My time at the Vetrisian court didn’t allow me to visit the library as much as I’d have liked. I had Y’shennria’s library, which served me well during the scarce few moments of rest time between trying to steal the prince’s heart, but I’d never set foot in the palace’s library. Most of my time here was piddled away on boring things like pretending to be interesting and making other people like me.

A waste, in the end.

A waste, always.

But now, a few weeks older and wiser, I step into the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. The windows are kept small and modest to keep sunlight from damaging the books. A brass globe in massive proportions hangs from the ceiling, suspended by cables and rotating slowly. Huge rosewood shelves tower over us, laden with every book I can imagine—from the sweeping epics to the children’s bedtime stories to the written history of every civilization on Arathess—it’s all here. The basics of polymathematics, the famous odes of a poet-general during the Helkyrisian War, the sweetest, most breathtaking romances ever written by a noblewoman with too much time on her hands and too little action in her bed—my hands can’t flicker through the pages fast enough.

But of course, there are no books left in the palace library about witches.

Cavanos hates them, after all. No doubt their libraries have been purged of all literature pertaining to magic and witches. The only indication witches even exist are the children’s books, in which (witch, I am terribly clever) a Heartless or three hunt and eat the parents of the hero-child, their long limbs and gnashing teeth puncturing through the page and directly into my unheart.

I tilt one such children’s book as I look at a picture. “They got the knees all wrong. And is that— No!” I hiss softly. “We do not have furry underbellies!”

In utter disgust, I put the book back on the shelf, the old wood thing wobbling angrily as I do.

“There, there.” I pat it to still it. “I know. These humans never get history quite right, do they?”

“Except when someone wrongs us.” I look up at the voice at the end of the aisle and see Fione standing there. I pretend not to notice the way her hand grips her valkerax-headed cane as if her life depended on it, or the way her head is held a little too high. The hunger can smell her fear even through her riding coat, and I tamp it down with extra fervor. Her noble mask is otherwise perfect, impassive as she walks a mere one step closer. I try to make myself small, unthreatening.

“Lovely weather we’re having.” I start with something harmless and trace my finger over the spine of a book. A fine cloud of gray particles spins up into the air. “A little dusty, though.”