by Kathryn Moon
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I giggled and pressed a hand over my mouth as he opened one eye to check on me. “Seems like a silly question,” I said. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt better. Drowsy and a little sticky with sweat, but practically incandescent.
He rolled us, taking me against his side and pulling us up to the head of the bed. I hummed with the aftershocks. His arms wrapped around me and he peppered kisses over the shoulder resting on his chest.
“You’ll stay with me, like this?” he asked.
I blinked my eyes open. His were shut, his face relaxed and tilted to me. I stretched up for a kiss and his lips pursed back.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said and then added, “I don’t think I can walk.”
“Sore?” he asked, brow furrowing.
“Turned to jelly.”
His smile burst forth and his eyes opened at that. “Aiden and Callum will probably check on us when they make it back.”
I hummed and snuggled into his chest.
“They might crawl into the bed,” he added.
I thought that over for half a minute, but my clothes were too far away to worry about modesty and I was too tired to really care. Isaac twitched the covers over us and then nothing mattered.
When I stirred in the night there was a dark arm stretched over Isaac’s stomach, warm hand resting on my waist, and a lean body pressed up the length of my back. Callum was snoring softly into my shoulder, arm wrapped over my lower belly. He and Aiden smelled clean and they were safe and I had never felt more comfortable sleeping next to someone, let alone plural.
17. Joanna
I woke up to the door creaking open and sat up with a start. The bed was empty around me and with a bleary glance out the window I could see the sky, pink with morning. Isaac stood in the doorway, a tray of food and coffee in his hands.
“Wha’ time is it?” I rasped. I stretched under the sheets and smiled at the gentle ache still left from the night before.
He came in, setting the tray on the bed and laughing as I scooped the coffee cup up straight away. “You’ve got almost an hour before you need to be at the library,” he said.
“Where’s Callum and Aiden?” I asked, squinting at the dent in the pillow to my right. I was sure they had been there at some point.
“They cleared out a bit ago,” Isaac said. “To get ready and…and we weren’t sure how you would feel, given…”
“Given I was sex dizzy last night?” I asked, smirking behind the cup as Isaac’s eyes flashed for a brief moment, scanning over my bare chest.
“Yes.” He scooted forward, bracing his arms on either side of my waist and leaning in, kissing at one shoulder and then the other. “We don’t want to rush you.”
“I don’t want to be rushed. But I didn’t mind them joining us to sleep.” At Isaac’s beaming smile I added, “And if you hand me that shirt I wouldn’t mind a kiss good morning from them.”
Isaac grabbed a white dress shirt from the foot of the bed, and I pulled it on over my head, the shoulders hanging loose. I guessed it was probably Callum’s if the length of the sleeves was any clue, and I rolled the cuffs up three times. As if Isaac had called for them, Aiden peeked his head in through the cracked door.
“Hello, you,” he said. He looked exhausted and his gaze was less playful and more relieved, as if he’d needed the reassurance of seeing me again.
I reached a hand out for him and he glanced back into the hall and then came to me. He took my hand and I had to tilt my head far back to catch his kiss on my lips.
“Morning,” I said, looking up and searching his face.
He smiled, an attempt at cheer, but there was stress in the lines at the corners of his eyes. “Any chance of convincing you to take the day off with me?” he asked.
“No.” My lips twitched in a smile and his followed, even as he rumbled in his chest.
“Worth a shot,” he said, sighing and pecking at my lips again.
Aiden stepped back and Callum was hovering in the doorway.
“Thank you for the shirt,” I said.
He looked at me, some combination of interest and wariness and hunger, until I could feel the heat in my cheeks. “Anytime. I’m heading out early to scout the campus. I’ll see you later?”
I nodded, chewing at the inside of my lip. I wanted to jump out of the bed and pull Callum back to join me. But he was already disappearing down the hall.
“Before you go getting any ideas about what he’s thinking, he practically arm wrestled me to crawl in beside you last night” Aiden said, a hand reaching down to squeeze at my shoulder.
“Eat up,” Isaac said, nudging at my knee under the blankets. “We’ll walk you to the library.”
For the first time I walked into the library that morning and it felt truly silent. I stopped as the doors swung shut behind me, and stared at the wreckage. It looked worse by the light somehow, the destruction stark and clear. They had done a thorough job of cleaning the night before—the air was sharp with it—and all the dust and shards were swept away. The desk was in pieces with bared teeth, jagged wooden spikes where it had been shattered. I had done my best the night before not to see what the scene really looked like, but either I had failed or I had too vivid an imagination. I turned my face up, trying to avoid my gruesome vision, and saw the gaping maw of the broken ceiling. The sky was visible through the tear, and magic shimmered like a temporary pane of glass.
“Oh!” The voice was soft. I looked to my left and Alice Batting, another clerk and a recent graduate was standing between two shelves that had been pushed upright again. She stared at me with wide eyes and then glanced at the desk with me.
All at once she was flying across the room. My heart thudded in my chest and then I had a set of arms wrapped around mine, pinning them to my sides, and a puff of white blonde hair in my face. Alice was crying into my shirt—Callum’s shirt—and squeezing me tighter with every breath. I searched the balconies for a rescue and found my coworkers peeking out from shelves and…smiling.
The doors swung open behind us and I twisted in Alice’s grasp.
“Oh, alright Batting,” Gwen said. “Back to work.”
Alice released me with a watery smile and then dashed back to the stacks. I stared at Gwen, baffled. She had dark circles under her eyes and her dress was wrinkled and stained but her hawkish gaze was sharp as she looked back at me. Hildy was at her side although I almost hadn’t recognized her without her finery. But she looked ready to work and there was a group of men bringing in a cartload of wood behind her.
“You don’t look well-rested,” Gwen said to me.
I ignored my blush rising. I may not have gotten a lot of sleep but it was good sleep. I had no complaints.
“I’m fine, do you know why…?” Why Alice had hugged me when we’d barely spoken before? Why the others were still watching me?
“They know what you did last night,” Gwen said, and we backed away to give the workers room move in. “You’ll have to put up with everyone liking you now.”
“Nicely done, darling,” Hildy said, greeting me with a kiss to the cheek and a muted smile.
Tatsuo and Bryce were bringing up the rear and Gwen nodded them in our direction. Tatsuo and I hugged while Bryce sniffed at my collar and grinned toothily at me.
“What needs doing?” I asked Gwen.
“Plenty but I have something specific I’d like to see if you can help with.” She led me to the long tables, now stacked with books, some of which were partially burnt or torn in half. “Normally I have a strict policy against our books being marked up. But I’ll make an exception if you can fix them,” she said.
I picked up a book, Orientation and Alignment, that still had its cover and only looked a little dusty.
“Open it,” Bryce said, voice light and and low like the late echo of a bell.
I flipped it open and found blank pages filling the spine. “Ah,” I said.
“Yes,” Gwen said
. “Those especially concern me. Tatsuo is familiar enough with the catalog to let you know if you’re on the right track.”
“Do you have a pencil?” I asked, chewing at my lip and drawing up a chair.
Be whole worked to put the torn books back together but it didn’t fix charred edges or empty pages. I am unburnt and fireproof did the trick for the former but I had yet to find a solution for the latter.
My pages are full brought uninterrupted gibberish that Tatsuo read loudly and with great solemnity. Or in one case, a book stuffed with feathers and dried flowers and leaves. Bryce, who had taken it upon themself to guard me—either from danger or grateful coworkers—snatched that up and pulled each piece of refuse free, taking experimental whiffs.
I am restored and My text is returned brought nothing but my erase marks inside the covers.
I was practicing phrases on a piece of paper like the words were a puzzle. Was I contain my original text as it was printed too wordy? I grabbed the book Bryce had picked clean like a carcass and tested the words in pencil and waited.
“Ahh,” Tatsuo said, watching small captions appear at the bottom of the open pages. “Yes, that’s actually a compendium of natural materials in flight work. It’s primarily illustrated.”
I sighed and sagged in my chair. “Hence the feathers,” I said.
Tatsuo and Bryce nodded. “Hence the feathers,” Tatsuo said.
I looked at Bryce. “Maybe we could just paste them back in with the captions?” I suggested weakly.
Bryce snorted. “Ate them,” they said.
I blinked at that. Two warm hands cupped at my shoulders and I tilted head back to see Callum standing over my chair, eyes peering through his glasses to my words in the book.
“It isn’t working,” I said to him, chewing the inside of my lip to keep from pouting.
“It is,” he said. “It just isn’t doing what you want it to.”
“Same thing,” I muttered.
Callum’s thumbs kneaded into the back of my neck and I resisted the urge to purr. “Come on,” he said. “Take a break, I’ve brought lunch.”
I made to stand but Bryce growled out, “Ask nicely.”
I wasn’t sure they were joking, even if Tatsuo was grinning, but Callum only rolled his eyes. Then he turned fully to me, a bright smile on his face.
“Joanna,” he said. “Would you please join me for lunch?”
Bryce made a snuffling sound that might have been a laugh and I ducked my head to hide my bright cheeks.
“I’ll organize these into text only,” Tatsuo said as I stood. “This new spell should suffice for those. We’ll plan for the others after your meal.”
I thanked them both and then took Callum’s waiting hand.
“Do you mind eating as we walk?” he asked as we reached the doors. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“I need the walk. I’m not used to sitting while I’m working.”
People stared at us on the grounds and I kept my eyes on the sandwich Callum passed me from his bag.
“It’s because of the library,” Callum said glancing between the gawkers and me.
“It could just as easily be because I’m with you,” I said, looking up at him. His hair was reddish in the sunlight, his smile nervous, and it gave me a good reason to quit staring at the ground. “It happens with Aiden or Isaac too.”
“People like to gossip,” he said, shrugging.
“It is a long time,” I said, thinking of Aiden’s decades of waiting.
Callum was quiet for a stretch, and then he released my hand. I thought for a moment I made a misstep saying anything, but he only wrapped his arm around my waist.
“Worth the wait,” he said, so quiet I almost didn’t hear.
But it made the nerves in my stomach swoop and spin dizzily, uncertain if I was scared or delighted by the finality in his words. Afraid that they might be a lie…or that they would turn out to be wrong.
“Are we…I thought the woods were restricted?” I asked as I realized we were headed to the edge of campus, trees turning dense ahead of us.
“They are and we won’t go far in,” Callum said. “But Isaac called me out when he saw what was happening.”
Before I could ask, Isaac appeared from behind a massive tree trunk in a dark wool coat. His expression, knotted and dark, eased as he spotted us and he jogged over. I accepted the kiss as he reached me, smiling and feeling the night’s light sweetness as it lingered. Callum was watching us as Isaac stepped back, looking almost shy. Isaac smirked at me and then pulled Callum in as well, the taller man’s eyebrows raising for a moment before his eyes fell shut and his shoulders relaxed. They parted slowly, gazes full of a familiar kind of understanding and I ignored the warm twist in my belly at the sight.
“I didn’t think you’d listen to me,” Isaac said to him, cheeks dimpling.
“She’s safe with us,” Callum murmured, eyes soft and sleepy with affection. “And you’re right,” he said before turning to me, “You’ve been living outside of serious spellcraft so long, it’s better to share as much as we can with you.”
“I don’t know that I’d call this spellcraft,” Isaac said, tone darkening. “Come see.”
I followed with Callum, lifting my skirt to avoid catching it on briars as the forest brush turned wilder the farther we walked in. Fall had caught up with the woods, the colors dimming and the smell of growth gone musty and wet. And, somehow stranger, a stillness had fallen. There were no other sounds, no other movement, than ours as we travelled.
“This is far enough,” Callum said and there was a touch at my elbow as if he thought of holding me and then reconsidered.
I stopped and stuck close to his side and Isaac backtracked to us, framing me at my right.
“Do you see it?” he asked.
I looked up at Callum, expecting him to answer but his eyes were fixed up, wary and distant and I realized he was keeping an eye out for any danger. Any sign of what had come to the library. Isaac nudged me and I looked back into the woods. Was it the silence? Was there some kind of familiar scene here that I should recognize? But I hadn’t walked this part of the woods before, at least not as far as I knew. And it was Isaac that had noticed the change which meant…
“There’s no…green,” I said. It sounded stupid as it came out of my mouth but I was staring at an evergreen tree that was a dull slate gray. I thought of home and walking in winter and even on the grayest of days in the deepest of snow there was still a little life. “And no animals,” I added.
Callum stirred next to me, turning to Isaac, “Is it…?”
“Complete,” Isaac said. “Not a single spot of green up until about four yards from the campus. It’s like this for miles around. The west end is still good.”
“You shouldn’t have gone in that deep,” Callum said.
“I wasn’t alone,” Isaac said, and they watched each other for a moment before Isaac smiled. “If you mean I shouldn’t have done something dangerous without you just say so.”