Page 89 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

“And then your note was…odd,” Briar added.

Pippa grimaced. “I was trying not to alarm you.”

Sorcha snorted. “You should have tried harder.”

“She’s under a Fae binding,” Lachlan said. “Some things can’t be spoken. Or even written.”

“Things such as being chosen as a Fae Tithe,” Aidan said quietly.

Pippa tried to smile as though everything were perfectly fine. Perfectly safe. Perfectly normal.

Sorcha shuddered. “Bah. Not your Librarian smile.”

But it wasn’t, not anymore. Pippa’s smile faltered, but only for a moment. If she could smile when a river spirit wanted to talk at great length about a book, all the while smelling of dead fish and rotted seaweed, she could smile through this.

“And on your birthday,” Briar said. “Ethan would have sent his ship for you.”

“I know he would have.”

Sorcha looped her arm through Pippa’s. Even her freckles were sharp with indignation. “You are not allowed to be in charge of either your birthday or your solstice celebrations any longer. You clearly cannot be trusted.”

“It was only…” Pippa trailed off when she was treated to identical looks of outraged disdain from two witches, a werewolf, an Iron Crow, and a Fae king. “Um.”

“Can. Not. Be. Trusted,” Sorcha reiterated. “Do come along, you’ve made me cross, and now I need tea.”

It took some persuasion, but Sorcha eventually agreed to let Pippa go to the Library, with strict instructions (threats) that Lachlan keep her safe. Briar slipped her several pouches of herbs of a decidedly dubious nature with whispered instructions. Pippa put it next to her snuffbox of salt. Ethan handed her a salt-soaked iron blade, and Aidan gave her a charm from his pocket.

“Arm her,” Ethan said to Lachlan.

“Of course.”

“And make sure your lot know she’s not alone,” Aidan added.

“Already done.”

Pippa blinked at him. “It is?”

“Well, you are my w—”

Pippa slapped her hand over his mouth. He was not going to call her his wife in front of her friends. They would demand explanations she did not have time to give. It was not a real marriage, at any rate. Why go through the questions and the concerned glances? And if someone offered to throw an engagement ball for her, she would throw herself into the sea.

“Coventry?” Lachlan said when she finally took her palm from his mouth.

“Aye?”

He nodded to Sorcha, who was whispering to one of Lachlan’s owls. “Don’t let that one walk through a fairy ring.”

“Do I look like an idiot to you?”

Returning to the Library was bittersweet. But it kindled Pippa’s hope, as well, that she could control her fire and pass the tests.

After she walked the Labyrinth.

Tiny detail.

She took them past the statues and the stained glass windows to the card catalogue at the back of the second floor. There were card catalogues on every floor for patron use, but this one was solely for the Librarians.

There were candles in brass holders shaped like frogs—one of their benefactors had really loved frogs. There were soft blankets, benches with witchlights and will-o’-the wisps who mostly stayed put, even though they usually preferred to lure travelers into marshy bogs. It was a tentative agreement. No murders offered, but instead cats who enjoyed a good chase in exchange for light that was safe around the books that were particularly fitful with magic or brittle with age. It was a far more humane arrangement than the old-fashioned iron traps where the wisps had flung themselves against salt-encrusted glass, their pale green light fitful and too weak to read by.