They transferred it in secret the night I stole the Codex.”
Nathaniel exploded to his feet. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I forgot. There was so much going on at the time.” Unhappiness wrung her heart as she watched Nathaniel turn away, pacing across the cell. She hesitated, then asked, “How much do you know about the Chronicles?”
Nathaniel drew up short, gazing out into the passageway. When he spoke, his voice sounded clipped. “It contains the spell Baltasar used to raise his army, among other necromantic rituals. As to what powers it would manifest as a Malefict, that’s a librarian’s area of study, not mine.” She sat in silence, waiting. He was holding something back. At last he leaned his forehead against the bars and went on, “My . . . my father read it. To prepare. He wasn’t quite the same when he returned. I was never able to decide exactly what was different about him. Sometimes, I thought it felt like he had brought something back with him. Other times, it was as though he had left a piece of himself behind.”
She studied Nathaniel’s face, the stark lines of his profile. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
Everything, she thought. “I dragged you into this,” she said. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”
“You’re right. I would be alone in my study, utterly miserable, spending my final hours unaware that demons were about to overrun the world.” He returned and slumped beside her, tipping his head back against the stone. “I like this version better. The one with you in it.”
“Even if we die?”
Briefly, he shut his eyes. “The last month has been the happiest time of my life that I can remember since I was twelve, the fiends and the blood drinking and the imminent threat of a demonic apocalypse notwithstanding. I think—I think I was a bit dead already, before you came along.” He turned his head, taking her in. “It’s an honor to fight by your side, Elisabeth, for however long it lasts. You’ve reminded me to live. That’s worth having something to lose.”
Elisabeth swallowed. She did not have anything to say; she could only think how intolerable it seemed that she had once found his face so cruel. Impulsively, she folded herself up and tucked her head against his chest. After a pause, he rested his chin on her hair. She sat listening to his heartbeat in the dark.
The moment stretched on, the passage of time impossible to calculate, and her thoughts stretched with it, casting outward. She pictured the Great Library from above, its guttering torches and soaring black towers rising above the wilderness.
How long would it take Silas to find them? She wasn’t certain that she shared Nathaniel’s confidence. The defenses here were like nothing she had seen before. Even if Silas could scale the sheer wall encircling the building, it was clad in iron and patrolled by wardens. And that was just the beginning; next, he would have to sneak through the library and get past the countless locked iron gates leading to the dungeon.
After waiting for what felt like hours, she sat up. “You don’t think Silas has been caught, do you?” she asked.
“I should think not,” answered a whispering voice from the corridor, sounding faintly injured. “I am not an amateur.”
“Silas!” they both exclaimed, rushing to the bars.
He sighed as he stepped into view. “Not so loudly, if you please.”
Nathaniel grinned irrepressibly at the sight of him, unearthly in the torchlight, but pristine and unruffled, no different than he looked on a regular evening at home. “You weren’t hurt?”
Silas waved a hand, dismissing the question as beneath him. “I see the pair of you have wasted no time getting yourselves thrown into prison.” He bent to inspect the door, then drew a warden’s key ring from his pocket, holding the iron carefully within a wadded-up handkerchief. “What is this, master—the third time I’ve broken you out of a jail cell?”
Nathaniel coughed. “Minor misunderstandings, on both previous occasions,” he assured Elisabeth.
Silas detached one of the keys from the ring and used it to unlock Nathaniel’s shackles. While Nathaniel got to work on Elisabeth’s, Silas selected a second key and tried it on the door. He spoke mildly, his lashes shading his eyes. “At least you’re wearing clothes this time, master.”
“I’ll have you know,” Nathaniel said, “that that was an accident, and the public certainly didn’t mind. One woman even sent me flowers.” To Elisabeth, he added, “Don’t worry. She was forty years old, and