Rowan
The library kept better records than people. Shelves forgot nothing, even when the school did. I liked that. It made my work easy. I took a table under the south window where the light was steady and pulled a stack of books that would not sit together on any sane syllabus: old fae treatises on disguise craft, human notes on stage illusions, and a thin handbook the vampires used for court glamours. On top, I put an index from the Restricted Alcove so I could pretend I was only cross-checking citations.
I opened a fae volume first. The script was clean. The diagram I needed sat on the right page like a patient trap. Gender masking, simple tier, body to voice alignment. I traced the spiral with my thumb until the lines made sense again. The margin note said: keep the shift small; breaking truth costs blood. I believed the scribe. Old fae did not waste warnings.
"Studying, Rowan?" the librarian asked as she passed.
"Always," I said.
