The darkness recedes. Slowly at first, then quicker as something warm spreads her heat, giving me some of her soul flame. My bleary eyes blink open.

We’re still in the Underground. The thuds of feet and the muted hush of whispered voices come from all around, along with the slight buzz of hundreds of wings. There are vast ceilings above us, and I shiver, not from cold, but from the thought of the weight above us and what would happen if it collapsed.

“Aria?”

I glance over, and Silver reaches for my hand, squeezing my cold fingers. His eyes rake me from head to toe, the silver burning a feverish light. Fairies sit on his shoulders, one nestled right under his ear where his neck meets his shoulder. My lips turn in a smile. He doesn’t look quite so dangerous when fairies are cuddling up to him. It’s cute.

“How do you feel?”

I take stock, wiggling my fingers, toes, and moving my arms and legs. I smack my lips, strangely relived they aren’t numb anymore. Numb lips are really odd. “Sore, but alive. You shouldn’t have come back.”

He gives me a straight look, pushing a lock of hair behind my ear. “You asked me to, remember? Or did you really think I’d abandon you because of a tiny fight?” he asks.

Warmth pools in my soul. I smile, closing my eyes and basking in the delightful shivers racing from his simple touch on my face. But there are more important things than falling for this guy.

Falling? Hah. You’ve taken the plunge over the Centrefuge icecap and dropped farther than a dragon can swim.

I ignore Ran, even as I feel her purr beneath me and clench my fingers in her warm fur. How I’ve missed the feel of her smooth gait beneath me, of being one with my most wonderful friend. "I can't tell you what you mean to me, Silver. What your actions have given me. You are a blessing. And I'm sorry for sending you away. For forcing you to be someone you're not," I say, squeezing his hand and basking in his gentle smile. What words will never say is what I've finally realized. This relationship has been dreadfully one sided... if you can call it a relationship. I'm treading thin ice here, not knowing what to do or what's expected of me from here. But what I do know is that he's been patient and genuine in his support of me... while I've been taking. Taking his time. taking his energy, taking his prowess in battle and hardly giving anything back.

"It's my pleasure to do what little I can to support you in your trials." He glances at me, taking my hand, then looks around as if checking for enemies.

But I shake my head. "No, Silver. No. Don't make what you've done smaller. You have done what no one else knew to do. You've saved me from myself and supported me when no one else even saw me. Not as you did and do. So thank you. You're my hero."

His ears go pink, and my grin broadens as he looks away from me, clearing his throat. "Where to?" he asks.

I try not to smile or bring further attention to his ears. He's a darling of a teddy bear beneath that bulky assassin exterior. “Library. And hopefully the fairies will let you in. I’m still excommunicated.”

“We’ll see if that stands after I deal with them,” was what I think he said with bitter venom snaking through the words.

“What was that?” I ask, staring at him.

He coughs. “Nothing. Library it is.”

“Anyone else hurt?”

He glances around. “All alive and accounted for. Madame Nika lost a finger and a few of the others nearly didn’t make it back. The fairies healed them.”

A fairy flutters and lands in front of me on Ran’s neck. He watches me through eyes of emerald green, cocking his head. Then he bows.

“We thank you, Mistress Guardian, for your help. I am Cedric of Clan Tulip.” His voice is surprisingly deep, and I have to swallow a laugh when such a deep and stately voice proclaims Tulip in such a serious manner. Part of me realizes I’m finding everything extra humorous. It needs to stop. Like now.

I bite my tongue to keep my lips from turning up and give him a nod of my head. “It’s nice to meet you, Cedric. How are the fairies?”

He bows again, a wreath of leaves on his forehead shivering with the movement as his green wings flutter. “They fare well, my lady. Is it true you shall take us to the library?”

I nod. “It is—unless you wish to go elsewhere?” I say, noting the slant of his brows and the unease of his shifting feat.

He pauses, looking over. I follow his gaze, seeing his eyes riveted on Natasha, who’s helping a another fairy bind a wing of a freed fairy. “It may cause disturbance, my lady,” he says, voice low and deepening with something I can’t name.

“How?” I ask, trying to keep my voice soft.

“Once upon a moon, many seasons ago, I may have tried for the crown and was banished.” He won’t meet my eyes.

My eyebrows rise. Oh. So now I’ve freed the fairy king’s competitor… or maybe he’s a traitor? I don’t know enough about the fairies to say. “What about the others?” I ask.

He shakes his head, tiny green leaves fluttering from his head to land on Ran’s mane. She seems not to mind, if she even knows. “No, madame. They will be welcomed with open arms.”

I bite my cheek, thinking. He’s not going back, not if they’re gonna kill him after I just freed him. But at the same time, if he’s guilty of wrong-doing, I can’t just free him.

Well booger. I just discovered my purpose and already there’s problems.

I look him in the eye, and he holds my gaze, his filled with remorse. My Gift flares, sending warmth tingling through my limbs, and I gasp. It’s almost like she’s sending a thank you through my soul for taking the burden from her. That’s going to take some getting used to.

Silver squeezes my fingers. I stroke his hand absently to let him know I’m alright.

My Gift flows into me, bringing thoughts, hopes, dreams, and ideas into my own, but instead of overwhelming me as I experience each minute detail, it’s as if I’m reading it in a book or hearing it from someone else. Still startling and uncomfortable, but not near as debilitating.

I focus on the little fairy before me, and his eyes widen as I gently probe his soul, feeling the remorse he holds but also a strange pride, as if he’d do it again if given the chance. He holds a deep hate for the king—oh my word.

I nearly cackle in glee, clapping my hands, my soul lighting with joy.

We are visiting the library tonight.

It’s time for me to stop taking wolf excrement from those I’ve saved and start demanding the respect I’ve earned.

I’m taking my life, my city, and my future into my own hands.

I’m done being the underrat. It’s time I began being the Guardian this city needs, the Protector this world needs, and the Empath The King made me to be.

I’ve found my purpose, and nothing’s going to stop me now.

I enter the library as I used to, entering the odd door-like thing on the third level and shivering as the almost watery feel of the sheer door passes over my skin and leaves me dry once I’m through. I glance around, smiling at the labrynth.

A girl once sat here with her wolf, learning about the world, escaping into other worlds, and trying to understand her place in this world while looking for a cure for her sister.

The woman who stands here now is not the same. I was a naive girl with a penchant for trouble and scrambling to find answers where none could be found. Now… now I have withstood the flames life threw and I became hardened steel, forged into a blade which The King could wield to defend and kill—but wants to use to protect freedom and break chains.

A deep breath of the comforting scents of ink and parchment and the smoke of fires and the one scent I can’t name which will always be the library fills my nose. My hand caresses the library paneling. It pulses with warmth beneath my hand, and I smile, then I tap into my Gift and fall into a vast chamber of knowledge pulsing with emotion.

It welcomes me, nearly overwhelming me with things I can’t comprehend and images I have no context for. I see something flying in the sky that looks like a dragon, but it’s all polished silver and armored steel. I see streets teeming with people in odd clothing, and then I see the deepest parts of the ocean, where blackness is its own character and the creatures there are things of nightmare.

I wouldn’t exactly call it a person. It feels more like an animal, speaking in emotion and images.

I gently ease it back, pushing as if it were a Timber Wolf getting too close to my personal space. It recoils slightly, as if broken in spirit or tucking its tail, but I pat its metaphorical head and it perks back up.

“You are the sweetest thing, aren’t you?” I say, and feel it wag it’s metaphorical tail, yipping in excitement as it throws images of sunshine and warmth and vast rows of books at me. I try to send a warm hug, kinda the feeling it welcomed me with all those years, and it settles down, and I feel a vibration rumble through my feet and the walls.

Heck. It’s purring.

Silver hisses out a breath, a silver blade half-way from it’s scabbard as the ground rumbles again, but this time with warning.

Without opening my eyes or breaking connection, I reach out a hand to stop Silver from drawing a blade. I can feel the unhappiness of the library at weapons within it’s realm, but it allows it because it realizes we don’t know the rules.

The rules flash into my mind, an old parchment written in a hand I nearly can’t decipher, but the library helps where I get stuck. The main ones are books returned on time with proper respect for the timeless papers, no open flames around the books, no disrupting a reading apprentice, no sabotaging a fellow student to win the Month-End Accolades, and no weapons within the hallowed grounds above the second floor and below the fiftieth. There are others I can’t quite understand.

Wait… there are fifty floors?!?

Fleeting questions race through my mind, and the library answers them as it’s able. Images of people, from children all the way up to near adults, racing through the hallways and into classes, getting into scuffles, battling with other mages in mock fights, winning games of battle and wit to earn the Accolades.

A surge of surprise sends tingles down my back. I gasp. This was once a school of learning. A school for Gifted.

A school of mages.

Loneliness threads through me. I realize it’s not mine. It’s the library’s.

“So long, you’ve been unused. Forgotten. Abandoned. I am so sorry,” I whisper, rubbing my hands along its walls and feeling its dejection.

Its very purpose was to help the Headmaster watch out for his students. To keep them safe, to provide learning areas for the children who couldn’t yet protect themselves and were a risk to others because of their Gifts.

A tear trails down my face. What would have been if this place still ran when I was a child? Could they have provided answers, given me a safe place to learn and grow without learning to hate myself and my Gift?

Sorrow filters through the library walls and communes with mine. Gifts are now harbored in families, few knowing who has what by edict if a king long ago, before my grandfather’s grandfather’s time. The king wanted no one to know what talents were Given to his mage knights because then no one would be prepared to fight them.

Surprise he used, and it seemed good at the time.

But now, generations later, I can see what that one simple law cost us all. Children with Gifts born outside the nobility are growing up, not knowing about their Gifts, not using them, hurting others, or getting hurt because of them.

Very few commoners have them at all, or go about life without knowing they have a Gift at all, and most nobles carry them with both pride and horror, according to Jenny.

It needs to change, but I don’t know where to begin. Jill’s Gifts are breaking her, and it hurts me with each tear she dashes away when she accidentally kills a flower or a bug. So far, she hasn’t done anything more to harm a person or animal, but who knows what would happen if she loses control?

A gentle stroking of my mind brings me back to the library, and a gentle pressure makes known what it wants.

Bring her here.

It shows me the measures it has for dangerous students, how it can protect her and those around her both, ingrained into its foundation by its creator.

I sniffle as it gives me a hope I never dared even imagine when I learned of Jill’s competing Gifts and her struggle.

The library pulses with something I can’t exactly name. It’s excitement is a rampaging thing that nearly flattens me to the ground with happiness. Then a voice speaks into my mind.

Headmistress, it says softly, sounding both as old as the bones buried hundreds of layers beneath my feet and as giddy as a ten-year-old girl.

I blink, staring at the wall. What is your name?

I feel it’s confusion. I know names. Many names. Oliftrun the Great, Ginshun the Wicked, Kilijun who founded this school--

I smile. I know you know names. But what is yours?

My… name?

I start with a different thread of thought. My name is Aria Rosen, and my sister’s name is Jill. The man with me is called Silver.

I… have been known by many names.

Which name do you like?

Like?

Heck, this is like climbing a bucking Bamshee’s scales. What can I call you?

You may call me cognitis.

It is nice to meet you, Cognitis.

You as well, headmistress Aria Rosen.

My grin stretches across my face as I feel the happiness of the hallowed building as it once again has purpose after a long and dreary time of waiting. A person without purpose is miserable.

I should well know.

The same thing happened to the library.

But with purpose… nothing can stop a person—or library—who know’s what they're meant for and are determined to carry it to fruition.

“I banished you.”

I sigh, banging my head against the library wall. Couldn't the idiot of a sprite give me a few more moments to bask in my newest discovery?