This book was illustrated. In explicit detail.Damn. The image in front of me was a man spreadeagled on a bed, all four limbs tied to the posts with intricate knot work. It reminded me of how I’d tied up Kirin for our knife play session, stopping him from getting away. Instead of being focused on pain, though, this activity was pure pleasure. Pleasure to the point of being uncomfortable, which was something I’d never considered as a possibility.
A disembodied hand covered his cock, and cum was covering him as his expression twisted into one of discomfort. When I looked closer at the illustration, his strained muscles were obvious. He was pulling and trying to get away, hips pressed into the mattress but his cock unable to escape the touch.
Off to the side there was a simple illustration of a mechanism, not done to the same level of detail as the man. It had a series of tubes and a square holding chamber, but I had no clue what it did until I read the note below the graphic.
Milking machine. Attach to the subject’s cock, infuse the runes with magic, and the machine will do all the work of bringing them to orgasm and making them ultra sensitive to touch.
On the opposite page a few paragraphs described the process of milking a subject, and the multiple interpretations of the term. Some people used the machine, others preferred hands and mouths. All were valid ways of participating in the kink.
“Sounds like something you would have fun with,” I commented after I’d finished skimming.
My mind was brewing with ideas, but I truly didn’t have the time. Now I had a lead, I needed to focus on it. Not on having sex with my murderers. No amount of telling myself they must have a good reason would actually make a good reason appear, so my feelings for them should be nothing more than lust and hatred. Tell that to my brain, though.
Either way, I closed the book and got back to work on the shelves. Kirin didn’t say anything else, wallowing in his embarrassment in the doorway while I flipped through book after book. I’d gotten through half the shelving before something caught my eye.
The thin spine was out of place among the thick fiction and non-fiction tombs. It screamed of a children’s book, which wasn’t in Kirin’s usual repertoire. I’d come across so much erotica I was sure he spent ninety per cent of his time reading it. When I slid the book off the shelf, I internally cursed myself for being so stupid. I should have been looking in here from the beginning, because this book was a childhood favourite of mine.
There were no coincidences in this house, and anything relating back to my childhood was a clue. Or a red herring, but I had a good feeling about this one.
“Weird, that definitely doesn’t belong to me,” Kirin said.
Childish illustrations decorated the front cover, a forest with glowing pixies flitting around. Not pixies like Waylon, who was only slightly smaller than a human. True pixies no taller than the length of my arm, darting around on wings that looked too big for their bodies. The title was in an easily readable script font.Beware the Pixie Forest.
I’d loved the book as a child because of the pretty visuals, but remembering the story now, it held some poor views. Pixies were crafty and evil. If you looked into the eyes of one, they would steal your soul. My parents hadn’t loved the book, but had allowed me to read it since I loved it so much. I remembered them telling me pixies weren’t really the way they were portrayed in the book, using words a five-year-old would understand.
Come to think of it, why had they gotten me the story when they didn’t like the contents? Mom read every book before I did, and there were plenty my friends had access to that I wasn’t allowed to read.
The only logical conclusion was that it was some kind of gift from Uncle Felix, during the time he was watching me and none of us knew he was around.
Opening the book, I stared at the familiar pictures, reading the words on the page.
#
One day, Vanessa wandered into the pixie forest.
She saw pretty pixies playing in the trees, and didn’t know she was in danger.
#
The illustration was a young girl staring in awe up at the tree, where pixies were playing. On the next page, similar negative language was used about the pixies. The author made it seem like Vanessa was playing with fire, on the brink of death if the pixies chose to attack her. By the end of the short and simple book, Vanessa was being grabbed by her mother and spirited out of the pixie forest. I’d never realized before, but the implication was the forest was burned to the ground behind them.
It was also implied the destruction of the pixie forest and its inhabitants was a good thing.
This book was fucked up.
Running my fingers along the haze of smoke on the last page, only covering a small part of the corner while most of the illustration focused on Vanessa escaping with her mother, I felt a tingle of magic.
Thank Ixaris, this wasn’t a red herring. Something was hiding beneath the story, hidden by magic. I knew plenty of spells to reveal secrets hidden in books from my time working in the Grand Library. The scholars who ran the library didn’t want magic on their books or documents, and they certainly didn’t want it bleeding over into other ancient tomes. Magic could be volatile.
I tried a couple of my spells until the words shifted and change on the page. When Difrenen letters stared up at me, I nearly sobbed in relief.
Finally. I had a spell to break the seal.
Chapter 22
Ididmyduediligence on the Difrenen spell and everything else in the book, ensuring it was what I was looking for. My translation told me it was. The spell was specifically formulated for breaking long-standing seals to keep people trapped. No details accompanied the spell, but my research on individual parts claimed it would perform better at a specific time and date, which depended on the characteristics of the seal that was being broken.
I had my time and date, too. Tonight, the night of a full moon, at two in the morning.
