hear her over the hubbub. And there was another, louder sound, drowning out everything else. A sound like grasshoppers shrilling in a field, swelling as it cascaded toward them. Screams.
At last, people began to run. But they weren’t moving fast enough. They scattered in every direction as a fiend bounded into the crowd, snapping and snarling, its teeth flashing in the unearthly light. At the corner of her vision, Elisabeth saw a child trip over a dropped skating boot and fall, the motion tracked by the demon’s red eyes. She let go of Nathaniel and leaped forward without a thought, slicing Demonslayer through the air.
The demon swung around to meet her, only to falter when her blade carved through one of its horns and kept going, separating bone and sinew like butter, and only stopped when it rang against the cobblestones, trailing steam. Elisabeth staggered back, readying herself to parry the demon’s counterattack, but none came. Its body collapsed to the street, lifeless. She had nearly cleaved it in two.
There, another fiend, standing over a screaming woman—but it dropped before she could act, the crimson light fading from its eyes. She didn’t understand what had happened to it until a pale blur streaked past, and a third demon fell limply to the ground. Silas wove through the crowd like a dancer, astonished faces turning as he flashed by. His claws gleamed, flicking out, slitting fiends’ throats before they even saw him coming. Awe shivered through her, chased by an instinctive prickle of fear. This was a glimpse of the Silas of old, set loose on an ancient battlefield, surrounded by spears and pennants, transforming the front into a merciless waltz of death. Only back then, it would have been humans bleeding out with each stroke of his claws.
As though sensing Elisabeth’s gaze, he paused long enough to nod at her. Her breath stopped. Then she nodded back and turned away, confident that he would take care of any fiends she couldn’t reach.
Emerald light flared; Nathaniel’s whip had spun out beside her. He staggered on his feet, but sent her a reckless grin, his teeth flashing white against his sooty face. An objection died on her lips when his whip snapped toward a fiend threatening a group of people. Crackling and spitting embers, it yanked the fiend away, directly into the path of Elisabeth’s sword.
Conviction coursed through her as she struck the demon down. Her pulse thundered in her ears. After what she and Nathaniel had faced in Harrows, this felt like child’s play. Nothing could stop them now.
They cut a swath toward the library, slowly gaining ground. The countless blows numbed Elisabeth’s arms and left her blood singing. Every time a fiend leaped toward her, Nathaniel’s whip slashed it aside. And whenever one charged at him, Elisabeth was there to meet it with her sword. Dozens fell at their feet.
But it wasn’t enough. More kept coming, pouring endlessly down the Royal Library’s steps, hurdling from its windows in glinting explosions of stained glass. Between the three of them, they were holding the demons at bay, but they couldn’t push inside without letting fiends loose into the city.
Nathaniel’s breath rushed hot across her ear. “Buy me time.”
Once, she wouldn’t have understood the request. Now she spun without hesitation, blocking the fiend that lunged for him as he dropped to one knee, splaying a hand on the cobbles. His hair tumbled over his forehead, hiding everything but the sharp slashes of his cheekbones and his crooked mouth, twisted into a grimace of concentration.
Sorcery snapped through the air. Elisabeth dealt a blow to the fiend that sent it toppling down at her feet. With her view now unobstructed, she saw the moment Nathaniel’s spell took hold.
A row of hooded librarians were carved in bas-relief from one end of the library’s facade to the other. As she watched, their heads lifted, and their grips tightened on the stone lanterns in their hands. Marble crumbled as they tore free from the building and stepped forward, marching in a faceless regiment toward the fray. They chanted as they went, a solemn dirge that rumbled through her bones like the turning of a millstone.
Above them, angel statues stretched and sighed and unfurled their wings. Their serene faces turned to appraise the battlefield. One climbed down from her perch and bodily flung a fiend aside. Another emotionlessly seized the corner of a sculpted cornice and wrenched it from the library, then hurled it down with enough force to