Page 20 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

They didn’t sit frozen in their prisons for an embarrassingly long time.

Sorcha would have splintered the bed into weapons, but Pippa just sat there, feeling bewildered and frightened, listening for footfalls over her head.

She had only ever read about oubliettes. She had not even been certain they were real.

It was not a pleasant discovery.

Although, for a hole in the ground that was used to forget about people, it was surprisingly…nice. There was a crack of light through the floor, just enough to make out the bed under her knees. There was a painted table with a candle and a flint box. A pitcher of water, a bowl of dark purple grapes, a loaf of bread with butter. A single book. Her favorite.

Was that a coincidence?

Had Lachlan planned this?

But why? It didn’t make sense.

She could taste chamomile flowers on her tongue. They were used to calm the mind, to summon sleep. So she thought about fire and smoke and the crackle of flames until her iron cuff felt like a red-hot manacle.

She would stay not-calm, thank you very much, Professor Thorn.

The bed was warm and inviting, the coverlet woven from silvery strands of the softest-looking wool she had ever seen. She suddenly ached to curl up and close her eyes. To pretend none of this was happening. Not losing her post, not the Tithe nor Lachlan.

The damned missing Red Grimoire.

It was surprisingly difficult to crawl off that bed and stand in the narrow space between it and the table. The back of her neck was damp with sweat. She considered taking off her bracelet but didn’t think she could burn through the door above, with its iron hinges shaped like owls. Not before burning through herself. She would call that the contingency plan.

Then she remembered to think like a Librarian.

A deep breath. Another.

A slow, methodical assessment of her situation, and her surroundings. An inspection of the books and what in the current environment might endanger them. What magic might be at play. If she could hear the telltale whisper of a spell book awakening or the grumble of trolls. If there was damp or rot. Or mice.

The familiar routine helped.

And it reminded her that there was the one book by the bowl of the ripest plums she had ever seen. Hadn’t those been grapes just a moment ago? And how had she not noticed the glass dish of perfect, tiny strawberries, impossible in December?

Don’t eat the fruit.

She picked up the book instead, even as her tastebuds tingled. There would be no spells or magic in it to help her; she already knew that. But she had brought her own magic. She might not be a Librarian of Hallow University any longer, but books liked her. Libraries liked her.

And libraries liked each other.

Not just that, but they gossiped like old men at the seaside on a hot summer day. They were connected. And Pippa knew how to use that connection to travel between them. Admittedly, she did so rarely—no one was going to trust her to pop over to the London Museum of Magic library. Or the secret collection at Oxford. But she still knew the magic, and the spells required.

All she needed was a library. A shelf of books.

A single book, if she tried hard enough.

She turned it over to inspect it. It was well cared for, the leather oiled and the stitches even and strong. She felt the brush of magic against her ankles, like the vines of an invisible plant. The hooves sounded again but were muffled. The screech of an owl drowned them out.

She knocked gently on the book, three times. “Open the door, open the door,” she whispered.

Traveling magically from library to library was not particularly pleasant, but it was not nearly as disorienting as being taken under the hills by the man you secretly hoped would remember you, and then, when he did, it made things so much worse. There was the same wind rushing in her ears, a subtle popping in her sinuses. She fought back a sneeze, as though she had inhaled paper dust. Only a complete amateur on her first day sneezed at book dust.

When Pippa landed, she was still in Elphame.

Blast and botheration.

She was at the end of a hall with two chairs upholstered in black velvet, a tall candelabrum, and a table with a single book, ornately inscribed in silver. Didn’t they have more books in this bloody place? A proper library? What kind of professor lived like this, in a house brimming with silver and magic but with so few books?