Chapter Thirty-Three

Summary

• The characters are in a dark archive, where mage lights are blocked, and they are navigating through it carefully to avoid detection or injury.
• Xaden, one character, slips away to deal with two guards to clear a path for the group.
• After incapacitating the guards, they move quickly down a hallway with powerful wards and into a protected library that smells damp and earthy but feels cool and magical.
• Xaden refuses to let another character, Aaric, pull him through the warded archway due to their antagonistic relationship.
• The characters search frantically for two specific journals among hundreds of tomes, with Aaric and the protagonist Violet moving into the warded library to search for them.
• They only have a limited time to find the journals and escape before the doors to the archives seal shut.
• Despite feeling sick from the magic, Violet and Aaric examine several books in the library, searching for anything related to wards or wardstones.
• They discuss the political and historical context of their quest, hinting at larger conflicts and secrets kept within their group.
• With time running short, Violet discovers a hidden compartment under a velvet tablecloth with the sought-after journals, secured by additional wards.
• Aaric, risking harm, retrieves the two journals but suffers blistering burns from the protective wards.
• Violet stores each journal in separate satchels for safekeeping as they prepare to flee the archive.
• The group rushes to escape the archives, chased by the bells signaling the imminent sealing of the doors.
• In a dramatic finale, Xaden uses his shadow magic to keep the door open just long enough for all of them, including Violet and Imogen, to escape, while narrowly avoiding being trapped inside.