Page 52 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“A tavern?” Evar hesitated. “Isn’t that where people break barstools over each other’s heads?”

“Only in books.” Starval wiped the wetness from his mane. “Besides, we’re on a street full of bookshops. It’s going to be full of readers. How bad could it be?”

Anyone undertaking extensive travels should, like the nomad, carry the essential core of their existence with them. Be it a shrine, portrait, or simply a favoured stone. Without a centre the soul becomes unmoored and immune to the wonders of change.

The Eternal Tourist, by Halley Combit

Chapter 24

Livira

“I don’t feel good.” Livira’s stomach had already threatened rebellion over the carnage that unfolded after King Chertal’s army ambushed the skeer patrol. Now though, something else added itself to her discomfort. They had flown a few miles over the forest to put additional space between themselves, the battlefield, and the night-ship. Without warning, the act of flying, which had been effortless, had become a burden.

“Livira?” Carlotte descended beside her.

“You’re crying.” Livira tried to distract herself from her own problems by focusing on Carlotte’s. “It was horrific. The fighting. We should all be crying after what we’ve seen…”

Carlotte wiped at red eyes. “We should. I should. But it wasn’t that. It’s Meelan. We’ve been busy the whole time since you got here. Now we’re leaving, it’s hit me. He won’t be there.”

Yolanda had dropped lower in Carlotte’s wake, bringing Leetar with her.

Carlotte noticed her. “Sorry.” Deferential, as if a friend’s grief should bow before that of a sister.

Leetar managed a weak smile, hair whipping around her face as if she weren’t a ghost and the wind of their passage could touch her. Belief, Livira noted, was a force of nature too.

“Brothers are strange things. We fought a lot, not all of it as children. And when we weren’t fighting, we really weren’t that interested in each other’s lives. But you can’t believe how much it hurt losing him.” Shepaused, momentary doubt on her pretty face. “For a trained diplomat I can say some stupid things.”

“Tell me about brothers.” Livira, still struggling to keep flying, needed something to think about other than the pull of the forest beneath them. “I never had one…” Leetar had been there, seen the canith family split between all three of the choices that Irad, Jaspeth, and Yute had laid before them. Evar would have come with her to save the library, she knew that. Kerrol went chasing Yute’s endless compromises. Mayland had stolen Evar away with Starval and Clovis to seek the library’s destruction. “And now we’re getting to the sharp end of things.” It wouldn’t be long before the bonds of Evar’s family were put to the test, set in the balance with ideals, conviction, ambition—every corrosive product of an intelligent mind and a wounded childhood. It was Livira’s family too, almost more real than the one that she’d been born into out on the Dust. Livira and Malar had raised Evar and his siblings, albeit behind masks the library had imposed on them. “Tell me about brothers.”

Leetar brushed a hand across her face, dragging aside the auburn spray of her hair, her expression that of someone grappling with too large a question. Just as Livira thought she wasn’t going to answer, Leetar shook her head and said, “They’ll always surprise you.”

Instead of asking further questions, Livira found herself on a downward trajectory, like an overambitious hawk that had taken off with prey clearly too large for its wingspan. “I…I need to rest.”

The treetops threatened, close enough to see individual branches, the flutter of leaves.

“Catch her!” Yolanda’s call from higher up.

Carlotte tried, but a moment later everything became a green blur, a rushing thicket of tree limbs, and then a sudden, jolting reunion with the ground, almost hard enough to convince Livira that she’d become something solid. She lay, cradled by the forest floor, groaning.

“What’s happened to her?” Carlotte demanded as Yolanda alighted with Leetar.

“I’m fine.” Livira forced herself into a sitting position.

“Something’s happening.” Yolanda offered Livira a small white hand to help her up.

Livira forced the sarcastic reply to stay on her tongue and let the surprisingly strong child heave her to her feet.

“There.” Yolanda nodded to where Livira had landed. To what Livira would have to admit was more of an impact site than any ghost had a right to make.

“What are those…” Livira peered at black lines that almost seemed like…

“Fissures,” Yolanda said. “Something is happening. Your book and the hole it keeps cutting through time has started to break the world.”

Livira dusted herself off, feeling heavy, slow, and rather bruised. “Well, get me back to it then, and maybe we can do something about it. I think—”

Carlotte’s shriek cut her off.

“What? What is it?” Leetar tried to stop Carlotte’s hopping dance of pain or distress.

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