Page 13 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

The magic woke.

It rushed to meet her, shooting flames higher, hearts searing blue. They raced along the top of the table, burning through the varnish, leaping toward paper and parchment, leather and vellum. Scorch marks bloomed through gilt lettering.

The bells, charmed to alert when fire threatened, rang. Someone’s familiar, a massive blue whale made of shimmering light, floated past, wide eye blinking at her.

Pippa used her pelisse to bat at the fire, the iron around her wrist searing through her skin. When that did not work, she ran for the bucket of sand kept in the chest under the window for such emergencies. But it wasn’t enough, not with magic lifting her hair into the air and sparking hungrily from her fingers, too long denied, too long chained and choked. She could taste it: salt and fire and iron. She could not risk a spell.

Another Librarian arrived with a fire cart stocked with more water and sand, and magical supplies.

“Pippa, step back,” Mrs. Pettigrew demanded suddenly, pulling on her elbow. “You are making it worse.”

Pippa scrambled backward so quickly that she kicked her own ankle. With a smothering blanket, a layer of salt, and three Librarians whispering a charm, the fire finally died down.

Pippa surveyed the damage through the lingering smoke, her heart beating too hard in her throat. A scorched table and bench, the spines of three books where sparks had landed, a collection of paper flyers in ashes. It could have been so much worse.

So much better, too, had Pippa not been there at all.

“Miss Cavendish.”

Dread made her stomach drop.

“Yes, Mrs. Pettigrew?”

“What happened here?”

“A lamp was knocked over.”

“Those lamps are bound with magic.”

“She did not knock the lamp over,” a patron said from the next row of shelves. “It was goblin mischief, pure and simple. You know how it unravels every charm and every bit of good sense. Your apprentice was no help, either.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Pettigrew said. “But the fire responded to you, did it not, Miss Cavendish?”

Pippa swallowed, and it was like burning needles. “Yes.”

“I see.” Mrs. Pettigrew did not look smug or pleased, only intractable. Utterly immovable. “Miss Cavendish, I am afraid I must relieve you of your post.”

Pippa’s throat cramped around a hundred denials, against shouts and pleas. Against every single thing she could think of to say, none of which would make any difference at all.

Because Mrs. Pettigrew was quite right, in the end.

Despite all of her best efforts, Pippa was a threat to the Library.

And threats would not be tolerated.