In fact, she looked… pleased with herself.
It worried me because it was almost like she’d finally been allowed into a place she’d always considered hers and was savoring the moment before anyone dared to suggest otherwise.
The book sprite that had bumped the shelf dipped into a frantic bow, wings quivering.
Mariselle extended one slender finger and traced the spine of a book as she passed, not reverent. No, she was possessive. Hernail made a soft, audible tick against the leather, and the sound made bile rise in my throat.
I could almost feel the library recoiling, but it didn’t eject her.
It tolerated her.
Which was somehow worse.
Because I knew why. The library didn’t have a choice.
She paused, flicking her gaze up and down the shelves like she was inventorying treasure. Her expression didn’t change much from book to book. She didn’t need dramatic eyebrows or villainous smirks. The menace lived in how calm she was and in the certainty of the choices that got her there.
A sprite zipped by carrying a stack of thin volumes, and the Priestess snapped her fingers once, sharp.
The sprite nearly dropped everything.
“Not those,” she said, voice mild and deadly. “Those are not for your little hands.”
The sprite froze in midair, trembling. Another sprite rushed in, as if to help, and Mariselle’s eyes slid toward it.
“Ah-ah.” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. “One at a time.”
The second sprite halted so abruptly that its wings fluttered helplessly, then drifted backward as if shoved by an invisible force.
My stomach churned. I’d never seen sprites with this much fear running through them. This wasn’t what their world should ever look like.
Even though my hands were still on the mirror, I felt my body react. My skin prickled, and I felt sweat break along my spine as if my body couldn’t decide whether to fight or run.
I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t.
The mirror held me, not physically, but with the weight of what I was seeing. It was as if I looked away, then I’d miss the moment that mattered most.
Mariselle glided to the end of the aisle and turned slowly, surveying the room again.
But then she looked directly toward me.
Not at the mirror or my fingers pressing the glass, but at me.
My breath stopped long enough that my chest ached.
For one terrible second, I was certain she could see through the pedestal.
But as quickly as it happened, her gaze slid past, as if she were looking at something behind the mirror now, something deeper inside the compound.
She lifted her hand and gestured lazily.
“Bring me the index,” she told the sprites. “All of it. I want every catalog entry.”
A few sprites scrambled, panicked, and obeyed.
Mariselle’s mouth curved, but it wasn’t into a smile. There was no warmth there, only a satisfied shift, like someone tightening a grip, and I felt physically ill.
There was nothing metaphorical about the nausea running through me.
