pull. “Tell me the third item you want. I need to get back to Sebastian.” Get back—and what? The Serenity Palace sentinels saw me with the book. Even if that wasn’t Sebastian I spotted running toward me on the beach, I’m sure his guard has filled him in by now. I bow my head, remembering the way he looked at me as he made love to me last night. The grief on his face after he heard the Banshee sing my name. The sincerity in his eyes when he spoke of his mother.