Girls of Shadows

Chapter 11- The Shadow Princess

A/N: I am contantly reediting and rethinking about this story as I go on, but one change in this  chapter is that I changed the Goddess of Auzryn's name from Rya to Caly (pronounced like Kali).

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The musty smell of the Eldham library tickled my nose as I slid the leather-bound tomes back onto the shelves, ignoring the ache in my arms as I lifted book after book onto the towering cases. I couldnt hold back a sneeze as the thick spine of The Tales of Kyva, as told by Kaeterran Legends scattered dust into my face, the old histories hardly ever reviewed by the townsfolk these days.

Although I was impartial to dust mites and mice, there was something soothing about being surrounded by novels filled with the knowledge and history of the greatest minds on the continent. Something humbling about knowing thousands of people have touched these same pages, people studying and learning, hoping and dreaming, escaping their world and being thrust into the story of another.

People who have suffered as I have, people who have seen things beyond my imagination. And yet still they found peace amongst the words written by others, by authors filled with a darkness they trusted only to the paper, with stories to tell and readers who need to hear them.

It gave me hope, knowing that I could get lost in this library and be a nobody, just as all those who seek refuge here are. When in the presence of thousands, what is another character trying to find her way?

Hidden. Unseen. Forgettable.

Everything I needed to be.

Once the last of my pile had been safely tucked into their places, I descended down the spiraling staircase of the three story building to the main entrance of the library. The large double window planted into the face of the wall refracted the setting sun into glowing orange slivers, telling me it was the end of another shift. My boots hit the plush carpets with hardly a sound, the patrons milling about the premises hardly noticing anyone was even in their midst.

I said goodbye to the other staff, who had been kind and welcoming since I settled in Eldham, and grabbed my belongings before making my way into the late evening bustle.

Eldham was hardly big enough to be called a town, easily dismissed as a smudge on a map. But the traffic it produced of weary travellers for the nearby border to the clan of Treveos, the active ports within a days ride, and the strict military presence due to the above made it worthy of a few streets packed with life. Even at this time, hardly past the end of the workday, inns were losing their vacancies and noise radiated out of pubs lining the main gravel road that lead from Treveos to deeper into Mantiva territory.

Hiding out of the way, right in plain sight. Exactly what I wished for, all those weeks ago when I had fled my kingdom in hopes of a new life. A life of my own, untainted by my fathers legacy, far away from my home where people only knew two things: pain and war, long since bestowed on my family by our Goddess Caly.

And when that legacy had caught up to us, forced its way through the doors of our castle, in the form of people looking for our mangled heads displayed on spikes in our own kingdom, I had chosen survival over pride. Which wasnt nearly as atrocious my fathers choice: his power over the lives of innocents.

Some days, I think he deserved exactly what he got. Others, sorrow and regret consumed my entire body, knowing what I had left them to face alone.

It wasnt easy, seeing the rotten words written in the papers about my parents execution, hearing the repulsive renditions on how my family was disgraced. Some swore that I was there, punished brutally in front of my own nation, while others had given a scarily-accurate description of my face, hoping for the reward of turning me in. It wasnt easy saying goodbye to the power that had backed me since I was a child, either, with it always waiting for me to call upon it, waiting to burn through my body but never once receiving the command.