entangling her in a final embrace, smelling faintly of brimstone.
Without thinking, she staggered to Silas. She thrust Demonslayer through a link in the chains and twisted, levering the sword with all her might. Metal groaned. The link warped and split open.
Too late. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ashcroft raise his sword above Nathaniel’s chest. She couldn’t get there in time. And Silas, weakened—
The chains clattered to the ground, coiled empty on the flagstones.
Ashcroft’s sword flashed in the moonlight, inscribing a downward arc.
And the point emerged red, protruding from Silas’s back, where the weapon had speared him through the heart. In the span of a breath he had appeared between Ashcroft and Nathaniel, using his own body as a shield.
The world went still. Silence descended like frost. Silas’s loose hair hung down, hiding his face. After a moment his pale hand rose to touch the length of iron that entered his chest, almost curiously, though in doing so, his claws sent up wisps of steam.
“I don’t understand.” Ashcroft spoke haltingly. “He didn’t command you to do that.”
Silas looked up at him. Their expressions could not have been more different. Silas was a carven saint, his marble countenance beautiful, impassive, untouched by emotion or pain. And Ashcroft was a mortal confronted, for the first time in his life, by something he couldn’t comprehend.
“Had you let him die,” Ashcroft said, “your bargain would have been fulfilled. The life he promised you—you would have received it. But now you’ve lost everything.”
“Yes,” whispered Silas. “I feel it. It is gone.”
Ashcroft’s eyes were wide. “Tell me why, demon! Tell me what you stood to gain—”
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of Silas’s mouth, shockingly red against his white skin. He closed his eyes, seemingly in relief. Then, he vanished.
The moment Ashcroft’s sword came free, Elisabeth was there to meet it. Iron clashed against iron as she forced the Chancellor back, sparing none of her strength. He managed a series of clumsy parries; then Demonslayer locked with his sword’s hilt and wrenched the weapon from his grasp, sending it flying out of reach.
Panic flashed across his face. With a jolt, Elisabeth realized that both of his eyes were blue. Not only had his demonic mark vanished, his right sleeve hung in tatters over a normal arm. In Lorelei’s absence, he was no longer a sorcerer, just an ordinary man.
Slowly, he lifted his empty hands in surrender.
“Are you going to kill me, Miss Scrivener?” he asked, his face uncharacteristically solemn. “If you do, it will change you forever. It will set you down a path from which you cannot turn back. Believe me—I know.”
Demonslayer drooped. In Elisabeth’s moment of hesitation, Ashcroft’s boots scuffed against stone. Moving faster than she could have predicted, he dodged between the vines and vaulted over the edge of the pavilion.
She dashed forward and caught herself against the crumbled balustrade, heart pounding, tensed to give chase. She could overtake him easily: he appeared to have twisted his ankle leaping down, for he stumbled as he fled through the tangle of roses. She could pursue him, and catch him, and end his plot for good.
Or she could run in the opposite direction, and find the help she needed to save Nathaniel’s life.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE REMAINDER OF the night passed in a blur. First there was the disorienting brightness of the palace, followed by the startled faces of the guests Elisabeth encountered in the halls. After that she recalled shouting, a flurry of action. A physician was summoned. Someone inquired after the wound on Elisabeth’s hand, but she claimed that the blood was Nathaniel’s, which got everyone outside in a hurry. The next thing she knew, she stood in the rose garden as two men carried Nathaniel’s limp body into a carriage.
His condition was serious. She could tell that much by the physician’s urgency, the cries that rang out for help. She tried to go to him, but hands held her back. They needed to know what had happened. The Chancellor, she said, and no one believed her. Not until a man called from the top of the pavilion and held up Ashcroft’s sword, the gryphon on its pommel unmistakable in the moonlight.
Pandemonium. Lord Kicklighter’s booming voice cut through the din. A guest helped her toward the carriage—and how strange everyone’s finery looked, marked here and there with smears of Nathaniel’s blood. Her own gown had been ruined beyond repair. Silas would not be pleased about that; they had spent an entire