A long moment passed before she was able to speak. She dried her tears and blinked up at Silas. It struck her that he put up with a great deal from the humans in his care.

“Why did you fear my sword,” she asked, “if you can’t die in the mortal realm?”

A trace of a smile illuminated his beautiful features. “I fear not for myself. If I were banished, my loss would be an inconvenience for Master Thorn. It alarms me to imagine the state of his wardrobe. He would offend young ladies with his cravat.”

She laughed, taken by surprise, but it was a painful laugh, for the truth was terribly sad. If something happened to Silas, Nathaniel would be well and truly alone. He’d lose the only family he had left.

“Silas—” She hesitated, then forged onward. “Will you tell me what happened to Alistair Thorn?”

“It is an unpleasant tale. Are you certain you wish to know?”

She nodded.

“Very well.” He turned and went to the fireplace, gazing at nothing she could discern, except perhaps the ashes. “You recall me telling you that Charlotte and Maximilian perished in an accident. That was the start of it all.”

Elisabeth recalled what Nathaniel had said upstairs, terrible possibilities beginning to take shape in her mind. He’s brought them back again, Mother and Maximilian. . . .

“Alistair was a kind man—a good one, if you will forgive the irony of a demon saying so, and a devoted husband and father. But after the accident, a change came over him. He began studying Baltasar’s work day and night. Young Master Thorn grew lonely, and developed a habit of hiding in his father’s study for company.” Silas paused, as if considering whether to go on. “I shall get to the point. Two months after the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alistair exhumed their bodies and attempted to resurrect them via necromancy, here in this house. The ritual would not have raised them from the dead—not as themselves—but he had lost himself to grief, and would no longer listen to reason.”

Ice flowed through Elisabeth’s veins. “When you told me that you killed him . . .”

“Yes,” Silas whispered. “We were distracted, Alistair and I, and the both of us failed to notice that Master Thorn had hidden himself behind the drapes. He had been there all morning, as quiet as a mouse. We understood that the spell might take Alistair’s life, for it was a dark and terrible magic, but I knew when I glimpsed those eyes watching us through the curtains that it would take his son’s as well. So I ended it at once, in the only way possible. Master Thorn saw everything: the bodies, the ritual, his father’s death at my hands. He sees it still, when he closes his eyes to rest.”

Elisabeth said nothing. The horror of it was too extreme. Her stricken thoughts jumped to the journey through the Blackwald, remembering how Nathaniel had stayed up, unable to sleep. How little she had understood.

“There is a lesson to be had from that night.” Silas drew his gaze from the hearth and faced her again. He looked perfectly calm. “Alistair trusted me. He believed that I would never harm him, so he failed to command me not to. His trust was his undoing.”

“No. He was right to trust you.” Elisabeth’s stomach twisted. How did Silas not understand? “Had he been in his right mind, he would have wanted you to stop him, no matter the cost. You saved Nathaniel’s life.”

“And what did I do next, Miss Scrivener?” he inquired.

“What do you mean?”

“When Master Thorn summoned me, while his father’s body still lay warm on the floor, what did I do then?”

She had no answer.

“I took his life. Twenty years of it he bargained away to me, when he had scarcely seen the passing of half that number, and did not understand what he was giving, only that he did not want to be alone.” He took a step forward. “And it will taste sweet once I have it, just as his father’s before him, and the lives of his forebears stretching back three hundred years.”

Elisabeth’s hands tightened reflexively on Demonslayer. Two decades. “But how . . . how could you—?”

“I have devoured them all, Miss Scrivener.” He took another step forward. His eyes were yellow slits. He did not look beautiful now. “Do not see compassion where there is none. Was it not to my advantage to save Master Thorn’s life, so that I could claim a portion of it for myself?”

Silas was almost upon her. She raised Demonslayer between them and pointed it at his chest to halt his advance. Yet he took a third step forward nonetheless, and the blade pressed against his ribs, over his heart, if he had one. A smell of burnt flesh filled the air.

“Stop this!” she cried. “I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t. No matter what you’ve done, Nathaniel needs you.”

“Yes,” he whispered, as if she saw the truth at last. “You see, there is no absolution, no penance, for a creature such as I.” His eyes shone bright with pain. “You could strike me down and the blow would only harm another.”

She let the sword fall. Silas neatly stepped back and raised a hand to his chest. Some horrible light seemed to have gone out of him.

“I am a demon,” he said. “You cannot see me as anything more.”

Elisabeth shook from head to toe. She knew that if she tried to stand, her knees would give out beneath her. But it was not fear she felt. She did not know what this emotion was. Pity, perhaps, though she couldn’t tell for whom, and anger and despair, tearing through her like a storm. She believed that Silas cared about Nathaniel; she had seen it as plainly as day. But how could someone care for another and still take so much from them?

Twenty years. If Nathaniel was fated to die young—in his early forties, perhaps—then with that much taken away, he might only have a handful of years left. Her chest squeezed at the thought, the air wrung from her lungs like water from a dishrag. She couldn’t meet Silas’s gaze any longer.

When she looked down, a gleam of metal caught her eye. Another object lay at the bottom of the wrappings, where it had been concealed beneath Demonslayer. Master Hargrove had sent her more than just a sword. Slowly, she set Demonslayer aside. She reached into the wrappings and lifted out a chain. She ducked her head and drew the chain over it, feeling the weight of her greatkey settle against her chest: cold, but not for long. Then she ran her fingers over the grooves, so familiar they were a part of herself, designed to open the outer doors of any Great Library in the kingdom.

“Silas,” she said slowly. “If I got us inside the Royal Library after hours, would you be able to open the gate to the restricted archives?”

He paused. “There is a way.”

She looked up at him, gripping the key. “Help me.” The storm within her had stilled. “You’ve taken lives. Now help me save some.”

He gazed down at her, beautiful again, an angel considering a mortal’s petition from afar. “Is it that simple, Miss Scrivener?” he asked.

“It must be,” she replied. “For it’s the only thing to do.”

TWENTY-ONE

A GREAT LIBRARY NEVER slept, even after all the people had gone to bed. Voices echoed through the atrium as Elisabeth crept along, keeping to the curve of the wall, where her white cloak blended in with the marble. Some of the grimoires snored, while their neighbors made disgruntled noises at them for snoring too loudly; others whispered, and laughed. One lone grimoire sang a piercing lament that soared high above the rest, a sound that lifted past the shafts of blue moonlight spilling through the starry dome, and rang unearthly in the firmament, like music played on a crystal glass.