Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,66

don’t think it’s still a Society library?”

“I don’t really know.” She looked around. The library had a faint glowing light coming up from the floor, drifting up softly, shimmering along the stones around the perimeter of the room. All of it was enchanted. It gave a warm light, bright enough to read by. “You think you can help me find what I need to?”

“I can try,” he said, shaking his head. “I really do have things I need to be doing today.”

“I’m not going to keep you from your assignments.”

“You already have,” Char said and glanced at the door. “We should probably close that. I don’t want Master Agnew to realize I have you in here.”

“What would he say if he realized you had some woman inside of the outpost?”

“You aren’t just some woman, are you?”

“I suppose not.”

“You’re Jayna Aguelon, sorceress.”

She laughed softly, closing the door and locking herself in with Char. “I’m not so much a sorceress.”

“No. You’re something else.” Char watched her for a moment before tearing his gaze away and looking around at the books. “Now for us to figure out where we might find what you’re looking for.” He shrugged. “I can’t say what we might find here, and I can’t tell you whether there’s anything you’re looking for here, but I can help.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” she said.

“You’re asking for more than that,” he said.

“I wasn’t. But . . .” She shrugged. “If you think we might find something that would help me with other aspects of what I’m doing in the city, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

“You have been opposed to it,” Char said. “I’ve tried to offer you information about your friend, but you haven’t wanted to know anything about her.”

“That might have changed,” Jayna said softly.

“Why?”

Jayna forced a smile. “I don’t want to go into it now, but let’s just say that I think I’ve learned something about her.”

Char watched her for a long moment before shaking his head. “I don’t know where we’re going to find what you’re looking for, but if it’s going to be anywhere within the outpost, it’s going to be here. Unfortunately, nothing here is organized all that well, so it’s going to take time.” He glanced over to her. “You have some time, don’t you?”

Jayna took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Did she?

There was something going on. Dark magic. Someone hunting sorcerers, or dark magic users. A dark sorcerer trying to instigate something in the city and get the dular agitated. The enchantments made to look like the Ashara were involved in all of it.

And given what had happened, Jayna felt that figuring out whether the Ashara were truly involved was the most pressing need. She needed to help Eva understand herself and whether there was anything for her to be concerned about when it came to all of this.

“I have time, but do you?”

“For you, I always make time.”

He held her gaze then looked away, and Jayna felt a stirring of guilt and regret mixed with a bit of longing. She wasn’t sure how to handle these emotions, or how to react to them.

She and Char had always been friends, from the moment they had come to the Academy. They were never more than that—other than one late night where they had kissed. They had both wanted only friendship.

But the way Char had looked at her just now . . .

She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t have time for those sorts of emotions, not with everything that was going on around her. But every so often, she found herself casting a glance in Char’s direction, wondering what things might have been like had she found a way to remain in the Academy. They could’ve come to the outpost together. They could’ve trained together. They could have been together.

Now, given what she had done, the way she had pursued power and the reason behind it, they would never be.

It was one more thing dark magic had stripped from her.

15

Many of the books in the library were old, some of them impossibly so. She had to pull out each book one by one and look at the cover before shoving it back into the shelving. There was something almost cozy about the library. Maybe it was just that she was surrounded by books again, something she had not had the luxury of since leaving the Academy. Or perhaps it was just working with Char, and the reminder of what her life might