and approached the Library. The boy appeared to have blossomed, rather than being drained from his trials; he glowed. His ears stayed rounded and his skin stayed youthful and warm. He toyed with his messy coils of hair absently. How had it been possible that Rami had ever mistaken him for a demon? Leto hummed a tuneless pop song under his breath as he guided Rami past hallways drenched in the sunsets of alien stars, down grand staircases falling into disrepair, through ballrooms that still contained the last strains of music.
They encountered no one, which just set Rami more on edge. It was very quiet for an invasion. Either they were quite late, and the battle was done, or the opposition had been so weak as not to warrant a defense. Neither possibility boded well for the Library. It left Rami considering what he would do should they even reach the doors.
He was so busy chasing these thoughts around his head, he nearly ran into Leto. The teenager was frowning at a large alcove. A low, empty platform grounded the otherwise empty space, and it was this platform that seemed to concern him.
“The gargoyle should be here,” Leto said.
“A gargoyle?”
“Well, a headache in the form of a gargoyle. I really should have asked its name. . . .” Leto trailed off as he looked down the hallway. “Oh! There he is!”
The teenager took off toward a large form that stood frozen at the far end of the hall. A chill of alarm shot up Rami’s back, and his hand drifted to his sword as he ran. “Leto! Stop!”
He caught up with Leto as he stumbled to a stop near the unmoving form. It was a statue of dull, jagged stone and with a great head and wings that brushed the hallway’s tall ceiling. It appeared to be caught in midattack, arms and wings extended, muscles bunched. It didn’t move but still seemed to shift and twitch, never quite fully in focus. When Rami cautiously circled the statue to inspect its face, a disorienting pulse of pain bloomed in his head.
Rami looked away with a wince. “This is your gargoyle?”
“Yes. But when I knew him, he moved around more. . . .” Leto’s brow furrowed in concern. He reached his fingers out toward one frozen wing before catching himself. “Something’s wrong with him.”
“Perhaps he’s best left as he is.”
Leto shoved his hands in his pockets and paced around, then back up as if to get a better view. On his third step backward, the air crackled a warning. Rami’s shout was too slow.
Violet light filled the hall and shot at Leto’s back. The next moment, the teenager flew across the marble floor, and the light briefly coalesced into a wall before fading away.
Leto crumpled against a wall. Rami felt relief when he let out a breathy groan as he reached him. “Are you all right?”
“For the record, I did not touch anything. I swear.” Leto accepted help sitting upright, and he rubbed his shoulder with a wince. “What was that?”
“A ward.” Rami stood and approached the space where the wall had formed.
“That’s good, right? That means Andras and the other bad guys haven’t gotten in yet.”
“No.” Rami inspected the air. He brought out his sword and held it just over the space. Black and violet light arced between his blade and the ward, though it didn’t shock again. He sighed and put his blade away. “This is a temporary ward. Strong but hastily formed, not tied to anything. It isn’t anchored to the Library.”
Leto’s face fell as he looked down the hall. Beyond the invisible ward, they could see the great double doors that Rami assumed led to the Library. Muffled shouts and thuds could just barely be heard. But a full-scale resistance, a successful resistance, should have been much louder, producing sounds of fighting that could be heard even at this distance. Rami worried what they would find. They could be merely walking into an enemy encampment.
“So how do we get past it?” Leto asked.
“We can’t.” Rami stepped back to inspect the lines of power that were just visible now, crisscrossed through the air. “I said it was hasty, not that it was weak. Whoever constructed it has got something powerful feeding it, supplying energy. We would need something even stronger to disrupt it, even for a moment. We would need nothing short of a miracle to bring it down.”
“I might be able to manage that.” A voice came from