“And there is no way to break it?” To even have asked the question felt like infidelity on my part, to consider destroying the greatest gift that had ever been given to me.

Silence, then, “None other than death, my lady.”

Which circled back to the only solution: my survival. “What literature do you have on afflictions?” I asked. “Specifically, my own.”

The section was enormous. Row after row of volumes detailing the impact of iron, inbreeding, and confinement on my people, but as much as I was tempted to blame the human witch Anushka and her curse, my fingers drifting to the gold necklace at my throat told the truth. It was our own doing, our ancestors’ greed that had tied us to this world. All Anushka had done was make our world smaller.

“This isn’t one of my areas of focus,” Martin said, examining the shelves. “I’m afraid it never really captivated my attention.”

“Because you aren’t afflicted.” I immediately bit my tongue, because it was possible his was an affliction that was as hidden as my own. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the case. There was a certain selfishness to interest: one cared about what affected oneself, and only the best of people cared for what lay beyond that sphere.

A frown furrowed his brow, but he didn’t answer, only selected a volume. “This is specific to your concern, my lady.”

Sweat rose on my palms. I knew I couldn’t be cured. But maybe, just maybe, the key to understanding my ailment, to surviving it, resided within these pages. But as I flipped the cover, only unmarked paper greeted my greedy gaze. Startled, I flipped from cover to cover, but there was nothing. “These are blank.”

“Pardon?” Martin snatched the volume out of my hands, staring at it in bewilderment. “How strange.” Setting it aside, he extracted several more volumes, and the prickle of agitated magic across my skin told me that it was more of the same. I stood frozen in place while the librarian tore into the shelves, swiftly tossing aside those specific to my affliction and turning to those more encyclopedic in nature, but everything to do with uncontrolled bleeding had been excised from the pages.

“Impossible,” Martin whispered, a book held loosely in one hand.

Except that it wasn’t. Every scrap of research the royal library possessed about my affliction had been purged. And I knew who was responsible.

My father.

And there was only one reason I could think of for him to do it. He wanted to eliminate any chance of me surviving my pregnancy. The worst part of it was, there might have been something here. Something within these pages that would have ensured that Marc, our child, and I would endure, and now it was gone.

“Who would have done this? And why? For what purpose?” Martin demanded, but I wasn’t really listening, my ears roaring with fury. “Please excuse me, I have to go,” I said, and I bolted to the front of the library.