Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(43)
Surely it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
And yet I’m sitting awake tonight, writing this down, because I lied to Jess, and he believed me. I told him I didn’t care about Neksa, and, God help me, that was the biggest lie of my life. She’s not just a key, not just a tool, not just another woman I can push away. She’s . . . I don’t know. Everything.
I never meant to fall in love with any girl, much less a good, true Library girl who trusts me not to hurt her. I’ve spent months telling myself that I’m just biding my time, building her trust until it’s time to use her as I see fit, but tonight, looking into my twin’s eyes, I realized that the only person I’ve really been lying to is myself.
I can’t do this. I can’t hurt Neksa. I love her too much to do that, and now that I’ve faced it, seen the full extent of my failure here in Alexandria, I have to go home and beg my father for forgiveness. I have to leave Neksa and never look back, because I’ll do her far greater harm if I stay with her.
I blame Jess for making me finally see it.
Well, I have to blame someone. Can’t blame myself, can I?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three more days passed. Their compatriots received commissions and were folded into High Garda companies, but no word of any future for Glain and Jess. It was worrying for a day, and quietly terrifying after that. Glain constantly asked what it could mean, and Jess had no answers, only fears he refused to speak aloud and tried to bury under other concerns. Surely, Glain would find a good home in one of the elite companies.
He was not so confident of his own prospects.
While they waited, the two of them were rarely out of each other’s company. To fill the time, they researched the Library’s secret prisons and met with Dario and Khalila to discuss their findings.
The problem was, proof was thin on the ground. Thomas might be in one of three different places where secret prisons were strongly rumored to be hidden: Rome, Paris, Moscow. If Jess had to place a bet, he’d have put his money on Paris—the country of France was, after all, a Library territory, fully owned after the rebellion against the Library that failed in the late 1700s. What few of the French people were allowed to live in Paris were required by law to perform in the historical reenactments—the rebellion, the Library’s conquest, the executions. It was a perfect place, in Jess’s opinion, to hide prisoners. Who’d dare to even go look?
Trouble was, every new location led to impassioned speculation but no definitive answers to tip the scales toward one of the choices.
“Well,” Glain said over strong coffee in their usual café, “we can’t go looking for him blind. We need more information than we have. Much more. Somehow we have to find it.”
“I agree,” Jess said, and to his surprise, Dario was saying the same thing at the same time. They exchanged looks, and Jess let Dario continue.
“We need someone with more access than we can have. What about Morgan?”
“What about her?” Jess shot back, suddenly on his guard.
“She can access hidden information, can’t she? It’s the whole reason they’re called Obscurists.”
“I can’t contact Morgan. I have to wait for her to write to me.”
“And she hasn’t? Maybe your charm’s finally wearing off,” Dario observed. “Maybe she’s found some lucky man to fill her days inside the Iron Tower.”
Jess’s hand tightened on his fork, and for a brief, bloody moment he imagined that—or worse, that she hadn’t found someone else, that someone else had been found for her. He didn’t want to talk about that. At all. “Morgan can’t help us,” he snapped. “Move on, Dario.”
“I have, actually. I think we should involve someone else who can—”
“No,” Khalila said. Her tone sounded flat and a little angry. “Dario. We discussed this. You can’t involve anyone else inside the Library!”
“And anyone outside it is of no use—Jess has proved that. All his fancy criminal connections can’t get us what we need, and every day, every day we wait, Thomas suffers.” Dario glared at Khalila, a thing Jess had never seen him do, and Khalila held the stare firmly. She might be a quiet girl, but shy? No. She didn’t back away from a fight. “It’s three cities—we’ve narrowed it to that. We just need confirmation. If it’s someone we can trust—”
Sickly, Jess thought of his brother and Neksa. He could ask Brendan to use Neksa to verify the information. If she really did work for the Archivist, she might not have to do anything but look in a book and say yes or no. Easy. But that would make him complicit in ruining the girl, and that . . . that was a bridge he couldn’t cross.
He didn’t have to, because Dario said, “I didn’t wait to get your approval. I told Scholar Prakesh everything we know about Thomas. I asked for her help.”
There was a breathless silence, and Khalila’s eyes widened. She tried to speak, failed, and finally managed to say, “You what?”
“Without asking us?” Glain jumped in.
“I’m tired of waiting for someone to drop an answer into our laps,” Dario said. His cheeks had an angry red tinge now, and he met Jess’s eyes. “Well? Aren’t you going to join the outrage?”