“You brought breakfast?” Mercedes looked at me curiously.
I shrugged. “I thought we could all use it. Or Kitsuna did.”
“Right.” She followed me as I set the tray down on the main table in the center of the library. She picked up a muffin made with some sort of green fruit I didn’t recognize that sort of tasted like cherries. “Breakfast. Solves all our problems, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. “We may not have any idea about what the Dragon’s Tear is, but maybe the muffins will help us think more clearly?”
“And if we find the tear, you’ll destroy it, won’t you?”
“I have to.” I took a bite of my muffin. “It’s the only way to keep everyone safe.”
“Allie, if you destroy it, we’ll have lost two relics, and we still won’t be home. We’ll be trapped here. Won’t we?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “But we’re already trapped here anyway. We can’t go home.”
“Of course not,” Mercedes snapped, glaring at me. “Because somewhere along the line, after they plopped that crown on your head, you forgot that going home was what this was all supposed to be about. Finding a way to get us home. Not staying here and playing queen.”
Before I could say anything she grabbed another muffin and stormed past me, deeper into the library.
“Crap.” I sighed and turned to Kitsuna, who offered me a cup of tea. “That could have gone better.”
“Yes. It could have.” She looked around the library.
I followed her gaze, taking in Aquella, Boreas, and Darinda standing with their heads together over a scroll, chewing on muffins, but Mercedes was nowhere to be found. Weird.
“So, where do we start?” Kitsuna asked, her voice hushed as if the books themselves were forcing us to stay quiet.
“No idea.” I walked over to the nearest bookshelf and grabbed a green leather-bound book and read the spine: Criminal Trials of the Great Fairy Rebellion of 922. Probably not going to be helpful.
“I guess we start digging through these books and figure out what the heck it is we’re looking for.” I grabbed another book, this one bound in black, and read the heavy silver letters on the spine: Naiad Culture: A History for Nincompoops. This might take longer than I’d first thought.
“Come on,” Kitsuna said, motioning toward the far wall. “Let’s go ask the map. She’ll know where the dragon section is.”
I walked over to the Tree Folk stand and peered down at the piece of parchment trapped beneath the glass. “Hello.”
The map hummed in reply and words appeared on its surface. “What can I help you with today, Your Majesty?”
“I have no idea what I’m looking for, actually. So I was hoping you could guide me.”
Two tiny Xs appeared on the map, directly in the center of the library—where the case stood—and when I peered down at them I saw that the one X had a note on it that said, “You are here.” The other had a note on it that said, “You are not here.”
Well, that was helpful.
I moved closer and pressed my nose against the glass so that I could read the tiny script on the map. “Not so close” scrolled across the top of the map in bold calligraphy. “You’ll smudge my glass.”
I moved back slightly and narrowed my eyes at the case. “Is that better?”
“Much, thank you.”
Kitsuna shook her head, and I couldn’t help but grin. “Tree Folk wood. Always sassy, rarely helpful,” I said as I thought about how the doors—and the furniture in my bedroom—all had the same attitude.
The legends of Nerissette said that the Tree Folk were a tribe of dryads that had become so close to their trees they’d given up human form and became trees themselves. Then, one day, during the Great Wizard Wars, before the Pleiades showed themselves to the people of Nerissette, the Tree Folk had been destroyed—turned into various objects that could think for themselves. In the case of the Crystal Palace, it meant that we had living furniture in some places. Living furniture with way too much attitude.
“I need to know where the books related to the Dragon’s Tear can be found in the library,” I said.
“Dragon books are found in section four.” The words floated across the top of the map and I watched as a small area of the map—section four—began to glow. “Books about tears and sadness can be found in various places. Please be more specific.”
“I don’t want to know about tears.” I bit my lower lip. “I want to know about the Dragon’s Tear—the relic. I need to know about the relics.”
“Books on prisons, alchemists, and the search for eternal life can be found in the following areas of the library.” The map began to glow in three different sections, one near the top of the third floor, another in the very back of the library, and the third somewhere off to the left, in a section labeled Necromancy. I swallowed and then looked up to see a glowing light coming from what I thought just might be the “raising the dead” section of the library. Not really a place I wanted to go if I could help it.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I tried not to roll my eyes. Tree Folk furniture could think—it was sentient—but as I’d found through various trips to the library, the map didn’t always tell you what you wanted to know, more what it thought you needed to know.
“It is my strongest recommendation that you search for your answers in section four.”
“Right.” I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Come on,” Kitsuna said.
I gave the case one last look before turning to follow Kitsuna along the highlighted path the map had laid out on the floor. We made our way up the spiral staircase toward section four, and climbed onto the balcony on second floor of the library. I was careful not to look across the railing or down below. It wasn’t that I was afraid of heights, it was just that suddenly the barrier between open air and me didn’t look nearly sturdy enough. If one of us tripped it was a long way down to a very hard marble floor.
“You okay?”
I tried to smile but all I managed was a weak grimace instead. “Fine.”
Kitsuna eyed the space in front of us uneasily. “I’m glad we’re not up in the higher sections near the third and fourth floor. What about you?”
“You can’t be afraid of heights.” I glanced over at her. “You’re a dragon. A dragon. That’s like being afraid of fire even though hello? Dragons are fireproof.”
“I’m a wryen,” she said, “and no, I’m not afraid of heights. I like being up high just fine. What I don’t like is falling. Which seems like a real possibility right here. So come on, let’s go find some books on dragons and just how great it is to be fireproof.”
“Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “The book with the title 10,000 Things You Didn’t Know About the Dragon’s Tear and Where to Locate It. What else?”
“If only it were that simple, huh?”
“It’ll be fine. We still have two days,” Kitsuna said.
“That’s not much time.”
“But the upside is that we only have to search the palace and not all of Nerissette. That makes it easier. At least we’re not going to find out that it’s a half a day’s flight away in one of the far settlements of the Firas. Or, even worse, inside one of Arianne of the Veldt’s hair decorations.”
“You do have a point,” I said. “Now, if I were a book on legendary dragon relics that can be used to destroy the world, where would I hide?”