dresser and slumped in piles along the curved stone walls, and notes belonging to Katrien’s latest experiment littered the rug. Elisabeth took care not to step on them as she crossed to the door and drifted into the hall, her candle enfolding her in a hazy glow. The library’s thick walls deadened the wind’s howling to a faraway murmur.
Barefoot, dressed in only her nightgown, she drifted down the stairs like a ghost. A few turns brought her to a forbidding oak door reinforced with strips of iron. This door separated the library from the living quarters, and it always remained locked. Prior to the age of thirteen, she hadn’t been able to unlock it herself; she’d had to wait for a librarian to come past and usher her through. Now she possessed a greatkey, capable of unlocking the outer doors of any Great Library in the kingdom. She wore it around her neck at all times, even when sleeping or bathing, a tangible symbol of her oaths.
She lifted the key, then paused, running her fingertips across the door’s rough surface. A memory flashed before her: the claw marks on the table in the vault, which had scored the wood as though it were butter.
No—that was impossible. Grimoires only transformed into Maleficts if damaged. It was not something that would happen in the middle of the night, with no visitors and all the grimoires safely contained. Not with wardens patrolling the darkened halls, and the Great Library’s colossal warning bell hanging undisturbed above their heads.
Resolving to banish her childish fears, she slipped through the door and locked it again behind her. The atrium’s lamps had been dimmed for the night. Their light glimmered off the gilt letters on books’ spines, reflected from the brass rails that connected the wheeled ladders to the tops of the shelves. Straining her ears, she detected nothing out of the ordinary. Thousands of grimoires slumbered peacefully around her, velvet ribbons fluttering from their pages as they snored. In a glass case nearby, a Class Four named Lord Fustian’s Florilegium cleared its throat self-importantly, trying to get her attention. It needed to be complimented out loud at least once per day, or it would snap shut like a clam and refuse to open again for years.
She stole forward, holding her candle higher. Nothing’s wrong. Time to go back to bed.
That was when it struck her—an eye-watering, unmistakable smell. The last few months fell away, and for a moment she stood in the reading room again, bending over the leather armchair. Her heart skipped a beat, then began pounding in her ears.
Aetherial combustion. Someone had performed sorcery in the library.
Quickly, she snuffed out her candle. A banging sound made her flinch. She waited until it happened again, quieter this time, almost like an echo. Now suspecting what it was, she snuck around a bookcase until the library’s front doors came into view. They had been left open and were blowing in the wind.
Where were the wardens? She should have seen someone by now, but the library seemed completely empty. Chill with dread, she made her way toward the doors. Though every shadow now possessed an ominous quality, stretching across the floorboards like fingers, she skirted around the shafts of moonlight, not wanting to be seen.
Pain exploded through her bare toe halfway across the atrium. She had stubbed it on something on the floor. Something cold and hard—something that shone in the dark—
A sword. And not just any sword—Demonslayer. Garnets glittered on its pommel in the gloom.
Numbly, Elisabeth picked it up. Touching it felt wrong. Demonslayer never left the Director’s belt. She would only allow it out of her sight if . . .
With a stifled cry, Elisabeth rushed to the shape that lay slumped on the floor nearby. Red hair feathered by moonlight, a pale hand outflung. She gripped the shoulder and found it unresisting as she turned the body over. The Director’s eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
The floor yawned open beneath Elisabeth; the library spun in a dizzy whirl. This wasn’t possible. It was a bad dream. Any moment now she would wake up in her bed, and everything would be back to normal. As she waited for this to happen, the seconds unspooling past, her stomach heaved. She stumbled away from the Director’s body toward the doors, where she coughed up a sour string of bile. When she put out her hand to steady herself, her palm slipped against the door frame.