House of Flame and Shadow: The INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER third instalment in the Crescent City series
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 2 – Chapter 38

Ithan lunged for the book that had somehow skittered for the office doorway, landing atop it with a thud that echoed through his bones.

To his dismay, the book squirmed under him, trying to wriggle for the door and the world beyond.

“Keep it down over there,” Jesiba growled above her typing.

Ithan grunted, pressing all his considerable weight onto the errant book—

“Enough,” Jesiba snapped, and the book stilled at the command in her voice.

Yet Ithan didn’t move until he was certain the book had fully obeyed its mistress. Uncurling to peer down at the blue leather-bound book, he tensed, then reached a hand for it.

But the book just lay there. Dormant. Like any other book—

It snapped for his fingers, and Ithan lunged again.

“Lehabah was much more effective—and ate far less. Where does all that food go, wolf?”

Ithan couldn’t answer as he again wrestled the book into submission, wrapping the tome in his arms. Clutching it to his chest, he eased to his feet, then stomped toward the shelf where it was supposed to have stayed while he unpacked yet another crate—

“I said enough,” Jesiba snapped again, and the book froze in Ithan’s arms. He shoved it back on the shelf before it could get away. Then gave it another shove as a fuck you.

The book shoved back, as if it’d leap off the shelf and go at him for round three, but a golden ripple of light shimmered down its spine—a barrier falling back into place. Wards to seal the magical books in. The book thudded against it—and could go no further.

Jesiba said from the desk, “I thought I’d outsmarted it with the previous ward, but let’s see it try to get through that one.”

As if in answer, the book again rattled on the shelf. Ithan flipped it off, then faced the sorceress.

He’d been working nonstop for the past day, unpacking crates, inspecting the goods, cataloging the contents, rewrapping the artifacts inside, attaching new shipping labels … Busywork, but it kept him occupied.

Kept him from thinking about the blood on his hands. The body he could only hope was indeed on ice somewhere in this subterranean warren.

He didn’t leave Roga’s office. She had food delivered from the House’s private kitchens—and if he needed to rest, she ordered him to curl up on the carpet like the dog he was.

He did, ignoring the insult, and slept deeply enough that she’d had to prod him with a foot to wake him.

He might have objected had she not been the bearer of good news: Hunt Athalar, Ruhn Danaan, and Baxian Argos had escaped from the Asteri’s dungeons during a rescue operation that had incinerated the entirety of the Spine.

The Hind had done it. Tharion and Flynn and Dec had done it. Somehow, they’d pulled it off. Relief had tightened his throat to the point of pain, even as shame for not helping them twisted his gut.

Since then, Ithan and Jesiba had spoken little. Roga had mostly been on calls with clients or off at House meetings she didn’t tell him about, but now … Ithan peered at the shelf, at the magic book again shuddering against the wards holding it in place.

“During the Summit,” Ithan said, ignoring the belligerent volume, “Micah said your books were from the Library of Parthos.” Amelie had gossiped about it afterward. “That they’re all that’s left of it.”

“Mmm,” Jesiba murmured, continuing to clack away at her keyboard.

Ithan threw himself into the chair before her desk. “I thought Parthos was a myth.”

“The books say otherwise, don’t they?”

“What’s the truth, then?”

“Not one that’s easy to swallow for Vanir.” But she stopped typing. Her eyes lifted above the computer screen to replace his.

“Amelie Ravenscroft claimed that Micah said the library held two thousand years of human knowledge before the Asteri.”

“And?” Her face revealed nothing.

He pointed to the pissed-off book. “So the humans had magic?”

She sighed through her nose. “No. The magic books here … they were supposed to be guardians of the library itself. At least, that’s what I enchanted them to do, centuries ago. To attack those who tried to steal the books, to defend them.” One such book, Ithan recalled Bryce telling him, had helped save her when she fought Micah. “But the volumes took on lives and desires of their own. They became … aware.” She glared at the misbehaving book. “And by the time I tried to unweave the spells of life on them, their existence had become too permanent to undo. So I needed monitors such as Lehabah to guard the guardians. To make sure they didn’t escape and become more of a nuisance.”

“Why not sell them?”

She gave him a withering look. “Because my spells are written in there. I’m not letting that knowledge loose in the world.” Roga had been a witch before she’d defected to the House of Flame and Shadow and called herself a sorceress instead. He could only imagine what she’d seen in her long, long life.

“So what do they say? The Parthos books?”

The clacking keys resumed. “Nothing. And everything.”

Ithan snorted. “Cryptic, as usual.”

Her typing stopped again. “They’d bore most people. Some are books on complex mathematics, entire volumes on imaginary numbers. Some are philosophical treatises. Some are plays—tragedies, comedies—and some are poetry.”

“All from human life before the Asteri?”

“A great civilization lived on Midgard long before the Asteri conquered it.” He could have sworn she sounded sad. “One that prized knowledge in all its forms. So much so that a hundred thousand humans marched at Parthos to save these books from the Asteri and Vanir who came to burn them.” She shook her head, face distant. “A world where people loved and valued books and learning so much that they were willing to die for them. Can you imagine what such a civilization was like? A hundred thousand men and women marched to defend a library—it sounds like a bad joke these days.” Her eyes blazed. “But they fought, and they died. All to buy the library priestesses enough time to smuggle the books out on ships. The Vanir armies intercepted most of them, and the priestesses were burned, their precious books used as kindling. But one ship …” Her lips curved upward. “The Griffin. It slipped through the Vanir nets. Sailed across the Haldren and found safe harbor in Valbara.”

Ithan slowly shook his head. “How do you know all this, when no one else does?”

“The mer know some of it,” she hedged. “The mer aided the Griffin across the sea, at the behest of the Ocean Queen.”

“Why?”

“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 replace 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.”