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Feather,

It is agreed. Get the item to the Fairground Manager’s wagon when the Winter Solstice lantern procession enters the city, and he will trade.

No second chance.

On this dark, starless night, while the city celebrated, I would lose everyone I loved. There was no other choice.

I steadied my breathing and rolled my shoulders against the icy, snow-clogged winds of the Barren Lands. My woollen apprentice’s cloak whipped around my calves as I paused in a derelict doorway and scanned Main Street. Night had always been the perfect ally in a world where the enemies’ smiles shone brightly under the glaring winter sun. The scrawled ‘no second chance’ remained empress into my mind, even though the enchanted parchment had disintegrated to ash in my fingers after I had read it.

The Grand Library towered ahead of me, its pointed spires silhouetted against the darkening sky. Most of the Craven City residents thought of the building as a prison of dusty volumes and scrawled words, but over the last four years, I had discovered its secret. The library was alive. Many of the books might have had damaged pages or broken spines, but they still recognised me when I passed their shelves. They rumbled and shuddered in a warning or in thanks that I was there to mend their ripped jackets or restitch their bindings. I had found friends among them in a world where I was surrounded by foes.

And this was the night that they would help me take one more.

The compacted earth was hard and ice-cracked beneath my boots as I hurried through the shadows. I had called this cursed place many things, but never home. I’d stay and play my part for as long as I could. But my younger cousins, Ember and Thorn, needed to be free of this crumbling hellhole. All I had to do was steal a codex and trade it for our escape.

Two months ago, the ‘boarding house mistress’ or prison warden, as she should have been called, realised my younger cousins had turned twenty and twenty-one and placed their names on the Free Woman List. That was the moment everything shifted and our daydreamed plans needed to become a reality. But as I raced toward the library doors, I was going to lose them—that I had to. We had stayed together in our captivity, but now our plans would end up tearing us apart. But better I lose them to the world than see them claimed by the same men who had spent years carving obedience out of conquered women.

Under one of the few inner-city arches that were still standing, I shrank back and waited, stretching my senses, making sure that I hadn’t been seen. From beyond the walls, the joyful screams and laughter of children swooping and diving on the magic-powered fairground rides echoed on the chilled breeze. The city sat empty for a few precious hours. Everyone was more distracted than they would typically be, and this Yule we would take advantage of that. The Kingdom Fair arrived every winter solstice, and with it a slim chance of escape hidden among the departing wagons.

I glanced around the library’s deserted perimeter. The magical wards protecting the library kept intruders at bay—or so Master Frickel believed. But they wouldn’t stop me.

My fingertips found the circular gold amulet beneath my collar, and I hurried on. It hummed softly against my skin, warm despite the cold, and for one traitorous instant, a memory slid under my guard. The man who had given it to me. Aster. His broad hand cupping my jaw. His lips brushing against mine. And the dangerous way he once made me believe I could escape this place alive. I crushed the thought of him before it could soften me. Aster had left and never come back; my cousins were all I cared about now.

My grip tightened on the amulet until the gold dug into my palm and made the Triskelion, the Celtic triple spiral on the back, imprint on my skin. Life. Death. Rebirth. Except there was no rebirth now—death was death nowadays.

I concentrated on the white flame contained within its crystal globe as it heated and then flickered to life. Life. Death. Rebirth, I chanted in my mind, just as he had taught me. Seconds later, a small thread of white-hot magic flowed toward the wards. Open. And the lock clicked. The white flame died as the small service entrance door creaked back an inch, and I slipped through.

Three guards were slumped over a rickety table, a pitcher abandoned between them. There would be another three guards posted at the front door, but the same scene would greet me there. I had put powder in their ale that morning, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be able to resist filling their cups in a bid to drown out their annoyance at working while the rest partied.

Skirting around the sleeping guards, I hurried down the corridor and into the main library, a route I had taken every day for the last two years. My eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I breathed in the familiar musty air, which was heavy with the scent of old parchment and wax. Shadows danced along the high, vaulted ceilings, cast by a few ever-burning lanterns. I scanned the grand reading hall. Bookshelves stretched out as far as the eye could see, and rows of wooden tables swept down the centre of the hall, chairs pushed in with military precision. Beyond the hall and down the spiral staircase lay the Restricted Archives, where the codex was hidden.

I had spent years working in the library, but this was only my seventh venture into the archives, and my last. If I didn’t steal the codex before midnight, we could be stuck in the city for another year… and we didn’t have another year to wait.

I crept, heel to toe, heel to toe, my boots only a whisper against the stone floor. The magical locks on the Archive gates would take time to coax open, but…

A screech of wood against flagstone echoed down the hall.

A mumble of voices…

I froze as the faint sound of a voice I remembered only too well drifted toward me.

“No… don’t… I was only…”

Then I was sprinting toward the voices.

“What would you do to get out of here?” Master Frickel sneered. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. Others enjoy my… attention.”

My foot caught on one of the ancient and uneven flagstones when I heard the lie he so easily told.

“Don’t…” The hiss in Ember’s voice had my feet moving again; I no longer cared about the sound they made.

My pulse quickened as I flew toward her. They were in my bookbinding workshop, where I had spent the last four years of my life gluing boards to leather or marbling endpapers. Light spilled from under the door as I peered through the crack. Inside, Ember stood against a workbench, her hands bound behind her back. Her long, tangled hair framed her tear-streaked cheeks, and searing rage flickered in her eyes.

Master Frickel’s thin frame loomed over her. “Why are you really here?” He held a small dagger to her neck, and a bead of crimson trailed down to her chest.

Every part of me hardened as I slipped through the door. I pressed my spine into the bookcase to try to contain the urge to hurl myself at the monster and rip him apart with my nails. Clea was supposed to be there as a distraction if needed; Ember must have come instead, though how or why she had ended up in Frickel’s clutches were questions for another time. Right now, I needed to get her out of there as silently as possible.