The summons came the next morning. She'd known it would.
He had promised her. Not tonight, but you will. And a man like him, a thing like him, did not forget his debts.
She had come here to kill him. Instead, she was being called to his door like a summoned thing. And the worst of it? The part she could not scrub out of herself? It was the thin traitor thread of wanting that pulled tight when the woman in gray said his name.
The woman in gray took her to the library.
This was the first time Elaine had seen this room. It was worse than the study, somehow. Larger. Older. The shelves climbed up into a dark that the single fire could not hope to reach. Ladders on rails. The smell of old paper and even older leather. Ten thousand books. She felt certain he had actually read every single one
