Page 82 of The Prince and His Stolen Throne
I grabbed Fitz’s shoulder, shaking him and hissing his name, doing everything I could to get his attention.
He continued reading, unresponsive to the outside world.
Black splotches, the size of a grain of rice, dotted his face and the back of his hand. More appeared as I watched. The marks shifted, straightening into lines and curves, eventually forming letters.E … L … P … H …The letters repeated on every inch of his skin, disappearing under the collar of his shirt, the cuffs of his sleeves.
Fitz turned the page. The paper was so unnaturally thick that his fingers indented it, leaving clear impressions behind. The other books surrounding him were swollen, stuffed to the brim with thick paper that arched their spines.
Thinking I could break whatever spell it had him under, I tried to snatch the book away from him. His grip tightened on it and his jaw dropped open. A long, wordless moan poured from his mouth. I tugged one way; Fitz tugged the other. The book creaked and whined in our hands. Finally, I gave up on taking the whole thing from him and grabbed a handful of pages, ripping them out.
Ink soaked the ragged ends and stained my hand, hot as fresh spilled blood. It pooled on the table, expanding and writhing. The waves rose higher into five separate peaks until it formed a dagger sharp hand. The hand slammed down, claws digging into the table, and the rest of the arm slowly emerged from the puddle.
I unsheathed one of my swords and stabbed it straight through the hand. The ink faltered for a moment, then curled itself around the blade. Black tendrils climbed over the metal toward me. Panicking, I dropped my sword and jumped back. In seconds, the ink completely consumed it, and now the half-creature crawling toward me had a fucking sword.
Grabbing the back of Fitz’s chair, I hauled him toward the shelves, looking for some kind of shelter. He struggled, hands flailing in the air, but either he couldn’t get out of the chair, or he didn’t think of it, because he remained seated even after I set him down.
I peeked through the gaps between shelves. The creature hadn’t grown legs to pursue us yet. With one hand it held my stolen sword aloft, with the other it picked up the other engorged books, absorbing the ink within them. For now, the monster seemed content to grow and feed its gluttony.
A shrill scream ripped through the library. Seconds later, Delilah raced past our hiding spot without noticing us, chased by a buzzing swarm of catalog cards.
The ink monster and Delilah spotted each other at the same time. She skidded to a stop. The cards whipped past her, slicing a thin cut along one shoulder. Some cards collided with the monster and were absorbed into it, adding to its size. Others buried sharp corners into distant tables.
Delilah’s fur stood on end, turning her into a brown fluffball. She raised one hand, the sharp points of her claws trembling nervously.
“Don’t!” I dashed out from behind the bookcase and grabbed her hand. “Just run!”
We turned in unison, only to halt as the librarian blocked our path.
Brown hair spilled from her once neat bun, floating around her head. Ink pooled in her eyes, dripped down her forehead, leaked from the corners of her mouth. “I protect the library.” Her voice was the quiet whisper of a flipped page with the strength of a slammed book. She raised her hand, and a second swarm of catalog cards appeared, swirling in a tornado around her. “You are not welcome here.” She flicked her fingers, and the swarm surged toward us.
I shoved Delilah to the ground and covered her with as much of my body as I could. Stinging lines of pain opened across my arms and back in a dozen tiny cuts. The second swarm passed but another attack would follow, either from the librarian in front of us or the monster behind.
“Do we haveany fire?” I whispered to Delilah.
“Maybe in Angelica’s pouch?” She squirmed out from under me and crawled toward Maximus. While we’d been fighting, he’d been caught in the enchantment again. Intent on his work, he didn’t even notice Delilah snatching the little pink bag from his pack.
After a quick search, she held up a golden bottle labeled “Instant Campfire.”
Good enough.
I jumped to my feet and gestured for her to toss it to me. It’d barely landed in my waiting hands before I shifted, swung my arm, and chucked it at a shelf on the other side of the aisle, away from where I’d stashed Fitz. The bottle shattered as it collided with a row of books and burst into flame.
The librarian screamed in sorrow. She flickered out from in front of us and appeared next to the fire, desperately trying to put it out with her own hands.
We could have run then. The librarian was distracted, the ink monster was only half-formed. Delilah and I would have escaped the library, and since the librarian wanted us to leave, she probably wouldn’t chase after us.
But Fitz and Maximus were still trapped in the librarian’s spells. At some point, Fitz had grabbed another book from the shelf and started reading again. The black lines now covered so much of his skin that there was hardly anything left of him.
If we left now, we’d lose them to the library. I didn’t even know if Wilde or the old man would be strong enough to save them, or if they would bother trying. They wanted the champions out of the way, why not let the library do the work for them?
I turned to Delilah, mouth open to tell her to run.
She shook her head sharply. “I’m not leaving you to fight this alone.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “We can’t fight it directly—it already ate one of my swords.”
She narrowed her eyes at the monster happily gobbling books. “If it’s that hungry, let’s give it more to eat.” She snatched a book off the shelf and hefted it overhand, tossing it straight at the ink blob.
The creature snatched the book from the air, absorbing everything into its ink body. One section of its body slid off the table and formed a leg as thick as a tree trunk. Slowly it lowered a second leg to the floor and slid toward us, leaving behind a slimy trail of ink.
