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    re Maverine had always enjoyed libraries. In the small seaside vige of her childhood, there had been one—not nearly as grand as Lord Fowler’s but far more dear.


    After the night’s festivities concluded and the rest of the guests proceeded to therge dinner table, re made her escape back to the library where she’d first awoken. She found herself among the stacks of books with an aching heart. But any ailment of the heart could be ignored, or at the very least forgotten for a little while, when an open book sat before you, pages lined with nothing but new possibilities.


    This book was less imaginative and more illuminating. Pots of ink lined the inside of the pouch clipped around her waist, and re slipped the one she rarely used out of the far-right side. Yellow. When she’d first begun ingraining her magic into objects, she’d taken to ink almost immediately.


    There was already something magical about a liquid that could make something from nothing. To her magic, ink was another avenue for creation, and with each color she interacted with, a different reaction urred.


    Yellow was one of the greatest enigmas, but when she got it just right, it helped her uncover secrets hidden among ambiguous pages. With a flick of her hand, re pulled the yellow liquid from the small pot, moving it slowly with her fingers before sshing it against the crumpled paper in front of her.


    One of the many missives to Evie’s little sister was syed out on the mahogany table. She’d been hesitant to bring them along, but she couldn’t seem to leave them behind, something in the writing familiar in a jarring sort of way, all the letters curling strangely, each of the Ts with a crooked dash. She’d tried to find an answer within the ink several times ande up empty, but something about them… She couldn’t seem to let it go. The candles all around dripped wax slowly against the little trays they sat upon. The paper glowed along with the yellow ink, and re noticed several things all at once.


    For one, whatever ink was used to write the letter was not magical in the slightest—the letters etched onto the page were unchanging beneath the weight of re’s power. For another, the yellow ink had clung in ces torge, strange marks over every corner of the parchment.


    Not fingerprints… What are these?


    re pulled a magnifying ss off the desk and leaned over the paper, attempting to decipher what she was looking at.


    “You look like a detective. Attempting to find a heart?” Tatianna’sment was so startling in the quiet, not even a light footstep in warning, re cried out, stumbling into the wooden chair before righting herself on the edge of the table.


    “Have anything on hand to restart it?” re grumbled, sitting back in the seat with a huff before returning to her task. “What do you want?”


    Tatianna frowned, as did Kingsley, who sat with a tiny steel cuff clipped to his foot. A small, weighted ball was chained to the end of it. They’d found it in an armor disy, and after Alexander knocked it over, it felt like a natural next step. It had been Kingsley’s own idea. Now that his awareness was bing sparser and far more dangerous, judging by how the evening had disintegrated, they’d agreed that keeping Kingsley in ce was safest for all involved.


    Including re’s brother, who was very likely suffering an acute torture at being trapped for a night with a woman he seemed determined not to have.


    Tighter.


    Kingsley’s sign was followed by the pointing of a webbed foot to the chain around his other foot.


    “Alexander.” Tatianna straightened his crown. “It’s tight enough to be effective. I won’t abide cutting off the cirction to your poor little foot.” Tatianna did a double take. The dressing robe she’d scrounged up was miraculously pink. Or perhaps not so miraculous; re used to think that Tati could sniff out the color with her eyes closed.


    “re? What is that?” Tatianna asked, pointing to Lyssa’s discarded letter. This one read, Pleasee to your father, little Lyssa. Allow him to apologize. Allow him to make amends. The handwriting was deliberate, with strange diagonal dashes over the Ts.


    But it wasn’t the words that Tatianna was rmed by—it was the glowing blobs that had begun to take form underneath the yellow ink she’d sttered on the page.


    “Yellow ink reveals secrets.” re watched with bated breath as the blobs began to clear, revealing—


    Crash.


    Kingsley’s episodes decided to make a great return as the frog blinked out of awareness as quickly as he had blinked into it. And in his animal state, all Kingsley seemed to know was that he was trapped to something that held a great deal of weight.


    Weight that he used to his advantage.


    “Alexander, don’t!” re yelled as the frog attempted to jump, the weight on his foot knocking into candles, books, and then finally (and tragically) arge pot of ck ink. ck ink had no ability to hold on to re’s magic, except in acting as an extinguisher. The letter was bathed in a pool of midnight liquid, and the words were lost to her.


    Forever.


    Sorrow wed its way deep within the closed chambers of her heart as she came to terms with the fact that once more, she’d failed her brother. Once more, she’d failed herself.


    “Alexander!” re raged and was immediately racked by guilt when she noticed how ashamed the prince looked.


    Apologetic.


    “Another episode,” Tatianna said, sounding far more empathetic than re could manage, even though everything that had gone wrong in thest few moments could be traced back to her own foolish choices. “What were those marks?” Tatianna asked as she ran a dainty finger down the edge of the page.


    “I don’t know,” re replied, using a nearby throw nket to dab up the ck ink, but it was hopeless; whatever clue had started to appear on the page was there no longer.


    Kingsley held up a sign, and re thought that if she wasn’t a woman of twenty and six years, she might have thrown herself to the floor and wept.


    Sorry.


    Followed by the most pitiful sound any frog had ever made.


    On second thought, she might throw herself to the ground and weep anyway. If any group of people needed such a thing, it was precisely twenty-six-year-old women.


    “It’s all right, Alexander. There are more letters back at the manor. We’ll check those when we return.”


    “If we return.”


    “Tatianna!” re chastised, taking a step toward her, but halted when her foot sank into a hidden panel. The pressure against it must have triggered a hinging mechanism as soon as she picked her foot up again, because a stack of shelves against the wall opened to reveal a dark corridor beyond.


    “A hidden tunnel!” Tatianna was far too cheery about the discovery. “Finally, something interesting to do. Come! Let’s see where it goes.”


    “Are you out of your gourd? There’s no way I’m going into the creepy dark tunnel leading to gods know where! For all we know, it could lead straight to the deands itself, and I will not be caught—”


    She was cut off by Tatianna. Well…Tatianna and her lips. On re’s. Every coherent thought flew out of re’s ears, and then there was only sensation. re responded with fervor, with passion, and with her hands.


    For a glorious two seconds before Tatianna pushed away, leaving re hot and cold all over. “I’m going exploring. Come if you wish.” Tatianna winked, flicking a braid behind her shoulder and lifting a candle holder, the light following her to the hidden door.


    re was moving on shaky legs as she scurried after her ex-betrothed. “Hold on! I-I’ming, too.”


    Scooping Alexander up into her palm, she entered the torch-lined corridor and tried not to feel ill at ease.


    Especially when the door behind them mmed shut.