Page 47 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Clovis didn’t answer, but her grip tightened on his hand, and she chewed at something, as if finding every answer she had unsuited to the task. “Notjusthumans.”

It was all she had to say. And perhaps it was all there was to say. No species came to the fore without having emerged through an epic struggle of tooth and claw. Nature put its creations through a constant meat grinder, and nothing survived that was not prepared to doanythingto cling to its existence. Anything at all. Every hand that ever wrote out words was driven by an intelligence born of war, and instincts shaped to win at all costs. The hope that they could rise above such things was only that, a hope, fragile and apt to tear apart in the winds of any challenge.

“How are we going to find her?” Evar’s voice, up ahead, pulled Arpix from his gloomy philosophizing.

“We’re going to find the book,” Mayland replied. “It would be better if we didn’t find your human with it.”

Starval, an unlikely peacemaker, interjected over Evar’s hot reply, “Nobody is going to harm Livira, and finding her book might be a big step towards finding her.” The assassin pushed between his brothers, both a head taller than him. “So how do we take that step, Mayland?”

“Well, that’s obvious enough, isn’t it?” Mayland ran a three-fingered hand up across his face and into his mane. Arpix still found canith expressions hard to read, but it seemed to him that Mayland looked tired, the confidence in his words not mirrored in his face.

“Indulge me.” Starval reached up to sling an arm around Mayland’s shoulders.

“We go into the cracks the book fell into.”

“What?” Evar turned back. “The cracks we’ve been walking away from ever since we got here?”

Mayland shrugged. “I was hungry.”

Evar stepped threateningly towards him.

“And youdoknow how time works here, brother?” Mayland shook off Starval’s arm. “If we get there we’ll arrive when we need to.”

“If?” Evar asked.

“If,” Mayland confirmed. “We’ll be heading into a wound that the library is trying to heal. It will be…dangerous.”

Evar turned and started to stride back in the direction they’d come. The soldiers fell quiet as he approached and parted before him, falling away to either side, revealing Lord Algar seemingly stranded by his pride with no one save two of his personal guards to back him up. It seemed that Evar would pass him by without a word. And he almost did. But at the last moment, and quicker than the eye, he sent the lord reeling away with a backhanded slap.

“Ha!” Clovis barked a laugh.

Algar’s retainers prevented him from falling, and he covered his bloody mouth with both hands. Clearly Evar had exercised restraint. A full-grown canith could easily break a man’s neck with such a blow. But even Evar’s good nature had its limits, it seemed. And Arpix couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him.

Starval followed, nodding to himself. “Seems like we know how far Celcha’s peace extends. Slapping’s allowed.”

Whether it was just his snarls or that they caught some of his meaning, the soldiers moved back rapidly from Starval’s approach. Mayland strode after him.

“Come on.” Clovis pulled Arpix’s hand.

Arpix glanced from Salamonda to Neera. “You have to stay with Celcha and the others. She’ll look after you.”

“We’re coming!” Salamonda bristled.

“Really, no.” Arpix used every ounce of the authority his companions had slowly heaped on his shoulders during the Arthran years, despite hisprotests. “I’ll bring Livira and the others back. We’ll find you. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to make that happen. But you can’t follow.”

And as Clovis followed her family with Arpix in tow, Salamonda and Neera stayed.

The canith andArpix moved swiftly back along the route they’d taken.

“What is it?” Clovis asked when Arpix glanced back for the third time. “You saw those cowards. They won’t follow us.”

“Not that,” Arpix growled back. He hadn’t been thinking any soldiers might come seeking revenge. “It’s Algar. The man Evar hit. I feel as if we’ve left a poison seed in Celcha’s charge. I worry what’s going to have grown by the time we come back.” He had more to say but didn’t say it. What really worried him was not the idea that Lord Algar might somehow overpower Celcha, an individual with magics that seemed nearly equal to those of Irad and Jaspeth themselves. His concerns remained wider and more ephemeral. It helped him to believe that Algar was in truth a poison seed—a corruptor who through special talent and unique evil had pulled others under his sway and led them into the horrors that had followed. What truly worried Arpix was the possibility that Algar was nothing special, and that if it hadn’t been him, someone else would have stepped up to lead the mob to the same destination.

“You’re doing it again,” Clovis said.

“What?”

“You know.”

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