whale’s skull, its skeleton suspended from the ceiling by thousands of wires, stretching far into shadow. She again had the unsettling feeling that the archives wasn’t as straight a corridor as it appeared. That a person could get lost here, turned around inexplicably, wandering into sections of the hall that hadn’t existed a moment before.
As they moved on, Nathaniel’s question continued to nag her. Why had the library let them out here? Around them, the grimoires were silent. It felt as though they were listening, waiting. Holding their breath. As though they expected something to happen . . .
Her steps faltered at a flutter of motion nearby. The mist, eddying in a draft.
“Watch out for illusions,” she said over her shoulder. Nathaniel jerked at the sound of her voice; he had been frowning at a book whose cover was inlaid with human teeth. “The grimoires might try to trick us.”
“Not you, dear . . .”
Elisabeth whirled around. The voice had slithered from the mist, its source impossible to identify. She scanned the shelves, but saw no hint of which grimoire had spoken.
From the opposite direction, a different voice said: “And I suppose we can make an exception for the other humans—”
“Special circumstances, you see,” whispered another.
“We won’t harm a hair on their heads. We promise.”
“Well? Aren’t you going to get on with it, girl? We’re waiting.”
Helplessly, Elisabeth spun from one bookcase to another, chasing the speakers in vain. “What do you mean?” she appealed. “What do you want from me?”
But the voices had fallen silent.
Nathaniel stepped forward, reaching out as though to touch her shoulder until he stopped himself, uncertain. It was obvious he hadn’t heard the grimoires. “Elisabeth?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
Frustration gripped her as they started forward again, the shelves flowing past. It wasn’t nothing. They had been brought to the archives for a reason. But she didn’t see what could be more important than reaching Ashcroft and stopping his ritual as quickly as possible. If they even could stop him, just the three of them, with Nathaniel’s magic spent—
Oh. The answer dawned more beautifully than a sunrise. Without a second thought, she turned on her heel and rushed toward the shelves.
Nathaniel sounded dismayed. “What are you—Elisabeth?”
The grimoires didn’t hiss or rattle or spit ink at her approach. They merely waited, expectant. She stood on her toes to unhook the chain running across the nearest shelf. She yanked it free, then turned to him, its end dangling from her hand as the books unfolded their pages behind her, rising up. “The library wants to fight back.”
THIRTY-SIX
NATHANIEL FOLLOWED HER as she dashed from shelf to shelf, throwing open cages, tearing chains away. This went against everything she had ever been taught. But she felt no guilt, no shame, no hesitation. She felt as though a dam had burst inside her, the waters roaring forth to overcome every uncertainty in their path.
Cries of jubilation filled the air. Grimoires that hadn’t tasted freedom in centuries unfurled wings of parchment and took flight. Others toppled from the shelves and scuttled across the floor, joyfully riffling their pages. The corridor’s somber gloom gave way to chaos.
“Wait,” Nathaniel said. “Are you sure you should be doing this? The library was built by Cornelius. It was meant to summon the Archon from the very beginning.” He sidestepped as a grimoire went flopping past his boots. “What if this is some kind of . . .”
He trailed off, but she knew what he meant to say. A trick. A trap. She didn’t blame him. But at last, she understood.
The library no more belonged to Ashcroft and his plot than Elisabeth belonged to the unknown parents who had brought her into this world. It possessed a life of its own, had become something greater than Cornelius had ever intended. For these were not ordinary books the libraries kept. They were knowledge, given life. Wisdom, given voice. They sang when starlight streamed through the library’s windows. They felt pain and suffered heartbreak. Sometimes they were sinister, grotesque—but so was the world outside. And that made the world no less worth fighting for, because wherever there was darkness, there was also so much light.
This was Elisabeth’s purpose. Not to become a warden in the hopes of proving herself to people who would never understand. She wasn’t a wielder of chains; she was a breaker of them. She was the library’s will made flesh.
She felt it, now—the library’s consciousnesses sweeping past her, through her, like a swift-flowing current. Hundreds