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And hadn’t Toven just said: “What’s in your mind can be taken from you.”

It wasn’t just her important memories that Mallow would have access to. She could see anything Briony did, no matter how mundane. Pages and words and information. Her favorite things.

Briony put back the book with shaking fingers, knowing that researching the tattoos was enough to incriminate her. She’d never been afraid of her own mind before.

Staring at the shelves of a library so dark and powerful that it could defeat Mallow and all Bomard with only its pages wielded by the right person, Briony realized she couldn’t use any of it.

She stepped back, breathing hard. There was nothing she could research. Nothing was safe. She blinked quickly at the stacks, focusing on her breath, feeling a sharp pain in her ribs.

Her mind wasn’t her own. She felt Mallow’s presence inside still, slick like oil. Perhaps she wouldn’t ravage Briony’s consciousness again, but could she count on it?

She leaned back on the shelves, closing her eyes. “How do I keep her from reading my mind?” she whispered to herself, scarcely more than air.

The sound of shuffling to her left snapped her eyes open. A book slithered from a shelf down an aisle and floated, as if it had been called. Blinking, she peered between the shelves to see if Toven was calling books from the catalog at the front.

He sat in the armchair with one leg crossed over the other. It wasn’t him.

But still the book hovered. Briony moved down the aisle, walking carefully toward the text. Close enough to grasp it, she read the spine.

Mind Barriers for Beginners

Her heart stuttered in her chest as she reached for the thin book. It fell into her hands like an apple from a tree. She stared at the cover blankly for a minute before she flipped to the table of contents, fingers trembling.

It was a book on shielding one’s thoughts. Briony frowned. Had the library heard her? Did the catalog provide help without prompting? Perhaps this was more of the magic of the stones in Hearst Hall.

Mind barricades would be the best protection from Mallow’s probing, but it was a magical ability. And she didn’t have magic.

She read the chapter titles:

Meditation

Clearing Your Mind

Walls and Doorways

From the little she knew of mind barricades from her own reading, they required a focused mind. It was extremely advanced stuff. Year fives barely touched on it before leaving school, but these first chapters sounded simple enough, possibly non-magical.

Briony slid the thin book into the slipcase of a large text on agriculture and quickly glanced through the fiction shelves, grabbing two of her favorite books as decoys.

When she descended the stairs, Toven checked his timepiece in surprise. “Would you like the last twelve seconds or are you done?”

She swallowed thickly and smiled. “I’m done.”

Briony felt like a child that had stolen from the marketplace, waiting to see if she’d be caught by the vendor. Toven looked at the spines in her arms, seeing only the agriculture slipcase and two novels.

He led her out of the library, and Briony sent one last loving glance over her shoulder. They walked upstairs in silence, and he opened her door for her. She held the books to her chest like a shield.

“You’ll be eating from now on then?” Toven said, one hand on the doorknob.

“Until I run out of things to read,” she said lightly.

He frowned at her and shut the door. The lock turned.

Briony dashed to her bed, dropping the books and flipping open Mind Barriers for Beginners .

She still didn’t know how far she could get without magic.

When Finola had taught her cloaking, there were weeks of only meditation.

Finola had an entire room dedicated to meditation.

Briony had been inside it once, but it was so blank that it had dizzied her.

No windows, white walls, and the door disappeared once it was closed.

She’d gotten claustrophobic and needed to leave.

Briony looked around her bedroom, grateful for the first time that there was no distracting decor or large pieces of furniture. She could perhaps create her own meditation space.

She read all night, devouring the techniques in the book.

The next day, she put them into practice, finding familiarity in the same meditations from her cloaking studies.

So much of it reminded her of Finola that she burst into tears after an aggressive hour of concentration, feeling completely worn out.

Briony slipped into bed early and tried to focus on emptying her mind before sleeping, but dreams spun into her head like spiderwebs.

***

Her consciousness lifted from her dreams in slow waves, a weightless floating back to the surface. Every time she dipped back into dreaming, Rory was there. She wanted to stay there, in a place where her twin was still alive, but something tugged her relentlessly toward the surface.

Untwining her wishes and memories, Briony felt a pricking across her skin, her body dragging her back into her bed at Hearst Hall, where Rory was dead. Her arms prickled with goose bumps, and that familiar sensation of watchful eyes washed over her.

There was a soft tug at her hair, tickling at her neck.

Her lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes to her dark bedroom. She tilted her head to the door, certain for a moment that she hadn’t been alone. That a hand had passed through her hair, a gaze steadily watching over her.

That maybe someone had come to check on her.

She blinked away her silly thoughts, twisting her legs in the sheets, and turning over to her other side to snuggle in.

A shadow in the darkness moved.

And a low growl breathed hot air across her face.

Briony screamed as the gray fox from the forest pushed a paw into her chest, holding her down. It stood for a moment above her, canines bared, hot meaty breath gusting over her frozen skin. Then it snapped its jaws, and its teeth sank deep into her neck.