A tense minute passed during which neither of us spoke, both unwilling to break the furious silence.
Finally, Casimir gave a bitter laugh and sank back into his chair. “I suppose that’s true.” After a moment, he blurted out, “So, are you going to train with me? Or is this where we part ways?”
All at once, the fight drained out of me. A throb continued to build at my temples. “Fine,” I bit out.
He’d won. Again.
He nodded, rising to his feet. “We’ll take a break from glamours and refresh your combat training.”
“Alright,” I agreed, though somewhat cautiously.
“Tonight.”
Tonight?I balked, “I have actual work I need to do, you know. I can’t just spend every evening on this bull-”
Casimir interrupted, “If you feel your homework is more important than learning to protect yourself from Devereaux, be my guest.”
I groaned. “Fine. Where?”
“The Labyrinth.”
“The library closes at midnight,” I pointed out. Not that it had ever stopped him before.
“I’ll reserve a room. No one will bother us there.” He cast me a droll smile as he turned to go. “Eleven o’clock. Don’t be late.”
10
At ten o’clock that evening, I cloistered myself in the bowels of the Labyrinth, hoping for an hours’ respite before my next training session with Casimir. Upon entering, I was greeted by the familiar, earthy scent of old parchment, leather, distilled dust, and a reverential silence that never failed to calm my restless mind. A perpetual aroma of coffee permeated every corner of the library; the result of bleary-eyed students pulling all-nighters across several decades. I walked straight through the towering shelves and up a spiral staircase until I reached my favorite spot, nestled in a corner of the stacks.
The Labyrinth was my first sanctuary—a cozy refuge where the smell of dust motes and old parchment made me feel utterly safe and protected. Thirty years ago, my father had wandered through these very stacks, probably hunting down an annotated copy ofThe Iliad. It felt like… home.
It was also the place where my father first discovered a love of Shakespeare and the early modern poets like John Donne and Sir Thomas Wyatt. Where he’d barricaded himself in the stacks, like Hildegard of Bingen, heedless of the hour or the state of his tattered clothes and unkempt hair, so thoroughly did he lose himself in folklore and myth.
Slinging my bag onto a coffee table, I sighed as I sank into a roomy armchair. The Labyrinth itself was massive, containing multiple levels connected by narrow, winding staircases; luckily, this corner of the stacks was rarely occupied.
I drew a well-worn copy of Daphne du Maurier’sRebeccafrom my bag, my homework lying forgotten at the bottom. I’d read the novel countless times, but there was something about the disastrous inevitability of the plot that I found oddly comforting. The novel’s spooky atmosphere, punctuated by jealousy, a love triangle, and the looming threat of violence, held my attention. I both dreaded and anticipated the moment when the unnamed narrator discovered Max de Winter’s secret.
The narrator had just encountered Max de Winter at the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo when my lids began to feel heavy. I was flirting with the notion of catching a few uninterrupted moments of sleep when the faint tread of footsteps on the soft carpet pricked at my ears.
“Going to Manderley again?” asked a solemn voice.
I nearly toppled out of my armchair in surprise, my head snapping around to see?—
August.
He wore a familiar forest-green sweater and an expression of wary uncertainty. I couldn’t believe he was really there. His ink-bottle eyes were still as haunted as the night we’d met in the Tusk. I could only stare at him. Every cell in my body urged me to flee. Anything other than return to that dark period when I had lived and breathed for a friendly glance, a lone touch, for the smallest kernel of hope. Beneath the desire to flee from the room was something else, something worse.
The feeling that I was doomed. That no matter how many times I tried to kill that weak, simpering girl inside me, she still persisted. She was the girl who’d agreed to meet August in secret; the girl who was willing to destroy herself for the chance to earn August’s smile; to catch his eye across a crowded room; to lie with him on the grass and watch the constellations spill like diamonds across the velvet expanse of midnight sky. I could feel her. She was there, burrowing in my bones. Biding her time.
“Sometimes the past is worth revisiting,” I replied somewhat uneasily, closing the book on my lap.
August gave me a knowing smile that I knew meant he’d understood my allusion to Rebecca’s twisting narrative construct. He shook his head, then, the casual smile fading. “I used to hate how you always dog-eared the pages of your books,” he said.
“Don’t you still?”
Ignoring the question, August began curtly, “I don’t have much time. I’ve come to warn you to stay away from Devereaux Graves.”
I stared at him for a long moment, and then— “August, please, I know you’re in trouble.” It sounded like I was begging. “Let me help you.”