Page 10 of Orc’s Grimoire

But I barely register the book.

Because standing at the lectern is the keeper.

She isn’t what I expected.

Small. Pale. Dark hair braided tight against her skull, ink-stained fingers wrapped around a ritual knife. She should look fragile. Vulnerable. The kind of victim this place would consume without noticing.

She doesn’t.

Her eyes find mine across the Restricted Stacks, and my chest tightens. Not the addiction—a different pull. One I haven’t felt in twenty years of burning.

Interest. Actual interest.

She watches me the way I watch threats. Calm. Assessing. Cataloguing my weapons, my stance, my distance from the door. Not afraid. Not surprised. Just… observing.

I’ve seen that look before. In mirrors. In the eyes of fellow spell-burners before a difficult purge. It is the look of a person who has made peace with violence.

“Spell-burner.” Her voice is soft. Polite. Controlled. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The grimoire’s pages flutter. The book’s attention splits between us—watching her, watching me, wanting whatever happens next.

I cross the chamber toward her. Each step brings me closer to the grimoire’s presence, that immense awareness bearing down on my consciousness. My brand burns hot enough to blister. My hands ache with the need to reach for it.

Up close, the keeper is even more unsettling.

Her skin is pale olive, faded from years without sunlight. Faint sigil scars mark what I can see of her arms above the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around her palms. Her eyes are dark and large and miss nothing—tracking my movements, my weapons, the distance between us.

She is beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful. Sharp. Dangerous. Made for a purpose that isn’t kind.

Focus. She’s a keeper bound to a starving book. Probably already tainted.

“Thyra Vire.” She doesn’t offer her hand. The blood dripping from her palm would have made that awkward anyway. “Current keeper of the grimoire. I assume you have questions.”

“One.” I stop at the edge of the central lectern, close enough to smell the blood and ink that clings to her skin. Close enough to see the pulse beating in her throat. “Why haven’t you died yet?”

A flicker crosses her expression. Amusement, maybe. Or recognition. “Because I’m very careful.”

“Careful doesn’t last six years in a place like this.”

“No.” She holds my gaze without flinching. “It doesn’t.”

The grimoire makes a sound.

Not words—a vibration that travels through the lectern, through the floor, through my boots and up into my bones. The pages flutter again, rustling with anticipation.

The keeper—Thyra—turns back to the book. Her bleeding hand hovers over the cover, still feeding it, still keeping it calm. “It knows you’re here.”

“I assumed.”

“It’s… interested.” She hesitates, choosing her words carefully. “The grimoire reads people. Tastes their magic, their history, their sins. The more you’ve touched forbidden things, the more it can see.”

“I’ve burned a hundred libraries.” I don’t hide the satisfaction in my voice. “Destroyed relics that were older than this manor. Whatever it thinks it sees in me⁠—“

The grimoire’s pages turn on their own.

Thyra steps back, her eyes widening. “That’s not—it shouldn’t⁠—“

The pages keep turning. Faster. A wind rises in the Restricted Stacks—not natural wind, but a gust that carries the Archive’s deep reek: copper and parchment and old need. The chains rattle against the lectern. The containment runes flare bright enough to cast shadows.