!!! AVAILABLE ONLY ON AMAZON!!!
• • •
The Empire of Beasts is a cursed nation where beasts live.
But Elynn is only aware of the latter part, and yet not quite.
As Elynn discovers a solution to save her younger sister from the annual offering to the...
¡Ay! Esta imagen no sigue nuestras pautas de contenido. Para continuar la publicación, intente quitarla o subir otra.
I PRETENDED I WAS feeling unwell, this way escaping Alise with Irisa. They watched me until I disappeared in the direction of my home, but little did they know I took the other, longer route to the library, winding through the buildings.
The lovely librarian lady welcomed me with her usual contagious smile. It was impossible not to smile back.
I neared her desk. "Kristian told me more additions were arriving. Are they here already?"
"Yes," she said. "Do you want to see them all?"
I nodded.
"Come this way."
I followed her to the small table standing before one bookshelf with two unpacked cardboard boxes on it.
"All the new books are here. None have been shelved yet."
"Can I go through them?"
She chuckled. "Of course. I'll leave you to it and hope you find what you're looking for."
As I watched her go towards the desk, I wondered if she knew why I was so eager to go through the new books. She must be suspecting it, at least, as it wouldn't take a fool to figure out why a girl was entering a library once a week and inspecting all the bookshelves, only to leave empty-handed. Especially when everybody in town knew the names of sixteen-year-olds who'd be offered this year, Gen's name included.
I opened the boxes and started the search. There were gardening and cooking books I would never pick in my life, and then there were two novels. One was a romance; the other was a mystery. I picked the mystery one for my mum. However, there weren't any that could have an answer I'd been looking for all along.
Hiding my disappointment, I came back to the desk and put a mystery novel on it.
"Is this what you were looking for?" she asked.
I chuckled aloud without meaning to. If my problems revolved around finding a perfect mystery book, my life would be simple to live.
"It's for my mum."
"Oh." She smiled, but there was something sympathetic about her smile. "Well, I have to register it first, then you can have it. Meanwhile, you can explore. Maybe you'll find something you missed."
Doubtful, but I didn't object and disappeared between the bookshelves.
I wished there was something I'd missed, but there was no book with a loophole that could save Gen from the offering. I'd investigated every nook and cranny of this library many times, and my chances of finding something worthwhile remained practically non-existent.
And yet I stayed here, hopelessly expecting a new book with the answer written in it would fall into my hands, even if that had never happened before.
Sometimes I wondered if the offering wasn't a deception. Teachers had said we offered minors because it was the sign of peace between the Mortal Region and the Empire of Beasts that they'd reached years and years after the ending of the Hundred Years' War. But what if it was a lie? I'd done my investigation, finding no written proof of it being true.
