Page 26

“All right, all right, I’ll open you, just don’t leap out onto my face, please.” As if hearing her, it calmed its jostling down, just a little.

She gripped the tome, so thick her hand could barely fit around its spine, and withdrew it from its place. Lore had barely parted the edges of the book before it thrust itself wide, the pages fluttering as if on a phantom wind. Lore yelped, so surprised she almost dropped the thing.

After a few moments of flipping through artfully drawn illustrations of constellations, the books settled down until silence rang all through the library.

Well, she needed more, didn’t she? Lore said again, out loud to the library, “astronomy.” And the same books as before began vibrating, the sound of their whispers reverberating throughout the library.

Lore repeated this process, moving from stack to stack, until she’d retrieved each and every fussing book.

In the end, she slumped on the floor, slightly out of breath, and gazed in awe at the neatly piled towers before her. She’d collected everything in the library that pertained to celestial bodies. A total of two hundred sixty-eight books, fourteen scrolls, and twelve maps to have brought to the steward.

***

The morning of the autumn equinox, Lore sat in the servants’ dining hall, frowning. There was a small stain on the hem of her servant’s tunic—it was shaped exactly like a leaf, stem and all. She rubbed it with her thumb, though she assumed the stain wasprobably almost as old as the tunic itself. She doubted anyone had noticed it, especially since it was so much smaller than the black royal crest of Wyndlin Castle that was emblazoned on the frontandback of her outfit.

Overkill, if you asked her.

She hated that she bore their crest as if she belonged to them. She wanted to rip this tunic off. She picked at the crest, though it was sewn on with a stitch so thick it would require a dagger to break.

She didn’t know what to do. She’d already finished her meal and the thought of heading back to the library to continue working by herself—on today of all days—made the food in her stomach turn to lead.

She shouldn’t be here, alone in this gargantuan castle, without a single person to celebrate the autumn equinox with.

The autumn equinox marked the day when the nights became longer than the days. It had always been a significant day for her people and the most enjoyable festival of the year.

That was what bothered her—she should have been home, with Grey, stringing leaf wreaths and garlands and eating sizzling spiced apples and star-shaped oat cookies to celebrate the longer nights. They should have been speculating over who would be chosen to track the movement of the wandering stars that evening.

She imagined what the community would be doing now. If they had managed to rebuild the Burgs’ tavern, then she imagined that Emalie, their daughter, would be directing the other young folks to open all the windows and doors wide. Everyone would be working together to remove the tables and chairs and spread them out in the courtyard, so that the tavern’s wooden patio could be used for a dance space.

Thane, the blacksmith, would have put his hammer down and would be tuning his instruments. The man could playeverything. Aunty Eshe would be tidying the children: brushing andbraiding their hair and making sure they looked their best for the festival.

Acrid heat pooled within Lore’s chest when she thought of the conversation she’d had with the chief steward, when he’d forbidden her from attending the festivities.

She stopped picking at the crest and slumped against the table, dropping her head onto her arms. Resigning herself to an autumn equinox spent alone, Lore sniffed back tears.

She could smell the food already being prepared in the kitchens. No wonder the only thing they served for breakfast was yesterday’s bread and a small portion of butter. They were already preparing the feasts for that evening.

Though the humans’ more intimate affair would have been preferable, she did not doubt that the spread served tonight would be like nothing she’d ever seen—or tasted—before. Her mouth watered at the prospect.

If she couldn’t be with her loved ones, there had to be a way to sneak in and steal a plate from the fae, if only so she could eat it alone in her room. She’d be out of the way, as requested.

But she wasn’t going to miss out completely. She looked toward the kitchen. She picked up her tray and walked over to peek inside.Doublethe usual confectioners were hard at work. She could see at least six fae decoratingjustthe tarts. There were seven more dusting, icing, and glazing what appeared to be dozens of different flavors of cookies. It put her oat cookies to shame, but she would trade all the feasts in the world to have those oat cookies with Grey.

Lore twirled a stray curl around her finger, biting her lip to hold back her grin. Yeah, there was no way she was missing out on these cookies.

On the way out of the servant’s hall, she swiped a clean bowl from the counter.

***

The sun had already set by the time Lore had figured out her plan. She fluffed her curls over her very human ears and slipped her new cloak over her shoulders. Lore placed the stolen bowl into the pocket of the cloak and peeked her head out of the door. The hallway was empty, so she slipped out and closed her door.

The warm kitchen was empty aside from three boys fanning the flames of the largest oven. She sent a silent prayer of thanks up to the stars and the goddess of sweets that the desserts hadn’t all been removed to the royal banquet hall yet. She knew it wouldn’t be long before they were, though, so she didn’t have time to browse. Quickly scooping a few of the smallest tarts, she then grabbed a handful of cookies and was out the door before the boys noticed.

Now, all she had to do was make it through the servant’s dining hall and downstairs to her room without running into—

Lore swore while staring straight ahead at a tart—she suspected lemon, given its terribly bright yellow jelly—stuck firmly to the front of an otherwise immaculate guard uniform.

The tart slid down the front of the guard’s pressed coat, painfully slow, and landed with a muffled thud back into her bowl.