At the table, she pulled open the tie and placed it on the wood top. Then, with a careful hand, she opened the cover.
The pages were yellowed from age and emitted a musty scent. As though it had not been opened in decades. Perhaps longer.
The only word she recognized in the foreign—not magical—language was one.Cassoné.
She turned the page. Someone had spent a great deal of time writing lengthy prose in a careful script. She stared at it hard, willing her mind to translate it. To understand. Toknow.
And then something clicked insider her. That was when she knew the words would flow. She sat in the chair, her heart pumping hard and fast with the first glimmers of excitement and began to read.
Chapter 21
Leopoldpacedthelonghallway outside the library. Dickens said she’d returned there, shut the door, and hadn’t emerged for the last several hours.
It was nearly dusk.
Part of him was desperate to enter the room, to see her hunched over the book, scratching away with her quill. The other part of him was desperate to hide from her forever. He didn’t want to face her. He didn’t want to see pity on her face or fear. He didn’t want her to turn away from him.
And yet, he was still pacing the length of the hallway when Dickens arrived.
“My prince?” His voice echoed down the long corridor.
Leopold halted and raked a hand through his hair. The brand on his forehead burned and throbbed. The closer full twilight came, the more unnerved he was. He sensed the oncoming shift deep with him. And he feared it.
“She’s still in there, Dickens.”
Dickens glanced at the door. “Shall I retrieve her? It’s nearly dusk.”
“I know, I know.” He puffed out a breath. “If she’s translating, though, I don’t want to disturb her.”
He lifted a brow in question. “Is she close to a breakthrough?”
The truth was he didn’t know. The truth was, deep down, he was afraid. He was afraid his long-sought-after goal was finally going to come to fruition. And if it did, and he was nothing more than a mortal man, then what? Would he still be rattling around this enormous castle with no one but Dickens to keep him company?
A sharp shooting pain sliced through his heart.
He did not want to be alone in this castle anymore with Dickens. Not that Dickens wasn’t good company…it was just that after five hundred years one grew tired of each other.
His gaze cored into the library door.
No, he did not want to be alone in this castle any longer. He wanted to share it with someone. He wanted to fill the hollow halls with love and laughter. He wanted… No, he could not think it. He shoved the thought away almost as quickly as it came into being.
But yet, it leapt into his mind, anyway.
He wanted Bella.
“My prince?” Dickens prompted.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, his voice terse and thin. Agitated. He was agitated.
“If she’s to return to town before nightfall—”
“I’ll see to her.”
Leopold stomped down the corridor, his shoes thumping on the tile. He shoved open the door with a forceful hand and paused inside the threshold, her gaze halting on the table.
She wasn’t there. Her chair was empty. The book was closed.
In a panic, he rushed inside, looking through the rows of bookshelves for her. She was nowhere. As he turned toward the small seating area under the rose lancet window, there she was.
