When the supper bell sounded, deep and pure, two hours later, I rose from the edge of my bed where I’d been waiting and walked toward the door with my head held high. No more hiding, I told myself firmly.

I had drunk a full pot of hot, fortifying tea. I had spent a satisfying half-hour coming up with my most inventive curses for the situation. And most importantly of all, I had prepared myself for social warfare.

If there was one thing that Angland’s greatest politician had successfully taught her recalcitrant daughter, it was the usefulness of a really good set of sartorial armor.

Tonight, I was wearing my finest bronze silk gown with a golden, braided rope belted underneath my bosom and a chain of shining pearls around my neck. A shawl of shimmering fey-silk was draped gracefully around my shoulders, and my long-suffering maid, Aoife, had arranged my hair into a braided crown worthy of Boudicca herself.

I was ready. No matter who or what awaited me outside—whether it was Amy, Wrexham, or the elf lord himself—I would meet them with calm confidence and sweep unhindered on my way.

I turned the stag-shaped door handle and stepped out onto the carpeted corridor, braced for battle.

It was empty. From the top to bottom of the long hallway, I didn’t see a single soul.

My shoulders sagged with relief. Letting out my held breath, I turned left and started at an easy pace for the staircase...just as the door across from mine flew open.

“Oh!” The voice that spoke behind me was young, female and breathy, and it was all too horribly familiar. “What a surprise! I mean, Miss Harwood, what a marvelous coincidence it is that we both happened to be ready at the exact same moment!”

Oh, for...

It was the most appallingly bad acting that I had ever witnessed. I squeezed my eyes shut in pain as I stopped, forced by courtesy to reply despite myself.

“Miss Banks,” I said flatly. “What a marvelous coincidence indeed.”

“Isn’t it?” Beaming, she swooped in on me, letting her door fall heavily shut behind her. No longer covered by a heavy cloak, her fair hair was curled into fine ringlets about her thin white face, which was gently flushed with excitement. “I was so hoping to find the chance to have another chat with you!”

“Were you?” I asked dryly. “I had no idea.”

But it was impossible to escape such a well-planned ambush with mere sarcasm. Smiling hopefully, Miss Banks took her place at my side. “Shall we walk to supper together?”

I hesitated, my gaze searching the corridor with real hope this time. If only another guest would emerge to join us now...

No such luck. Every door in the corridor remained firmly closed, and the sound of convivial cheer floated up through the floorboards. Apparently, we were the last stragglers. So be it.

“How delightful,” I said, and strode down the hallway as swiftly as I could.

She hurried to keep up. “I’ve been longing to speak to you for simply ages, Miss Harwood! You have no idea how many questions I want to ask you. How you managed your entry into the Great Library in the first place, and whether it was difficult to be the only lady there, and, if you would—if you could explain to me exactly what went wrong, when you lost your powers all those months ago—”

“Miss Banks.” I swung around, stopping in my path and baring my teeth in the vicious parody of a smile. “I have not lost my powers. I am perfectly capable of casting a spell now with just as great an effect as I could have managed five months ago.”

“But...” Her blonde eyebrows drew together. “I thought—that is, everyone said...you know, everyone has been saying—”

“The spell would still work,” I said tightly, “but I wouldn’t.” At the sight of her baffled expression, I jerked my shoulders impatiently, trying to loosen the knotted muscles of my back. “Casting any spell, even a small one...would kill me. Apparently.”

“Because—women really aren’t suited to magic, after all?” Her brown eyes looked suddenly huge and tragic. “Is that why it happened?”

“No!” I snapped. “Being a woman had nothing to do with it. The same could have happened to any gentleman magician—and it has in the past.” Not often, certainly; but it was enough of a risk that our teachers at the Great Library had warned us of the danger of over-extending ourselves in our training, and Jonathan had found mentions of similar incidents all throughout the library’s historical records. The effect was rare, but hardly unheard of.

I had still thought, at the time, that it was worth the risk...but only because I’d never actually believed that any such thing could ever happen to me.

The memory of my own reckless folly was unbearable.

I glared at my interrogator, giving up on subtlety. “This,” I said, “is a deeply personal line of enquiry, Miss Banks. May I ask why you feel so free to pursue it with a stranger?”

Her fair skin flushed in a wave of red that swept up from her neck to cover her cheeks. Still, she stood her ground and held my gaze. “I have to,” she said quietly. “I have no choice, you see. If I can’t prove that what happened to you won’t happen to me, I’ll never be allowed into the Great Library myself.”

My eyes widened. We stared at each other for a moment in silence, as my heartbeat suddenly thrummed through my skin and her words echoed through my head.

“I’ll never be allowed into the Great Library...”

“You...want to study magic?” My voice sounded strangely distant in my ears.

She nodded, her thin face pinched with tension. “I must,” she said. “I’ve always yearned to. And now—now, it’s the only way. For me and for Miss Fennell, both.”

What? I shook my head, remembering that jolly, striding creature I’d met earlier. “Miss Fennell wants to study magic, too? I thought she was famously politically minded.” She’d certainly seemed like a young woman destined to run the nation one day, whether the nation happened to care for the experience or not.

“She is,” said Miss Banks. “And she’ll enter the Boudiccate within the next ten years, I’m certain of it. It’s what she’s always dreamed of, just as I’ve always dreamed of magic. But...” She stopped, and drew a breath. “If she wants to be accepted as a member, she has to marry a magician. Lady Cosgrave told her so. Otherwise, she’ll be like your sister-in-law—never quite accepted into the inner circle.”

“What?” I demanded. The sudden influx of information in that brave, wavering voice was overwhelming. “What does Amy have to do with all of this?”

Miss Banks shrugged unhappily. “We’ve all heard the story. It was Boudicca’s second, magician-husband who stood by her side when she led her great rebellion, and helped her expel Rome from our shores forever. Now, each member of the Boudiccate is expected to form that partnership in her own turn.”

Whereas Amy...Amy was already married to Jonathan, my history-loving brother, who had fought just as hard to escape his magical heritage as I had fought to claim it.

How had I never made that connection before?

Of course my mother had never felt required to warn me of that rule. She would have simply assumed that I would marry a magician, as every other woman in our family had for generations. Knowing my own rebellious pull toward magic, she would have considered it a foregone conclusion.

Still, Amy must have known the rule, too—even discussed it with Lady Cosgrave when she was so pointedly passed over for my mother’s seat on the Boudiccate. I’d never understood why that snub had occurred...but then, she would never have told me or Jonathan that truth, would she? She would have been far too concerned with saving our feelings even as her own were trampled.

My jaw clenched as fury built inside me. “What utter idiocy,” I snarled. “As if there weren’t plenty of magicians ready to defend the Boudiccate, without any marriages being involved in the matter.”

“Nevertheless, it’s still the rule,” said Miss Banks quietly. “And that’s why I have to study magic, you see. It’s the only way that Miss Fennell and I can wed.”

Her words lingered for a moment in the nearly-empty hallway before I made any sense of them. Then my eyebrows rose. “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

Well, that wasn’t unheard of either...at least not in ordinary society. It was a truth universally acknowledged that women were the more pragmatic sex; that was why we were expected to run the government, while men attended to the more mystical and imaginative realm of magic. So it was commonly accepted that every once in a while, two ladies with no interest in bearing children might well find a more sensible match in each other than in a gentleman.

And yet...

“Would they allow it?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of a Boudiccate member without a husband.” I’d accepted that all my life as mere hidebound tradition, without ever thinking the matter through—but of course, now that Miss Banks had pointed it out, their mimicry of the great Boudicca’s own pairing was obvious. How had I not solved that mystery myself long ago, to finally understand the reasons behind Amy’s snub?

The answer was damnably simple: Because I wasn’t paying enough attention.

That decision had been made just after my mother’s death, when I’d been beset by grief for her loss and for all those bitter battles that we would never have a chance, anymore, to forgive...but even as I’d wept and raged every night for her cut-short life, I’d spent my days at the Library in a grim blur of unbroken focus, throwing myself into my studies harder than ever before.

Oh, I’d still been outraged for Amy’s sake when I’d heard the news, for all that she’d made light of her disappointment in her letters to me...

But when it really came down to it, one truth had dominated: It wasn’t magic, so I hadn’t been interested enough to pursue the matter any further.

It was an uncomfortable realization to make about myself. More uncomfortable yet was Miss Banks’s steady, expectant stare as it rested on my face. “There never was a lady who cast magic, either,” she said, “until you.”

“Quite.” I swallowed hard.

What had I told myself, only minutes earlier? Time to stop hiding, indeed.

I’d retreated to the safety of my old bedroom in my family house and locked out every visitor so that I would never have to hear what the world might say of my notorious fall.

But clearly, there were other women who had been listening while I’d stayed sheltered with my fingers in my ears.

None of them deserved to be denied their own future for my failures.

A door opened in the corridor behind us. The sound of a tuneless whistle emerged.

I took a deep breath. “I will tell you everything,” I promised Miss Banks in a whispered rush. “And I’ll do it within a se’ennight.” I could put it off no longer. “Will you walk with me in Lord Cosgrave’s knot garden one morning after breakfast? We can talk privately then.”

“Of course.” Her face blazed with such hope, it was painful to look upon.

Had I looked that way, too, when I’d first sensed the doors of the Great Library opening to me?

The whistling behind us broke off. “I say!”

It was my older brother’s voice; I turned to find Jonathan smiling affably, his thick brown hair rumpled as if he’d been pulling at it with his fingers and a dab of dark blue ink smeared against his jaw. “I thought I’d be the last one to supper,” he said. “I’m glad to find you two still here. I had to finish up a rather urgent note I was writing—a bit of an addendum to that article of mine for the Journal of Deniscan Studies. I’ve been reading the proof copies, you see, and they’ve got the footnotes all wrong!”

“Horrors.” I shook my head at him as I reached over to dab away the ink with one finger and Miss Banks watched, eyes wide and curious. “Have you really left poor Amy to escort herself down to supper?”

“Oh, she doesn’t mind,” Jonathan said blithely. “All the more time to talk politics with her friends, you know, without having to explain the fine details to me as she goes along—and it’s not as if I’ve much of interest to contribute to their husbands’ conversations. All that high drama over the proper wording of spells...” He smiled ruefully at me. “Come and help me bear it?”

“Of course.” I slipped one arm through his, grateful for his familiar, solid strength and the unspoken support behind it—because for all that he’d phrased it as his own cry for help, he knew perfectly well how much I’d been dreading this first supper in magical company again.

Partners against the world. It was the way we’d always been, ever since we’d grown old enough to realize that the world—including our own parents—believed that the passions that drove us both had to be stamped out for our own good.

But Amy...

“Amy really is very patient with us, isn’t she?” I said thoughtfully.

“She won’t be for long, if we miss the start of supper.” Jonathan gave my arm an affectionate squeeze. “We’d better hurry.”

So we did.