Page 31 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Lanterns burned hotter as she passed. The snow was heavenly on her face. It helped her stagger the last few steps into the building. Climbing the stairs felt like hiking up the cliffside wearing a dress made of iron.

Finally, finally, she reached her room, where she could collapse in peace.

She was sweating and shivering and the iron around her wrist seared her down to her melting bones, but she was home. Librarians who had been serving as long as she had generally had their own cottages or larger apartments in town. The rooms provided for apprentices were small, cold in winter and hot in summer, and occasionally plagued by mice or ghosts or ghost mice.

There was a table and two chairs under the window and a bed in the far corner, with a chest painted with gargoyles and ivy leaves. It was nothing like Thorn Hall, dressed in magic and delicate ice. Or the bower choked with roses over which the Wild Hunt rode the clouds. The hearth was full of ashes, Pippa’s candles unlit. She preferred the spelled witchlights that hovered overhead without the use of fire at all. Every penny she made already went to replacing items she accidentally damaged. There was that entire shelf of biscuits in the shared kitchens that she had roasted. The curtains she had singed. The boots on Bonfire Night that she was fairly certain she’d had nothing to do with, but it was easier just to replace them.

It might seem dismal from the outside, but she liked the safety of stone walls and stone floors and very little furniture to burn to ashes. And her shabby room was currently at the very bottom of her list of things to worry about. At this point, she would have to be expected to sleep under the sea fully inside of a mermaid’s trap for it to even make the list at all.

She fell into her bed, dangerously close to toppling one of the many towers of books that took up every available space. Before tonight, she had fully expected to expire under an avalanche of books and papers, half drowned in ink. One day. But if she died today, it would be because she burned like an ember in her bed.

One deep breath, another.

She fumbled for the water left on the windowsill, which was thankfully icy. She dipped her hair into it, her wrists, her pillowcase. She would be fine by morning.

She just had to make it until morning.

Lachlan’s owl landed on the ledge outside her window. His eyes gleamed. He tapped on the glass. She tugged the lacy curtains shut with the last of her strength.

How was she meant to solve the Labyrinth when thirteen seconds using her natural magic depleted her so thoroughly?

She thought of the ice creeping along the feast table below stag hooves, of snow gathering around Lachlan’s head like a crown, of his scarred eye, silver as ice.

It helped.