Page 97 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Evar shook his head, confused, and wriggled comfortably into the mattress. “There’s only me and you.”

Livira kissed his cheek. His blood had been changed. Somehow. The library’s essence ran through his veins, and the story had him entirely in its grip. She, however, had written this story and would not allow it to contain her.

“If there’s no door then we can climb out.”

“That sounds dangerous.” Evar squeezed her. “We could stay. I think in just a short while I could do all that all over again.”

“Mmmmm.” Livira stretched. “But it can’t be that dangerous. You said you climbed up.”

“I did?” He rumbled in his chest. “That sounds more like…more like something…something my brother would do.”

“You did say so.” Livira slipped from his embrace and left the bed. She went to one of the windows with its view of wild heath, lone trees leaning into the wind, and an untamed sea.

“Why doesn’t your tower have a door?” Evar sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “Who builds a tower like that?”

“I’m a prisoner.” Livira knew it to be true as she said it. She remembered a pale king with a blade in his fist and murder behind his eyes.

“A witch kept you here,” Evar said, yawning.

“What? I never said anything about a…” But he was right. The story needed a witch. And as the sky outside darkened, and a distant thunder rolled in, Livira knew that the witch was coming.

Rain hit the windows as though the waves had swept ashore and were beating against the stonework, turning the tower into a lighthouse far from land. Within her bedroom the light had grown so dim that a candle would be needed if she wanted to read.

“Get back from the windows.” Evar stood and patted his hips before realising his nakedness. “I had knives.” He hesitated, then shaking off his confusion, grabbed up his trousers. “I don’t need knives. If this witch comes anywhere near you, I’ll break their neck.”

“The knight can’t always save the princess.” Livira remembered another time, the same tower. “Generally, princesses need to save themselves.”

Thunder boomed, rattling rooftiles. Day became night-time. Shadows flooded the room, and as the lightning struck, its flash painted a figure against the far wall.

The witch was a narrow twist of a man, sinister in the lightning’s frozen moments, terrifying in the blindness that followed. He pinned Livira with a hungry stare, eyes a little too close together below a wide forehead.

In the space between one blinding flash and the next, the witch moved. Like a spider advancing every time you looked away. In one hand he held a knife. A small, cruel curve of steel that Livira somehow knew had, from the first moment of its forging, been meant for cutting throats.

Without warning, the storm fell silent, though the darkness intensified, only to be broken by the coldness of witchlight that limned Livira’s foe, glimmering around him, making her squint.

Evar had, this whole time, remained by the bed, one hand in the act of hauling his trousers to his hip, seeming mired in some private hell of slowness, all his speed undone, as if the witch had moved him from the current of time and set him adrift in the doldrums, each action taking a hundred times longer than it should.

“I felt you trying to escape,” the witch said. “That’s not allowed.”

“I hadn’t even begun trying.” Livira pulled a book from the nearest shelf, not taking her eyes from the witch and his knife. “When I start, you’ll know all about it.”

“You’ll do what I say. Stay where I put you. This is mine. All of it. I hold the power here.” The illumination swelled around him, a corpse-light not born of flame.

Livira shook off the tendrils of fear trying to invade her. “You tell your story. I’ll tell mine.” She held the book before her, a shield against his blade. “The foundation of this tower is a page I stole. Its bricks are ink, laid by my hand.” In defiance of her fear, she advanced on the witch, and with each footstep the whole structure trembled, more deeply than when the thunder had spoken.

The witch struck as she closed on him, throwing himself forward, his robe a flowing tatter of night. If he had been a warrior, she would have had no chance, but he swung overhand, announcing his attack well in advance. Even so, she barely managed to interpose the book and found herself staring at two inches of bright steel protruding from the back cover just a foot from her face.

With a scream of effort, she struggled to prevent the knife’s advance towards her flesh as the witch bore down on her. A moment later she understood that it didn’t need to be a contest of strength. She rotated the book, twisting the trapped blade out of the witch’s hand.

The pair of them stood at the centre of the room, locked in a struggle for control of the book. Livira snarled, drawing energy into her rapidly tiring muscles, pulling it from the stories lining the walls, from the stones of the tower itself. This was hers. All this was hers. The witch was the interloper here.

The witch, his pale brow beading with sweat, began to lose his grip. In a moment of cunning, he swung his attention to Evar, still mired in slowness, barely two steps from the bed, the horror of his situation beginning to dawn across his face. The witch jerked his head and Evar slammed into the ceiling, rattling the boards, plaster dust pluming around him.

“Give. Me. The. Book.” The witch tried to wrest it from her grasp.

Livira felt herself weakening as Evar’s pain flooded across the room in waves. The book started to slip from her fingers.

“You can save him.” The witch grinned over the cover as they struggled. Evar, still pinned to the ceiling, smashed down. Only a partial collision with the bed saved him from an instantly fatal impact. He broke both thebed’s legs on that side, and an unknown number of his own bones, and lay like a rag doll.

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