“This is indeed the protected entrance to the gifted library, my cherry cupcakes.” He jumps up onto his two hind legs, and suddenly, a tiny clipboard with a piece of paper appears in his front hooves. “Your names, please?” he asks, looking from his paper back to us.

“Why do you need our names?” Emmett asks, narrowing his eyes.

“To see if you’re on the list, of course! I can’t ask you the verification questions if you’re not an authorized council member, now, can I?”

I let out another hiccup. Even glamoured as the Chung sisters, we couldn’t pass as council members. We’re doomed.

“Why are you protecting the entrance, anyway?” Emmett asks. “Aren’t the Miru guards supposed to be watching it?”

The cheollima drops his clipboard and stomps his hooves. “I am a guard, thank you very much.”

Emmett raises an eyebrow. “Are you, though? I thought cheollimas normally lived in the Godrealm?”

The winged horse sighs dramatically. “Indeed they do, my sweet sausage. But look at me.” He spins once so we get a sense of his full size. “Do you know how difficult it is for a runt to find stable employment in the Godrealm? No divine being wants to ride a cheollima who only comes up to their calves! It’s tough pickings up there, I tell you.”

“So you got a job working as security for the Miru,” I say. “Good for you.”

“Yeah, you do you, dude,” Emmett echoes. “It sucks to be small.”

The cheollima smiles his pearly whites. “Shucks, thanks, ladies. But, enough about me. As nice as this wee chat has been, if your names aren’t on the list, I will have no choice but to end your lives, right here, right now. I may be small, but I am deadly.”

We laugh uncomfortably at his second attempt at the killing-us joke, but this time he doesn’t smile. His poker face is next-level. He’s either got a really dry sense of humor, or we might not make it out of here alive.

Emmett slowly picks his fallen cookie container off the ground, sensing that we may have to make a run for it very soon.

“Wait a bloomin’ minute!” the cheollima shouts, his eyes widening. “What do you have there?”

“Cookies,” Emmett says, prying open the Tupperware. “Salted caramel. Baked fresh yesterday.”

The cheollima gasps and hops up and down on his back legs. “My favorite! What do I have to do to get my hooves on one of those, sugar plum?”

Emmett and I look at each other, and the same lightbulb goes on in both our heads.

“If you let us into the library, I’ll happily give you a cookie,” Emmett says.

“His—I mean, her cookies are the best,” I add. “I can definitely vouch for them.”