Word and Breath (35 page)

She’d never even wondered about his love-life before. Or wondered what kind of woman he’d be attracted to.

“What are you staring at?” Connor demanded, when he caught her peering at him in curiosity.

“Nothing,” she said. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

He didn’t have to answer the question, because they’d reached the old stone outbuilding. It was falling apart. The roof had fallen in, and no one had bothered to repair it. The one window was boarded up.

Without speaking, Connor led her inside, where there was nothing but dirt and debris. He leaned over to push aside an old crate and reveal a trapdoor.

Riana gave a little gasp. “Reed?”

He just smiled at her again, pulled up the trapdoor, and started down an old ladder.

She followed him, of course, relieved the ladder was sturdier than it looked.

“This looks like an old storm cellar,” she said, wiping the dirt on her hands onto her jeans. The cellar was dank and cool and dark, only lit by the light coming in from above.

“It is.”

Riana was starting to suspect something, and it was affirmed when Connor pushed aside another crate and revealed another trapdoor.

“Reed? Who owns this estate?”

“I do,” he admitted, opening the second trapdoor. “It’s been in my family for generations.”

“But the Union—”

“It was never in my family name. They buried the ownership from the beginning. They never trusted the government and were always party to some sort of rebellious activity.” He grinned at her as he started down the ladder. “Must run in the family.”

There was nothing for Riana to do but crawl down after him. This ladder was longer, and it was dark and creepy at the bottom.

“Reed?” she called out. Her voice seemed to echo in the space. “Reed, where did you go?”

“I’m here. Hold on. I’m trying to find the—”

Suddenly, the cellar was illuminated. There must be electricity down here, because a flip of the switch had lit the space up completely.

But that wasn’t what held Riana’s attention.

The cellar was bigger than she’d expected—as big as her old loft had been. And every wall, from top to bottom, was filled with books.

There were shelves of them. She was surrounded by them. Some huge and leather-bound and some the inexpensive paperbacks of the previous century. There were tables and a couple of desks spread around the room, and those were covered with stacks of books too. There were also a couple of comfortable chairs and a computer.

She gaped, hugging herself with an awed delight she had no way to effectively express.

After a minute of staring around the room, her eyes found Connor. He watched her, looking pleased, proud of himself, and a little bit shy. “Not what you expected?”

Riana tried to respond, but only a croak came out. She had to clear her throat and try again. “But where did they come from?”

Connor sat down at one of the tables and gestured for her to sit beside him. “It’s my family’s library. We’ve always been book lovers. And, several generations ago, they started to collect them intentionally. When the sentiment in the Union started to swing away from free thinking, they moved the library down here. It’s been here for decades. Only a few people know about it.”

Riana felt like she’d witnessed a miracle, and she looked at Connor with new eyes, wondering what other delightful mysteries he was concealing.

“What
are
they all?” she asked, wondering when he was going to let her start reading through them.

“All kind of things. History, literature, science, philosophy. But the heart of the collection is over here.” He got up and walked over to the tall shelves in the back of the room.

Riana followed him breathlessly.

“These are the ones that are most important. My great-grandfathers spent a fortune on some and risked everything to get their hands on the others.”

Her lips parted as she recognized a book that was placed on a small stool next to the shelves. “That’s the one you showed me the other day—the one with the quotation in that language. You told me you owned it.” She looked at him almost accusingly. “You didn’t tell me you own a zillion of them.”

He chuckled ruefully. “Sorry about that. It was kind of a hard thing to explain.”

“Why are these particular books so important?”

“Open one up.”

She chose one at random and opened it very carefully, the pages warm and rough under her fingertips. “The Old Language,” she breathed.

He nodded. “Look at the front page.”

She flipped the pages back to the beginning and started to read.

She gasped and jerked her hands away.

Connor nodded again.

“These are…” She had to start again when her voice broke. “These are pre-Cataclysm.”

“They are. They survived.”

“You think my grandfather’s book is pre-Cataclysm too?”

“I don’t know. It might have been written shortly after the Cataclysm when the Old Language was still used.”

“Why do you think the book is so important?”

“I don’t know,” Connor admitted. “Honestly, Riana, I don’t know. It may be nothing—other than its preciousness in being so old. But your grandfather treasured the book. And the fact that it’s written in an unknown version of the Old Language might be important. Largan seemed to believe it was so significant…”

He suddenly took her by the upper arms in his urgency. Mikel had held onto her the same way—like she was precious. “Riana, we have to find out why everything thinks it’s so important. Maybe it sounds trivial, when so much other work needs to be done. But books can change things. They
can
. Books changed me.”

She just stared up at him, as the world spun crazily around her.

“I think it’s important to us,” Connor concluded. He hadn’t dropped his hands. In fact, his fingers had tightened on her arms. “But we’ll have to translate it to find out for sure.”

And Riana understood something then, looking up at Connor’s rapt face, surrounded by the written experience of hundreds of souls who’d lived and died long before her.

This was what her grandfather had wanted for her, and this was what she’d always wanted for herself.

This was why she’d had to disappoint Mikel, when she would have much rather made him happy.

She needed a purpose to make sense of her life, her gifts, her memories, her dreams, all of the people she’d lost. She needed to do something
good
.

This was that good thing.

The threads of her life came together in this library, shaping this one inevitable choice.

She saw the photocopy of her grandfather’s book—the one Largan had risked his career to make—set on a table nearby.

There was an unused notebook beside it. The wire-bound kind, like her grandfather had used to teach her those sentences as a child. The notebook had all empty pages.

Pages she could help fill.

Something blazed to life inside her, and she turned back to share it with Connor.

She could see he already knew. He already felt it too.

For a minute she thought he would embrace her.

But then the corner of his mouth quirked up into a very Connor-like smile.

He said, “Shall we get started?”