monster off balance, he raised his other hand, which let loose a volcanic blast of green fire. Thrown back, the Malefict caught itself by clamping its claws down on a battlement. As the smoldering embers fell, it regarded Nathaniel at eye level, near enough to reach out and seize him.
“I know you,” it whispered instead. “Son of House Thorn, master of death.”
“No,” Nathaniel croaked, stepping back.
“Why do you hide your nature? Deny the call in your blood?”
Terror lanced through Elisabeth’s chest. “Nathaniel!” she shouted. He didn’t react, didn’t even seem to hear her.
“I see,” the Malefict said. “You wish to spare the girl you love. But you know the truth of magic. The greatest power springs only from suffering.” It drew closer to him, its spindle-toothed mouth seeping smoke. “Join me,” it whispered. “Master of death, become the darkness that haunts you. Kill the girl.”
Nathaniel’s arm drifted to his side, the whip fizzling out. Slowly, he turned. Elisabeth didn’t recognize the expression on his face. His coat was torn, and his eyes were rimmed in red.
Mouth dry, she spun the wheels, angling the cannon into a new position. She slammed the lever down again. As Nathaniel strode toward her, flames rippled over his shoulders and down his arms like the blossoming of some strange, translucent flower.
The cannon coughed. Stone sprayed several yards in front of the Malefict, a miss. She couldn’t aim directly at its head without risking hitting Nathaniel.
Green flashes lit the rampart. The sky above them roiled, a violent, churning mass of storm clouds. Surrounded by a corona of fire, he looked barely human, untouchable.
Elisabeth’s hands trembled on the controls. “Nathaniel, stop!”
He wasn’t listening. As he continued to advance, lightning streaked through the sky, arcing between the peaks of the mountains. The earth rumbled as snow cascaded down a nearby peak, the avalanche boiling over the trees that dotted the slope with enough force to level a village. Elisabeth had never seen such raw destruction. Worse, Nathaniel didn’t appear to even be aware that he was doing it.
A terrible thought struck her. She could adjust the cannon’s aim. The cannonballs were made of iron; he wouldn’t be able to stop one if she fired it at him. If that was what it took—if that was the only way to end this, to keep him from becoming another Baltasar—
A cool touch stayed her hand. “Wait,” Silas said. His hair had come free, flowing in the wind. She didn’t understand how he could look so calm.
Nathaniel was almost upon them. Sorcery glazed his eyes. Flames rolled off his body like a cloak. In a moment, it would be too late to stop him.
“Elisabeth.” His voice echoed unrecognizably with power. He held out his hand. The fire billowed back, away from his sleeve, so she could take it.
Trust me, he had said.
She remembered the day that they had met, when he had offered her his hand, and she had hesitated, certain he would hurt her. But the horrors she had imagined, those evil deeds—he had never been capable of them. Not Nathaniel, her Nathaniel, who was tortured by the darkness within him only because he was so good.
The Malefict’s words repeated in her mind. The girl you love. The truth of it rang through her like the tolling of a bell.
Slowly, she climbed down from the cannon. Heat shimmered in the air, but she felt no pain. It was as though she had donned a suit of armor, become invincible. She stepped toward the emerald flames, and they parted around her, curving away from her body like cresting waves. Nathaniel’s hand waited, outstretched.
Their fingers met. He closed his eyes. That was when she saw it: Prendergast’s vial hung empty at his chest.
The Malefict howled in fury, sensing the trick too late. It surged toward them, mouth agape, its head looming closer and closer, fetid breath washing over them, as the magic seized them and Harrows spun away.
THIRTY-FIVE
ELISABETH, NATHANIEL, AND Silas materialized in an unfamiliar parlor, in the middle of a group of women enjoying their evening tea. At least they were enjoying it, until the severed head of the Chronicles landed on their coffee table.
It arrived with a crash that flattened the table’s claw-foot legs and rattled the porcelain in the parlor’s mirrored cabinets. Decapitated at the neck, its antlers shorn off, it looked like a boulder-sized lump of charcoal. Staring at it in shock, Elisabeth supposed that it had come near enough Nathaniel to get seized by the spell. But