Reverent as any Brantish priest on a pilgrimage, Barl eased the door closed behind her and stepped further into the room. A well-worn leather reading chair, twin to the chair in Morgan Danfey’s privy parlour. Two large reading tables. Two glimlamps, unlit. There was only one window, framed in heavy velvet drapes of dark blue. They were drawn back to let the day spill nowhere but over the polished parquetry.

And books.

Shelf after shelf of them, filling all the wall space between the gleaming anfra floor and the lofty, corniced ceiling. Leatherbound and loose-leaf, some brass-spined, some plain, stitched and riveted, slender and fat, ancient and youthful. Whispers and chuckles and shouts of precious, wonderful knowledge. Barl felt herself smile for the first time since arriving in Elvado. A proper smile, a genuine smile, joy rising within her like sugar sap in the spring. In all her life she’d never seen so many books. She felt like a child again, when all the world was new.

“Oh, Remmie,” she sighed. “I wish you were here. You’d love this library.”

She was meant to be dusting and polishing, and she would, but first…

Wandering along the shelves, she kissed the books with her fingertips and feasted her avid gaze on their titles. Ruminations upon the Philosophy of Magework. Herbal Decoctions. Bilramin’s Treatise on Wardings. A Pother’s Guide to Elementary Healing. Practical Translocations. The Student’s Handbook. Purging Antithetical Energies. Tostig’s History of the Sigil.

The desire to tug one of them free of its brethren and immerse herself in the words had her shivering as hard as Morgan Danfey’s attic ward. Even if she couldn’t put the words into practice, just to pretend, for a moment, that she was still a proper mage… She’d denied herself that pleasure in his privy chamber, but she had the time now. She could afford to briefly indulge.

Except what if simply reading about incants triggered her binding?

Scalding resentment stole her sight. On a deep, shuddering breath she looked around at the books.

“One day I will read you,” she murmured. “One day all of your secrets will belong to me.”

And with the promise made, she started to dust.