Rejected (Shadow Beast Shifters #1) - Jaymin Eve Page 0,73

deaths actually weakened her power-wise?

“Ms. Mera!”

I spun as Lady Hel dashed up. The demi-fey royal didn’t usually speak directly to me, but it seemed she had a message.

“Hey, Lady,” I said with a smile. “What’s up?”

She was briefly confused by my turn of phrase before she plastered a smile back on. “Master wants us to release you from sweeping duty. You’ve paid off your initial daem loan and can now move on to other tasks. He wasn’t sure what you’d like to do instead, though. Do you have any ideas?”

Gaster looked ecstatic by this news. “You can roam around now and check out more books.”

It clearly hadn’t escaped his attention that while I’d been “sweeping,” I’d managed to do a lot of reading too.

“That sounds amazing…” I trailed off as a familiar face came into view, back in the shelves. Someone I desperately needed to speak with. “Let me just wander for a while. Maybe a new task will come to me,” I finished, distracted.

Gaster and Lady Hel didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, yes, fantastic idea,” he said. “You explore the many shelves, read the books that catch your eye, but don’t try to unlock any books that have a key insert on them.”

That caught my full attention. “Key insert?”

He spun and perused the nearest shelves before apparently finding one of these “untouchable” tomes. “See this,” he said, holding the spine close to my face. Straightaway, I noticed the small metal insert, with its perfectly round hole. “They’re locked for the safety of the reader or to protect classified information. It will zap you quite hard if you try to bypass the lock, and I’m not sure if you’d be strong enough…”

He trailed off, but we all got the gist of what he was saying.

“No worries, Gaster,” I said. “Plenty to read here without worrying about ones that might burn my eyes out.”

He was all smiles again, satisfied his warning had been delivered, as he placed the non-descript book back in the shelf. “Call if you need me,” he cried before hurrying off again. If I had one tenth of his energy, I’d probably be a hell of a lot more accomplished than I was.

But there was no time to worry about my laziness, as I went into stealth mode, stalking the male I’d caught sight of before: Len of the Silver Lands. This was the first time I’d seen any of Shadow’s friends in here, and I was not wasting the opportunity.

The fae was dressed in silver robes again, these ones even more elaborate and exquisite than the last set. How he walked about with so many gems and all that metal adorning his arms was beyond me, but it didn’t seem to hinder him as he grabbed at random books. He was searching for something specific, and almost everything left a disappointed look on his face.

“You could help, rather than lurk in the shadows,” he said, not turning. “Pun intended.”

Pun? Some sort of dig about Shadow that I wasn’t quite getting.

I stepped out from behind the shelves. “How long have you known I was there?”

He chuckled, a deep, rich sound that I was pretty sure contained all the fucking magic of the world, if the sensation along my skin was any indication. “I saw you before you were even born, sweet wolf. There’s nowhere you can hide.”

What?

“Okay, sure, that makes sense.” Not even remotely. “But for real… Do you need any help with your search?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve been searching for a long time to reclaim a special gem that should have been passed down through my family. It was stolen by someone we trusted. There’s very little chance it will ever be recovered, and yet, when I have free time, I still search through the books for any mention.”

He jerked his head toward the shelves, although any movement that smooth couldn’t really be described as a jerk. “Faerie tomes update themselves using magic. Only there’s never anything new about our stone, and without it, we are significantly weakened.”

I’d read more than a few Faerie books and had a pretty good idea what he was talking about. “You can store magic in your gems to boost your own power, right?”

It was why he wore so many on his person, and why his family was particularly powerful, despite the missing gem. Royals were not born to their position in his culture; they took it with force. I also knew that the gems that could store power were