fact that I had a bomb strapped to my chest, blocking out the awe at the bodies strewn over the courtyard. I leapt over them, one by one.
When I got to the western castle wall, I leapt up, fingers wedged between the stones. I heard the front door of the castle groaning open. But it didn’t matter now, I was halfway up to the window, moving faster than I ever had. Rage gave me strength, speed, focus.
The window was open a crack, and that was all I needed. I opened it the rest of the way, then carefully hoisted myself up, taking care not to press too hard on the briefcase. I touched down in the empty armory, then ran behind the armor.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, my jaw dropped. For a moment, it looked as if my hair was moving, snaking around my head. My eyes gleamed with a silver shade. I blinked, and the illusion was gone again. Maybe the nightshade had affected me after all.
Focus, Lila.
I pressed the button, and the door slid open.
Once I’d shut the mirror behind me, I reached for the belt, desperate to get the fucking bomb off me.
And yet … it was pitch black in here, with no candle.
I could accidentally bang it against the wall if I unstrapped it.
So instead, I held my hands out to either side, tracing my fingertips over the cold stone walls. Tonight, the castle felt alive. I moved swiftly, feeling like I had each turn memorized in here.
“Alice, I’m doing this for you.”
The image of her death was still burned in my mind, but it had started to take more shape now. A moving scene, until I could see Alice kneeling before him, begging him not to kill her. I wondered if she had the chance to tell him she had a family who’d miss her. With his eyes flaming, with the fiery chains writhing around his powerful body, he brought his sword down through her neck.
By the time I got to his room, pure fury lit me up from the inside out, burning away any reservations. Only then did I slowly unhook the belt from my chest, and lower the briefcase.
I peered through one of the slits in the wall, scanning for signs of movement. Some of the candles in the chandeliers were lit, flickering back and forth over the stacks of books. To the right, the archway that led into Samael’s bedroom looked dark.
I pressed my ear to the wall. Silence greeted me, just my heart thudding, blood pumping.
I found my way to the hidden doorway. Slowly, I pushed through it, then slipped out from behind the tapestry. I glanced from side to side. It seemed completely dead in here. I wondered how far the blast would go.
I could only hope it didn’t destroy too many of the books.
I crept quietly into his bedroom, finding it dark apart from the dim light beaming in from the library.
Go quickly Lila.
I lit one of the candles on the mantelpiece, giving myself enough light to see what I was doing.
It was only when I pulled open the drawer that I felt the slightest bit of hesitation, seeing his little glass jars of tea neatly lined up. It all just seemed so normal and domestic. Almost human. Something about knowing Samael’s nightly ritual, innocuous as it was, gave me pause. And how he’d fallen because he cared for someone, and he drank the tea because it reminded him of her.
My heart squeezed tight, body breathless. I felt a strange connection to him, a sharp flash of protectiveness.
Samael was a mystery I wanted to unlock. If he died, I’d never know his secrets.
But this wasn’t the time to go soft, was it? My loyalty was to Alice, not to him. Samael had beguiled me, and I’d fallen for his beautiful face, for his kiss. The sad fact was, he was slaughtering innocent people. My sister included. That was it.
I lay the briefcase down to rest on the flagstone floor, and carefully opened the latches.
My heart was thudding like a loud bass drum. Boom, boom, boom.
Swallowing hard, I tried to steady my hands as I pulled the little explosive mousetrap out of the briefcase. First, I tried it out in the drawer, making sure I knew exactly where I needed to glue it so the string would tug down on the switch without killing me in the process.
Then, as instructed, I painted two neat lines of glue