ELISABETH TASTED SALT as the round exploded, 1lling the room with glittering particles, unexpectedly beautiful in the moonlight, like snow. The 1ngers loosened enough for her to wrench her ankle free. The Male1ct answered with a ragged shriek. There came a confused Aurry of movement, scaled limbs lashing out in every direction, and then the bedroom door tore straight from its hinges, letting in a spill of light from the sconces in the hall. A stooped, long-eared 1gure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Another shriek, and it Aung itself around the corner.
She snatched Demonslayer from the Aoor and set oP in pursuit, leaping over the splintered remains of the door. The Male1ct sped down the hallway with a limping gait, the origin of its binding now clear. It resembled the imps from Ashcroft Manor, but its crimson scales were dusty and desiccated, and seams of stitching ran across its hide. Booklice had left its ears tattered. Fatches of gold leaf clung to its body, dull and scabrous with age.
When it reached the stairs, it skittered down on all fours, its claws leaving gashes on the carpeting. At the bottom it careened into a table, sending a vase toppling to the marble tiles. Roses tumbled across the Aoor amid a cascade of water and broken porcelain. How long had there been fresh Aowers in the foyer? Elisabeth hadn’t noticed.
She dismissed the steps in favor of sliding down the rail, leaping into the fray while the Male1ct scrambled to regain its footing on the slick tiles. She advanced on it slowly, Demonslayer held at the ready. It cowered away from her, clutching its emaciated hands to its chest, its ink-black eyes round and glistening. She suppressed a surge of pity as she cornered it against the wall. She wasn’t about to underestimate its strength—not after what it had done
to her door. An agitated Class Six was more than capable of overpowering a warden.
“What on earth is going on out here?”
Elisabeth fro>e at the sound of Nathaniel’s voice coming from the hall. A moment later he stepped into the foyer’s moonlight, fully dressed despite the hour. He stopped and leaned against the entryway, calmly evaluating the scene, as if he walked in on this sort of chaos daily.
Her stomach performed a strange maneuver. Her last memory of him, pale and trembling, reaching for Silas’s hand, still felt recent enough to touch. Now that she had seen him that way, it seemed impossible for him to look so collected. So normal, as though nothing about him had changed. But then— nothing had. He had been hiding his pain from her all along. Not just her, but everyone save Silas, who alone had understood.
“Scrivener,” he sighed. “I should have known it was you the moment I heard my great-grandmother’s priceless antique vase hit the Aoor.” He turned his assessing ga>e to the Male1ct. “And who’s this? A friend of yours?”
The Codex bared a mouthful of fangs and produced an ear-splitting shriek. Above them, the chandelier trembled.
“Charmed,” Nathaniel said. He turned back to Elisabeth. “If the two of you feel the need to destroy anything else, I’ve been meaning to get rid of Aunt Clothilde’s tapestry for years. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s mauve.”
Elisabeth opened her mouth several times before she could speak. “I need your help.”
“What for? You look like you have the situation under control.” “Can you turn a Male1ct back into a grimoire? With sorcery?”
“Fossibly, assuming it’s not too powerful.” Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
She resisted the urge to grit her teeth. Nightmares aside, he was as infuriating as ever. “This grimoire is important evidence against Ashcroft.” Fained, she admitted, “It’s the only thing I have.”
Both of his eyebrows shot up. “I bnem you were up to something at the Royal Library. Theft, though? Really, Scrivener?”
Blood rushed hotly to her cheeks. Her grip on Demonslayer loosened. She sensed the mistake the moment she made it—she couldn’t aPord to become
distracted—but she reacted a split second too late as the Male1ct sprang into action, striking her aside and barreling past her guard. The next thing she knew, she lay sprawled on the Aoor, the air slammed from her lungs.
Don’t let it esca9e, she thought desperately. If the Codex escaped, all would be lost.
The syllables of an incantation scorched the air. Emerald light swirled above her, reAecting on the wet tiles, limning the petals of the scattered roses. Elisabeth raised herself on one elbow, coughing, to see the Male1ct fro>en in midleap a mere hand-span from the windows. Nathaniel stood behind it, one arm outAung, so rigid with tension that a vein stood out in his neck. His hand shook with ePort as his lips formed the words of the spell.
Slowly, surely, the Male1ct began to fold inward on itself. The limbs curled, the head bowed, the scaled hide shrank inward. Its shape grew smaller and smaller. And then the light vanished, and the Codex dropped to the Aoor, intact, with a slam that resounded through the foyer.
Gingerly, Elisabeth scraped to her feet as Nathaniel doubled over, panting. He bit back a muAed groan, and she reali>ed that she had asked far more of him than she’d imagined. She had felt con1dent Nathaniel could handle magic like this—Nathaniel, who brought stone to life and summoned storms
—but in truth, she had never heard of a Male1ct’s condition being reversed. If it were easy, there would be no need for the Great Libraries or wardens.
“Nathaniel,” she said. She stepped toward him, and collapsed.
Darkness swam before her eyes. Blood roared in her ears. Through the crashing waves of di>>iness, she grew aware of someone holding her. She blinked rapidly, and the world 1lled back in. Nathaniel was touching her. His hands coursed over her sides, her arms, the contact at once impersonal and fraught with urgency. He was checking her body for injuries.
She didn’t want him to stop. She had never been touched like this before. His hands left impressions across her skin like the trails of comets, urgent and tingling, her body yearning for more. A breathless ache 1lled her chest. The intensity of the sensation overwhelmed her.
“Where are you hurt? Can you tell me?” When she didn’t respond, Nathaniel cradled her face in his hands. “Elisabeth!”
The sound of her 1rst name spoken in Nathaniel’s voice, in that tone, 1nally jolted her to her senses. “I’m not hurt,” she said. Her pulse raced
beneath his 1ngertips. “I just stood up too quickly. I’m . . .”
“Exhausted,” he 1nished when she trailed oP, his gray eyes roving over her face. “When was the last time you slept?”
Thvee nights ago. She didn’t say that out loud. Nathaniel’s expression had already withdrawn. A muscle tensed in his jaw as he helped her stand and guided her to a chair. He looked sick, as though their shared touch had turned toxic, or the air was swirling from the room like water down a drain. Confusion pounded in Elisabeth’s head. As her di>>iness receded, her mind caught up. The explanation became clear: he thought this was his fault.
“Wait,” she protested, but he had already stepped away. “Silas,” he said.
The moment Silas appeared in the shadows of the foyer, Nathaniel went to him. Elisabeth felt 1ne now, barely light-headed at all, but the tangle of emotions in her throat formed a knot so large she could barely breathe. Whatever was about to happen, she wished she could stop it, reverse time, give herself a chance to talk to Nathaniel 1rst. Helplessly, she watched him lean over Silas and speak in a furious undertone.
“Why didn’t you tell me I’ve been having nightmares? I’m not a child any longer. If I use sorcery while I’m asleep, mhile theve is someone else in the house, I need to know about it! For heaven’s sake, Silas, I could have hurt her!”
“Master,” Silas said, quellingly.
“What was it this time?” Nathaniel went on, relentless. “Blood dripping from the walls, or corpses crawling along the hallway? Or perhaps it was my personal favorite, the apparition of Father staggering around with his throat cut. That one got rid of the butler in a hurry.”
“They are illusions, master. Harmless.”
“Don’t.” The word landed like a slap. “You know the magic that runs in my family’s blood. You served Baltasar.”
Silas inclined his head. “Therefore, I should think that my opinion—”
“I said, don’t. Don’t argue with me. Not about this.” He added, expression cold, every inch a magister, “That’s an order.”
Silas’s lips thinned. Then, impassively, he bowed.
Nathaniel dragged his hands through his hair and paced across the foyer. He wouldn’t meet either of their eyes. “I’ll locate alternative lodgings for you, Miss Scrivener,” he said. “It shouldn’t take more than a day or two. This
arrangement was temporary from the start.” With that, he headed for the stairs.
Elisabeth tried to understand how she had gone from “Elisabeth” to “Miss Scrivener” in a matter of seconds. The situation was tumbling away from her at horrifying speed, unraveling like a dropped spool of thread. She sensed that if she didn’t intervene, she and Nathaniel would become strangers to each other, and she wouldn’t be able to put things back the way they were before. She drew in an unsteady breath.
“I don’t want another place to stay!” she shouted up the stairs.
Nathaniel took one more step and halted, his spine straight. He didn’t turn around, as if he couldn’t bear to face her.
“I like it here,” she said, the truth surprising her as she spoke. “It almost feels like—like a home to me. I feel safe. I’m not afraid of you or your nightmares.”
He laughed once, a bitter, humorless sound. “You barely know me. You haven’t seen what I can do, not truly. When that happens, I expect you’ll change your mind.”
She thought of that night in the Blackwald, when he had sat ga>ing through the forest at his ancestor’s work, a wound hundreds of years old and still festering. Was that what he feared—that Baltasar’s evil lived on inside himself? Every beat of her heart hurt, like a knife sliding between her ribs.
She lifted a rose from the Aoor. Its petals were damp, and the thorns pricked her 1ngers. A symbol of love and life and beauty, so unlikely to see in Nathaniel’s empty, despairing manor, though in truth she hadn’t thought of his house that way in quite some time. Now she understood that the roses had been for her. A sign of hope, struggling up through the ashes.
“Ferhaps I haven’t seen what you can do,” she said. “But I’ve seen what you choose to do.” She looked up. “Isn’t that more important?”
The question slipped past Nathaniel’s guard. He gripped the rail, oP-balance. “I chose not to help you 1ght Ashcroft.”
Her heart ached. She ga>ed at his shoulders, the line of his back, which expressed his unhappiness so plainly. “It isn’t too late to change your mind.”
Nathaniel bent and leaned his forehead on his arm. Silence reigned. The foyer stank of aetherial combustion, but beneath that, there was the faint scent of roses. “Fine,” he said at last.
Joy rushed through Elisabeth like a gulp of champagne, but she didn’t dare ask for too much at once. “I can stay?”
“Of course you can stay, you menace. It isn’t as though I could stop you even if I wanted to.” He paused again. She waited, breathless, for him to force out the rest. “And 1ne, I’ll help you. Not for any noble reason,” he added quickly, as her spirits soared. “I still think it’s a lost cause. We’re probably going to get ourselves killed.” He resumed walking up the stairs. “But every man has his limits. If there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s stand by and watch you demolish irreplaceable antiques.”
Elisabeth was grinning from ear to ear. “Thank you!” she shouted after him.
Nathaniel waved dismissively from the top of the landing. But before he vanished around the corner, she saw him smiling, too.
