I stacked the birch firewood back onto the rack beside the fireplace with deliberately slow movements. It felt foolish; I was alone in the dining room and both Briar and Valerien were two floors above me, but I wanted to make myself visible and present so I could corner anyone who passed and ask them about their master. Briar couldn’t be the only one who knew of his activities and habits. Surely some of the other servants had seen him come home like this before? 

But nobody came. The house stood eerily silent as I slowly made my way back to my room. I pretended to inspect the painting hanging on the wall between my door and Valerien’s (which depicted a wooden ship being torn apart by silky black tentacles rising from a ravaged sea) while listening for more sounds from his bedroom. It, too, stood silent now.

The library was the one room in the house I’d never stepped foot in after Briar had first showed me around. Reading had always been a last resort as a cure for boredom, reserved for when my body was too tired to do anything else but my mind wouldn’t let me rest. This was almost similar, because I didn’t want to leave the house but had shit else to do inside it.

The air inside was cold and dry. The room itself was clean but showed few signs of use, respected more than loved. There were nine bookshelves, absurdly tall with precarious ladders attached, filled with not only books, but strange-looking scrolls, glass jars, odd metal tools, tattered journals, jewelry boxes … The books themselves, though ragged and evidently old, were the only things that had been touched in the last century, with a few even missing from the shelves. 

I realized I’d never asked Valerien for his age. He couldn’t be older than twenty-five, though.

Sighing, I started pulling out books at random and carrying them to the one table and armchair in the room, where I spent the next few hours fruitlessly flipping through them. 

An overwhelming amount of books were blank. I assumed they were magic, because only a few looked like journals, some had dog-eared pages, and others had worn spines. Others yet were filled with tiny letters strewn across the page without any rhyme or reason that I could discern, like the journals of a madman. Many contained maps of the night sky the reader was supposed to unfold, but were so old and fragile I didn’t dare try it. 

There were a few fiction books with text I could recognize, but those were almost worse than the incomprehensible ones. Fae prose was impressively tedious, entire fat tomes mostly spent on describing the minute scents present in a scene, the colors of a pebble, the lengthy thought processes of the characters involved. I even found what I assumed was a love scene where the narrator was more preoccupied with the thread count and fabric quality of his lover’s dress rather than the body beneath it. And when he finally got to said body, he spent another few pages describing the myriad scents nestled in the creases beneath her breasts. I supposed this was the sort of fiction people would write if they had all the time in the world. 

Sunset came. I had to strain to see the pages despite lighting every lantern in the room. The pile of books beside me had grown tall, and my head was starting to hurt from the boredom. 

Why did people love reading so much? You just sat there like an idiot while your brain entertained you with make-believe pictures.

I put the last book away and rubbed my eyes. My “to-open” pile was on the floor, waiting to disappoint me.

I cursed and stood up from the chair, stretching. I knew going in it would be a waste of my time, and still I scolded myself for trying to distract my thoughts with the most boring thing imaginable.

“That is one impressive collection.” 

I nearly fell over. Valerien had appeared out of the darkness in the room; from the other end, where there was no door. He must’ve flown in through the window. 

The man had an obsession with dramatic entrances. 

“Hey,” I said, unsure of his reaction to seeing me here. 

He didn’t look mad, but that pretty face of his could be deceiving. He stepped closer soundlessly, almost floating, and regarded the book fortress I’d built around myself. 

“This is how you spend your evenings? Skulking in the dark like a rat?” 

I wanted all the pity I’d had for him to drain the instant he said that, but even though the bruises had faded, he still looked to be enduring some lingering pain. I couldn’t bring myself to reply.

Valerien made a beckoning gesture and a couple of books from my piles rose into the air, opening themselves and slowly flipping their pages, “Read anything interesting?” 

“Uh, sure. There’s a lot of … knowledge in this room. I hope you don’t mind?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” he said casually. Too casually. “Botany. Astronomy. Historical accounts. Secret journals. It appears you have broad tastes.”

He clearly didn’t believe that.

“Simple tastes, rather. I would have preferred a picture book over all this.” 

“Ah!” he gasped blandly. “A picture book. Like a small child.”

I wanted to ignore the bait, but decided I had a good shot at out-annoying him.

“We humans have this saying: a picture can speak a thousand words. What the fae choose to depict, and how, can still be enlightening.” 

He nodded sagely, ignoring every word. I watched as he inspected one of the books that hovered in front of him. He was exaggerating the level of interest he had in it, pretending to ponder its contents while holding his chin. 

Then he looked up, his eyes odd and off-putting in their sudden clarity. 

“If that is the case, Sidra, then tell me the thousand words this picture speaks.”

The book, one I hadn’t yet had a chance to flip through, turned around. Inside, taking up both pages, was a beautifully detailed illustration depicting a couple of naked, pointy-eared individuals tangled into what looked like a rather uncomfortable position, though they seemed to be enjoying themselves — and each other — nonetheless.

My cheeks flared, but I still met his incredulous gaze. It was my luck that the one book with vaguely interesting illustrations was the one I’d miss and the one he’d pick up.

“Oh, an instruction manual, is it?” I said. “I am somewhat surprised you’d need one, but I’m not one to judge. Suppose looks can only get you so far before the personality makes itself known.” 

Valerien snatched the book from the air and slammed it closed, his lips in a tight line. 

“Are you attempting to insult or flatter me?” he asked.

“I was hoping one would undo the other.”

The tight line changed into a crooked one and he tossed the book over his shoulder. It flew a fair bit, before completely changing trajectory and returning to its spot in the shelves. 

“I will generously assume you were looking for something else,” Valerien drawled as he took another step closer, invading my personal space. If he thought his proximity would compel me into honesty, he was wrong, but at this point I’d grown tired of the charade and relented anyway. 

“Fine. I wanted something to do that wouldn’t involve my leaving the house. I didn’t want to miss something dramatic happening.” I gave him a pointed stare.

“So you came looking for entertainment in books you can’t be bothered to read?” 

“Clearly I had the right idea.” I nodded toward where the illustrated manual had disappeared.

Valerien regarded me with calm amusement before rolling his eyes. 

He stepped away, and began putting the books back onto their shelves. He wasn’t using magic, so I assumed he had more to say and sat back down, waiting. A third into my pile, he broke the silence. 

“What were you hoping to find in here?” 

“Something to keep me occupied.”

“Nothing specific, then? No favorite genre? Poetry, perhaps?” 

If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought he was trying to get to know me. 

“Never understood poetry,” I sighed. “Just say what you mean and move on, you know?” 

His long-suffering sigh filled the silence. I imagined he took that as a personal insult — he did strike me as a the sort of pretentious bastard to wax poetic about raindrops on rose petals or some such.

“Hm. I almost wish I enjoyed it now, just to disagree with you,” he sniffed. “But alas, on this we are of one mind.” 

“Oh, the horror. Someone call for the king’s men and all their horses.”

Valerien didn’t meet my gaze when he returned for another stack of books. When he approached, the light from the candle lit up his pretty face, and I took the moment to inspect it for lingering damage. The bruises were still there, though faint now. Tomorrow, there would be no trace of them left.

“Are there any books about humans here? I’d like to know how your people view mine.” 

At this, he actually looked at me. “I do not think you would,” he said grimly. “But yes. There are a few. They do not end well.” 

“None of them?” 

“Not for the humans. Though a few of the romances tend to be more sympathetic, I suppose.”

“Romances? The fae write human-fae romances? That’s unexpected.” 

“Why? Your sister was considered desirable, was she not?”

I swallowed the urge to tell him off for that phrasing, figuring he was only stating facts. “Being desirable and being loved are different things. I didn’t think the fae would consider humans worthy romance partners.”

“We do not, as a rule,” Valerien said casually. “But some romanticize the notion of pain that comes with losing a mortal lover. They seek the thrill of death, in a way that feels more meaningful than killing prey.”

This startled me into silence, as it was somehow obvious yet unbelievably heartless at the same time. Maybe there could’ve been sympathy for these deathless beings who so desperately wished to feel anything of consequence, but at the expense of humans? I had little compassion to spare.

“Most end up bored with their lover before they die, which they generally find a disappointing end to the endeavor,” Valerien continued, unbothered by my silence. “Others decide to speed up the process by killing their lover themselves, but that obviously won’t lead to the desired pain. And finally, those who do end up falling in love regret it deeply when their mortal paramours finally pass.” 

He returned for another stack, watching my face with casual interest as he approached. “All in all, a waste of time. An exercise in toying with pain for those who have never suffered.”

“But you have?” 

His eyes glinted sharply, and he turned swiftly away after picking up a handful of books. 

“Yes.”

I thought it best not to pry. 

“So … Why do you have those books, then? Idle curiosity?” 

He stopped moving in the middle of putting an especially heavy tome at the top of one of the farthest bookshelves. A few moments of consideration later, he spoke. 

“They are not mine.” 

His ears slacked a little, the tiny blue gems dangling from thin silver chains almost brushing against his shoulders. “What difference does it make?”

“Some?”  I retorted. “This place is old and well-worn, and it’s obvious you don’t like living here. Parts of it are better cared for and seem like they belong somewhere else, and that’s where you usually spend your time. You also said you only live here, and it’s not your home. So whose is it? And where are they? Did you kill them? Trap them? Turn them into a frog?”

He grunted in annoyance and put the final book in his hands away, still without looking at me. “No, I did not kill anybody, or turn anyone into frogs. The house was empty when I … when I came here. But it does not belong to me. It hardly belongs to anyone.” 

“Then why are you here?”

Returning for the final stack of books, Valerien stopped beside the table and studied my face for a few uncomfortable moments.

There was a long, pregnant pause while we stared at each other. I tried to will him into elaborating without having to pry again, but even though he said nothing, the tips of his ears trembled, the jewelry on them shimmering. 

As Valerien lifted his gaze to look beyond the horizon, he looked small. Small in a childlike sense; a scared boy lost in the woods, too proud to cry for his parents, but too afraid to search for them. Needing help without knowing how to ask for it. 

The expression was painfully familiar. I found myself wanting to comfort him, despite everything.

“Because I am not welcome anywhere else.”

He turned away before I could reply.

“Interesting that Lin has not worn you down to the bone,” Valerien said with renewed vigor. “I would like to see what you have learned while I was away. You will show me, tomorrow morning.” 

“Show you?” I resisted the temptation to tell him where to shove his commands and stood up. “You mean you want to train me?” 

“Want’ might be too strong a word. But I need to make sure your training has been adequate. Besides, it will be good for you to try your new knowledge against a different opponent.”

“So you’re doing me a favor, huh?” I scoffed. 

Valerien smiled smugly without responding. I knew protesting now would make him question where Lin was and why I wasn’t with them, so said I’d be there, then bid him goodnight. 

This is one of my favorite chapters in the book, if not the favorite? So please let me know what you think!