Sorcery of Thorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

hers.
    “Elisabeth, you’re absolutely mad!” Katrien hissed, materializing from the darkness. “I can’t believe you touched him. I was poised to jump out and bludgeon him with a grimoire the entire time. Well? What’s the report?”
    Her nerves sang with exhilaration. She smiled, and then for some reason began to laugh. “No pointed ears,” she gasped. “They’re completely normal.”
    The reading room’s door creaked open. Katrien clamped a hand over Elisabeth’s mouth to smother her laughter. And not a moment too soon—the Director was waiting outside. She appeared as stern as always, her tumble of red hair gleaming like molten copperagainst the dark blue of her uniform. She glanced back into the room, and paused; after a moment of searching, her gaze unerringly found and held Elisabeth’s through the shelves. Elisabeth went rigid, but the Director said nothing. One corner of her mouth twitched, tugging at the scar on her cheek. Then the door clicked shut, and she and the magister were gone.

FOUR

    T HE MAGISTER’S VISIT marked the last exciting event of the season. Summer arrived in an onslaught of scorching heat. Soon afterward, an epidemic of Brittle-Spine left everyone exhausted and miserable, forced to massage the afflictedgrimoires with foul-smelling ointment for weeks on end. Elisabeth was assigned to care for a Class Two called The Decrees of Bartholomew Trout, which developed a habit of wiggling provocatively every time it saw her coming. By the time the first autumn storm blew over Summershall, she never wanted to see another pot of ointment again. She was ready to collapse into bed and sleep for years.
    Instead,she jolted awake in the dead of night, convinced she had heard a sound. Wind lashed the trees outside, howling through the eaves. Twigs pelted against the window in staccato bursts. The storm was loud, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had woken for a different reason. She sat up in bed and threw off her quilt.
    “Katrien?” she whispered.
    Katrien rolled over, muttering in the throesof a dream. She didn’t rouse even when Elisabeth reached across the space between their beds and shook her shoulder. “Blackmail him,” she mumbled against her pillow, still dreaming.
    Frowning, Elisabeth slipped out of bed. She lit a candle on the nightstand and glanced around, searching for anything amiss.
    The room she shared with Katrien was located high in one of the library’s towers. It wassmall and circular, with a narrow, castle-like window that let in drafts whenever the wind blew from the east. Everything looked exactly as it had when Elisabeth had gone to bed. Books lay open on the dresser and slumped in piles along the curved stone walls, and notes belonging to Katrien’s latest experiment littered the rug. Elisabeth took care not to step on them as she crossed to the door anddrifted into the hall, her candle enfolding her in a hazy glow. The library’s thick walls deadened the wind’s howling to a faraway murmur.
    Barefoot, dressed in only her nightgown, she drifted down the stairs like a ghost. A few turns brought her to a forbidding oak door reinforced with strips of iron. This door separated the library from the living quarters, and it always remained locked. Priorto the age of thirteen, she hadn’t been able to unlock it herself; she’d had to wait for a librarian to come past and usher her through. Now she possessed a greatkey, capable of unlocking the outer doors of any Great Library in the kingdom. She wore it around her neck at all times, even when sleeping or bathing, a tangible symbol of her oaths.
    She lifted the key, then paused, running her fingertipsacross the door’s rough surface. A memory flashed before her: the claw marks on the table in the vault, which had scored the wood as though it were butter.
    No—that was impossible. Grimoires only transformed intoMaleficts if damaged. It was not something that would happen in the middle of the night, with no