Page 135 of A Tribute of Fire

My body ordered me to close the gap between us. To give him his boon, pay his toll, thank him, whatever excuse I could come up with, just so that I could be kissing him again. The kiss of gratitude I’d given him hadn’t been nearly enough. It had been the smallest taste of what I was missing out on.

Like starving and sitting down to the greatest feast imaginable and eating only a single morsel of bread. It wouldn’t fill me up. I was too greedy for that, just like he’d noted. I wanted everything.

But I’d made a vow.

I swallowed down the desire I felt for him and crossed the street. I climbed the stairs to the front doors and pushed slightly. Unlocked.

Frowning, I opened the door enough to let myself through. Jason had made it sound like they were so concerned about security, but they hadn’t even bothered to lock the doors. Why?

My steps seemed unnecessarily loud as I traveled down a long stone hallway. The end of the hallway emptied into a massive room, even bigger than the auditorium that we studied in at the temple. There were wooden shelves everywhere, set up in perfect rows. So many scrolls and books and papers.

I didn’t even know where to begin, how it was arranged. If it was organized. It might not have been. I went into the middle of the room and turned in a small circle. I had to make a choice.

My grandmother’s book was very old. Maybe that was a good starting point—to locate the oldest documents. Was there a vault? A special room with a collection of religious texts? There was too much to search through. I felt a bit panicky as I realized that I could spend the rest of the night here and not find anything helpful.

The only thing I had left was my instinct. I decided to walk through the shelves and see if anything called out to me. I realized how foolish that decision was, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I went to the shelves farthest from the entrance. If I’d been in charge of the library, that was where I would have put important documents. Where they would be the least likely to be handled by patrons and scholars.

As I went down the aisle, I let my fingers brush against the scrolls and books. I wondered if I was the first woman who had entered this room, given that most Ilionian women couldn’t read. I reached the end and turned the corner, intending to walk down the next one.

But a very large white bird waited for me. He was half my height. He looked like a large duck with a long, curved neck, and he was bobbing his head up and down. He spread his wings out, shaking them. His wingspan was enormous.

“Would you like some treats?” I asked the bird softly, reaching into the cloth that held the leftover pasteli. I took out the crumbs and threw them toward the goose.

This seemed to alarm him. Where Kunguru would have hunted down every single scrap, this goose made a strange hissing sound.

I didn’t know birds could make a noise like that.

He continued to bob his feather-ridged head as he slowly moved toward me. It was a threatening move, and I responded by backing away slowly. Maybe if I just returned to my own row he would leave me alone.

But when I went around the corner, he continued to follow me. It was concerning. I should just grab some books and run.

The second my hand made contact with the nearest one, the hissing sound got louder.

A warning.

I raised both of my hands.

This didn’t seem to placate the creature. He honked, a loud trill that I felt in my bones.

It seemed ridiculous, but I knew I was in danger.

Stupid girl! It’s only a bird!

Demaratus didn’t know what he was talking about. I reached the center of the room and judged the distance between myself and the door.

The goose came closer, hissing as he went. He darted out and his ridged bill clamped onto my forearm, pinching my skin. He twisted his neck to inflict the highest amount of damage.

“Ow!” I called out as he withdrew. It had really hurt, my skin was throbbing.

“I’m going,” I told him, again trying to placate him. He honked loudly and it suddenly occurred to me that he might be calling for reinforcements.

The last thing I wanted was to deal with an entire flock of these snake-duck hybrids. Like the monsters out of one of Maia’s stories.

Then without warning, the goose launched himself at me, hitting me hard with one of his wings. It was like being hit by a stave. He snapped at my face with that strange beak, lifted both of his feet, and kicked at me. He had short claws and I felt them drag across the skin of my right arm, which I’d brought up to deflect his attack.

Enough.

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