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visitors and all the grimoires safely contained. Not with wardens patrolling the darkenedhalls, and the Great Library’s colossal warning bell hanging undisturbed above their heads.
    Resolving to banish her childish fears, she slipped through the door and locked it again behind her. The atrium’s lamps had been dimmed for the night. Their light glimmered off the gilt letters on books’ spines, reflected from the brass rails that connected the wheeled ladders to the tops of the shelves.Straining her ears, she detected nothing out of the ordinary. Thousands of grimoires slumbered peacefully around her, velvet ribbons fluttering from their pages as they snored. In a glass case nearby, a Class Four named Lord Fustian’s Florilegium cleared its throat self-importantly, trying to get her attention. It needed to be complimented out loud at least once per day, or it would snap shut likea clam and refuse to open again for years.
    She stole forward, holding her candle higher. Nothing’s wrong. Time to go back to bed .
    That was when it struck her—an eye-watering, unmistakable smell. The last few months fell away, and for a moment she stood in the reading room again, bending over the leather armchair. Her heart skipped a beat, then began pounding in her ears.
    Aetherial combustion.Someone had performed sorcery in the library.
    Quickly, she snuffed out her candle. A banging sound made her flinch. She waited until it happened again, quieter this time, almost like an echo. Now suspecting what it was, she snuck around a bookcase until the library’s front doors came into view. They had been left open and were blowing in the wind.
    Where were the wardens? She should have seensomeone bynow, but the library seemed completely empty. Chill with dread, she made her way toward the doors. Though every shadow now possessed an ominous quality, stretching across the floorboards like fingers, she skirted around the shafts of moonlight, not wanting to be seen.
    Pain exploded through her bare toe halfway across the atrium. She had stubbed it on something on the floor. Somethingcold and hard—something that shone in the dark—
    A sword. And not just any sword—Demonslayer. Garnets glittered on its pommel in the gloom.
    Numbly, Elisabeth picked it up. Touching it felt wrong. Demonslayer never left the Director’s belt. She would only allow it out of her sight if . . .
    With a stifled cry, Elisabeth rushed to the shape that lay slumped on the floor nearby. Red hair featheredby moonlight, a pale hand outflung. She gripped the shoulder and found it unresisting as she turned the body over. The Director’s eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
    The floor yawned open beneath Elisabeth; the library spun in a dizzy whirl. This wasn’t possible. It was a bad dream. Any moment now she would wake up in her bed, and everything would be back to normal. As she waited for thisto happen, the seconds unspooling past, her stomach heaved. She stumbled away from the Director’s body toward the doors, where she coughed up a sour string of bile. When she put out her hand to steady herself, her palm slipped against the door frame.
    Blood , she thought automatically, but the substance coating her hand was something else—thicker, darker. Not blood—ink.
    Elisabeth instantly knewwhat this meant. She wiped her hand on her nightgown and gripped Demonslayer’s pommel in both hands, shaking too violently to hold it with only one. Shestepped out into the night. The wind rushed over her, tangling her hair. At first she saw nothing, only the twinkling glow of a few lamps still lit down in Summershall. Their lights flickered as the orchard’s trees thrashed in the wind. A highwrought iron fence stood around the library’s gravel yard, its sharp finials spearing the restless sky like daggers, but the gate hung open, warped on its hinges, dripping with ink.
    Then, in the distance, a hulking silhouette moved among the trees. Moonlight shone on its greasy surface. It