Page 1 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

Chapter One

Samhain, 1798

It was just past midnight when Miss Pippa Cavendish found a naked man in the restricted section of the Library.

And he was bleeding on the books.

Pippa could overlook the nudity and the lack of consciousness—she had worked in the Library for over a decade, after all. Bewitched books were unpredictable and professors were not as patient as one might think. Students were exactly as unruly as one might think. For a quiet cathedral to books, there was always a certain chaos lurking under the surface.

Rather like a kraken in a village pond.

Still, blood was one thing she could not overlook. Not on a rare fourteenth-century grimoire about the magical uses of poisonous basilisk saliva. That parchment was incredibly fragile. Irreplaceable. And a basilisk summoned, accidentally or not, into the magical Library of Hallow University would be disastrous. The poor thing would be cross. And with good reason.

And as the nearest Librarian, Pippa would be blamed for it. Samhain festivities were in full swing. A dance with the beloved dead in the cemetery, a traveling necromancer convincing long-dead poets to pen one more poem. Fires lit in home hearths, turnips carved into gargoyle faces to delight and distract any passing spirits with ill intent. It was mischief and secrets and omens. Also, wind and rain and lanterns sputtering out.

But instead, Pippa was here in the Library with a naked man.

And she could not afford to be blamed for anything else.

Especially when it wasn’t even her doing.

This time.

She was not even on duty tonight. She was simply using the section as a thoroughfare to the apprentice lodgings. She supposed it served her right for using a shortcut. Not that it was forbidden. But Head Librarian Mrs. Pettigrew did not like it, and she already did not like Pippa. Not one little bit. Pippa ranked somewhere beneath the worms that occasionally threatened to infest the books. There were spells for that, but there were no spells for Pippa.

Pippa had searched.

Rather a lot.

She crouched next to the unconscious man, gently turning his head to pat his cheek. “Excuse me.”

Not just any naked man, but Professor Lachlan Thorn.

He did not reply. Not even the flicker of an eyelash. His eyelashes were ridiculous, long and dark. The slash of his dark eyebrows, the delicate sharpness of his jaw. The sinewy muscles of his bare chest dusted with hair. The way he was twisted slightly, his hip angled to cover the part of him she did not look at. Well, not again.

It was hard not to notice all the parts of a very naked man just sprawled there at one’s feet at midnight.

Especially Professor Lachlan Thorn.

What was he doing here? What did ordinary professors do so late at night? Read? Grade papers and write lectures? Practice their solemn glowers, purchase a pair of spectacles? It hardly mattered, as Professor Thorn was not the type to have to fetch his own books, especially not in the middle of the night on Samhain.

She could spot a professor at a hundred paces in the dark. There was an air about them. And most of them crossed her path before long, requesting certain restricted volumes or bewitched inks. Their students flooded the corridors, complaining in hushed and increasingly hysterical tones about those professors vociferously. Almost as much as they fawned over them. It depended almost entirely on the time of year and the state of examinations.

Lachlan was unlike those professors in as many ways as were possible. He was darker, far more menacing. And he spent more time researching subjects no one dared question him about than actually teaching. One could hardly tell a Fae king what to do.

He smelled like the forest, like midnight. Well, he was Fae. She supposed that must be it. People whispered such a great many things about him that if even half of them were true, she ought to leave him right where he lay and pretend she knew nothing about it.

But the books.

She was a Librarian. She had a duty. Some might say obsession.

Those people were clearly not Librarians.

She touched the professor’s shoulder. He did not stir, but at least he was breathing easily and did not stink of wine or whiskey or the goblin ale that the exhausted students drank night and day. “Hello?”

He had done nothing but nod vaguely in her direction the few times she had seen him in the Library. She was invisible to him, just another Librarian. As expected. She was invisible to most people, by design. And the rumors suggested that it was best to be invisible to him. The other options involved anything from crushing disdain to decapitation.

“Pardon me, professor,” she tried again. “But you cannot die here. It’s bad for the books.”