For several moments, Quinn and Malakai watched the door Arnekai and Milaro left through. They stood side by side, their shoulders touching ever so slightly, content in knowing that the other was okay. Just the atmosphere, the ability to relax and not have to be doing something every moment she was awake, soothed her.

Quinn hadn’t realized how much she’d missed his constant presence. Over the course of the last few months, Malakai had become a shadow by her side, always there, intervening, making sure she was protected, even when she didn’t necessarily need it. Until he wasn’t. It had been cold the last couple of weeks.

“You know,” Malakai said, pulling Quinn out of her thoughts. “You can’t do that again.”

“Do what again?” Quinn asked, blinking at him as she tried to figure out if she’d missed something. She wracked her brain, trying to think what he meant, and moved to the two recliners in his room to sit comfortably. “I don’t get what you mean.”

He followed her, taking the second seat. “Really? You’re avoiding talking to me about this.”

“About what?” Quinn said, sincerely confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Honestly?” Malakai paused, “Or are you just saying you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about because you don’t want to have this discussion?”

“Maybe a bit of both,” she said. “As in, you’re about to tell me I can’t do something again and generally, that’s a bad idea because if you tell me I can’t do something then that usually it something I really want to do.”

Malakai laughed. It was a full-throated laugh, the first one she’d heard from him since they’d come back from the ill-fated ambush. “That’s... Quinn, I don’t even have words for that.”

“Good, so we should talk about something else then,” Quinn sounded smug.

“No, you need to promise me that you won’t do that again.” Malakai was back to being deadly serious.

Quinn didn’t say anything but raised an eyebrow because at this point, they were just running around in circles.

Malakai sighed and elaborated. “When I got injured, your emotional reaction took over. I could feel you. You let those emotions roll over you, engulf you even. As the Librarian, you’ve often been even-keeled and logical. But you disregarded the things that make you a strong Librarian and lashed out.”

“Well, excuse me for being upset that my guard managed to almost get himself killed.” She could already feel her hackles rising.

“But that’s just it. If I had died, if Eric had died, you can’t let that take a hold of you in the moment, because bad judgement could kill you.”

“What do you... Oh,” Quinn paused, really thinking over what he’d said. She didn’t like to admit it, but he was right. It wasn’t about her hurting others personally, but about what her absence as Librarian would do to all of those people depending on the Library for the mana they utilized on a daily basis. Allowing herself to lose any amount of control in the heat of a situation could easily lead to an opening in her defenses she wouldn’t otherwise have.

“Exactly,” Malakai said.

“I didn’t make any comments,” Quinn said defensively.

“You didn’t have to. The look on your face was plenty enough. You understood what I’ve said, and to be honest, Quinn, that’s all I care about. I just wanted to make sure that you understood the gravity of the situation. The fact that you can’t act or react in the heat of the moment during a battle. I know you’re not specifically trained for combat or warfare, but I think when we go back to training, that’s something we’re going to need to make a priority.”

“I just saw red, and I was so angry and I tried so hard to push my emotions down like I had the last time, but the anger, it simmered,” She was trying to track all the emotions that had been at play when Malakai jumped in to save her. Their imprint still felt wild. “When we caught Tenejo, I knew everybody was fine, if hurt, even if that wasn’t a good thing. This time, I couldn’t separate it because I didn’t know how badly you were injured.”

“It’s my job, Quinn. I’m your trainer and I’m your guard.” He crossed his arms, locking gazes with her.

“But you’re technically younger than me,” she said.

“No, you’re still younger than me. I’ve technically just past Elven adolescence, so I’m sort of an adult now.”

Quinn laughed. “Well, apparently, I’m like an egg. Hal keeps calling me an egg, Malakai.”

Mal laughed. “You are a bit of an egg. Did you know that?”

“Don’t even,” Quinn said. She laughed. The awkwardness was mostly gone now, and he was right. Not that she wanted to let Malakai know that. It’d just make him even more insufferable. Still, she really missed their training sessions and their sparring sessions, both verbally and with weapons. She wasn’t sure what that said about their relationship. She just knew that she didn’t want this to happen again.

“We need to get you better armor,” she said. “So that, you know, when stuff does try to kill you while you’re trying to protect me, then at least the armor will save you.”

“Done. You owe me one set of brand-new armor.”

Quinn laughed, “Fine, I owe you a set of brand-new armor.”

It was another moment of pleasant silence and Quinn finally spoke again. She’d been thinking because she knew he was right. How she’d reacted. It hadn’t been leader-esque at all. Maybe she’d been relying too much on the fact that Hal had been with them and had de facto taken on the leadership role. She hadn’t had to worry. Not until Malakai got hit. She sighed. “You know, I’m kind of pissed.”

“What about? I mean,” He paused her and flashed her a grin, “other than generally.”

Quinn smiled, but it was a tight expression and she knew it didn’t reach her eyes. She was too busy trying to figure out what she wanted to say in her head. “My power levels. I’m not capable of complete annihilation yet. I thought I’d gotten stronger. Thank Gods did I want to kill every single one of them? I was so angry. I need to work on becoming powerful, on transferring the cold and logical space into a sort of hybrid haven where I can rationally examine reactions I’m having.”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“Sounds like a solid plan,” Malakai said, “But I have some good and bad news about that.”

“What?” Quinn pushed down on the flurry of panic that swept through her at the thought of bad news she hadn’t anticipated.

“After we’ve restored the Library, the odds of you having to fight as much as you have been recently are very low.” He shrugged and sat grinning at her.

“Seriously?” Quinn said.

“Yep. It’s not gonna never happen, but not with the frequency that we’ve had to fight the last few months.”

“Oh,” Quinn said. “Well, that is actually a relief. Does that mean I’ll actually get some book time for myself?”

Malakai blinked, and didn’t answer immediately, as he seemed somewhat confused. “You just want to curl up with a good book?”

Quinn nodded emphatically.

Mal laughed softly. “Fine. But we’d better get to the Academy branch so you can do that.”

She smiled, anticipating the day when the Library was back at full strength and she could sit back and relax. As long as Mal was still there. Considering the brushes with death he’d had since she arrived... “I just had an odd thought,” Quinn said suddenly.

Malakai looked over at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this wasn’t the first time you’d almost been killed when I was around. The first time was in that cave with Kajaro when we went to retrieve the book and he attacked us with the octopus, remember?”

“Yes, I too vaguely recall that,” Malakai said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “What do you mean: It’s different?”

“Well, it was different this time. I didn’t want you to get hurt. Whereas the first time I didn’t know you well enough to get angry about it.”

Malakai raised an eyebrow. “We were pretty much just fighting for survival that time, Quinn.”

“I know. We didn’t have a bond of any sort.”

He nudged her foot with his. “I wasn’t even your trainer really back then, not fully.”

“Exactly!” she said as if that perfectly proved her point." So, don’t go throwing yourself into situations where you can get killed. No dying. Okay? No more heroics where you almost die."

“You realize it’s, again, literally my job description.” Malakai spoke calmly.

“Well, maybe I don’t like your job description,” Quinn said.

“Who else is going to save you, Quinn?”

She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Me. I’m going to get stronger, so you don’t need to save me.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding in agreement. “I’ll help you with that, eh?”

“I like that plan,” Quinn said, suddenly feeling more at ease. A few moments went by and she could feel the tension leaking back out of her body. “Do you think they’d notice if we just kind of sat and read some books?”

Malakai laughed. “You want to sit in the infirmary and read some books?”

“I don’t get many chances to just sit and read a book, and Hal basically told me not to go and look for the next book for the alchemical branch yet. So I’m kind of stuck in limbo and, I mean, I’ll read about anything. There’s some species I still need to catch up on. I think, I think that might be nice.”

“You are the Librarian. I don’t see why you can’t just sit and read and catch a breath.” Mal said softly.

They sat in the recliners, close, yet not quite together, enjoying the silence and the general camaraderie that lay between them.

Several minutes later, Malakai broke the silence. “You know what? I’d be kind of put out if you died, Quinn.”

She looked up at him. “Yeah. I get it. No dying on my part either, right?”

“Right.”

Quinn waited for several seconds before speaking again, trying to figure out how to say what she wanted to say. “How are you really feeling, Malakai?”

He laughed self-deprecatingly. “You know, I’ve got muscle stiffness and my magic replenishment is kind of shot for now. I’m slower than usual and my mana pathways are still recovering. That means I can only use body strengthening manipulation techniques right now. It only uses my energy, not my mana. So that way at least, I can still be effective in defending you, myself, the Library and others.”

Quinn latched onto what he was saying. “So you can’t use your mana flow?”

“That blast pretty much bled them raw and if I use them, I run the danger of burning myself out magic-wise, which isn’t something I’m prepared to do.”

“I don’t blame you,” Quinn said.

There was a knock against the door, and Quinn looked up as Dottie trotted into the room. She couldn’t help the smile that came over her at seeing the little bench.

“I am bringing you some snacks courtesy of Chef,” Dottie said.

Quinn was fairly certain if Dottie had had eyes, she would have been looking between Quinn and Malakai on a pretty consistent basis.

Dottie sort of rippled, giving the impression of a shrug. “What? You two seemed less argumentative.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “And being nice. He almost died saving me.”

Dottie laughed and the sound peeled through the entire infirmary, echoing right down the hall from which she’d just come. Quinn hadn’t thought it was that entertaining a statement. She frowned. “What’s up, Dottie? Why are you here?”

“Well, to be honest, I was just wanting to bring you something to eat. But I also wanted to tell you, I think you should take a day off, Quinn. With Hal’s message, you could even take some downtime. Maybe a day or two so you can just relax for once.” Dottie was in full encouragement mode.

Quinn nodded. “Yeah, that’s the plan, Dottie.”

“Excellent.” The bench said, giggled and ran out of the room.

Quinn blinked after her. “You saw that, right?” She said to Malakai.

He chuckled. “Seeing is not understanding.”

Quinn shook her head in bewilderment. “I have no idea what she was doing.”

“Me either.”

“Anyway. How long do you think your recuperation is going to take?” She asked, trying to veer back on topic from earlier.

“For the Manaflow, Grandfather said two to six weeks, depending. As long as I don’t use Manaflow abilities, it should be the shorter times. As long as I do the strengthening exercises, he gave me and focus purely on my energy consumption, physical attributes, and fighting. That way I’m reinforcing my body, which means that if anything like that ever happens again, I’d actually have greater physical defenses, which was probably one of my downsides when I got hit in the first place. If I had had greater physical strength.”

Quinn was silent for several seconds. She was a little sad still. She was about to speak again when words flashed very quickly in front of her face.

“What... that?” She took several steps back as the words flashed in front of her.

“Quinn, what’s wrong?” Malakai asked, concern coloring his voice.

‘The Jezishian solution to Maladies of the Mana Pathways - a beginner’s guide,’ has been returned.

This completes the prerequisite for the alchemical medicinal branch opening.

Do you wish to initiate the opening procedure?"

Yes? or No?

“The book just got returned.” She whispered the words reverently.

“What? How?” Malakai sprang out of his chair.

“I have no idea.” But Quinn knew who would. There was no idea Hal hadn’t given her his warning and not known about this. “Hal needs to tell me what he knows.”

Both of them got up, leaving the food behind, the books on the stands, and ran toward the check-in desk. Not even halfway there, Quinn heard booming laughter. And she noticed Uncle Hal standing right next to the check-in desk.

“Ah, here she comes. I knew that’d get you out of the room.” He was in fine form today. Probably topping out at ten feet.

But Quinn didn’t care about his size doubling her own. She only had one thing on her mind. The damn book. “Hal, you had the book?”

“Oh no,” Hal said. “But I do now.”