Then he failed to step quickly enough, and her sword slashed through him.

He dissolved into mist.

More figures emerged from the shadows, advancing toward her. Warden Finch. Lorelei. Mr. Hob. Even the man who had cornered her in the alley—and he wasn’t the only dead person among them. The Director also rose from the mist, her spectral face grim with disappointment. They drew closer and closer, but Elisabeth didn’t step back, even though the Director’s expression made her stomach curdle. The figures weren’t real. Whoever had conjured them, on the other hand—

“Whatever you are, you’re showing me my fears,” she declared, surprised by how steady her voice sounded. “You’re trying to trap me, aren’t you?”

She sheathed Demonslayer and turned. A large, ornate display cage stood directly behind her. Had she taken even one more step, away from the illusions, she would have run into it. As soon as she realized that, the figures subsided back into the mist.

A woman’s pale, withered face gazed out at her from within the cage, mere inches away, floating in the darkness. Or it would have gazed at her, had the eyes not been stitched shut. And the face didn’t belong to a person, at least not any longer: it had been sewn onto a grimoire’s cover, which levitated opposite Elisabeth amid a swirl of vapor. A black ribbon twirled through the air around the grimoire, a silver needle gleaming on its end.

“Smart girl.” The grimoire spoke in a hissing, multitudinous voice: men, women, and children all speaking in chorus, each one as dry as sand whispering over bone. “We’ve taken three wardens with that trick, now that we’ve convinced the Illusarium to help us. Too bad. Such an interesting face you have. Not beautiful, but bold.”

The grimoire was unusually thick and heavily bound, filled with—more faces, Elisabeth thought in horror, as the binding creaked and the cover lifted, flipping past page after page of human faces, Enochian script simmering across them like freshly laid brands. At last it settled on an empty page and lovingly caressed the bare vellum with its needle.

“We have room for you, if you ever change your mind.”

“No, thank you,” Elisabeth said, inching away.

“Our stitches are neat. It would only hurt a little. . . .”

Elisabeth squared her shoulders and wheeled around, mindful not to bump into the white stone pedestal she had seen earlier, situated just a few feet away from the cage. A plaque beneath the pedestal read THE ILLUSARIUM, CLASS VII, and atop it sat a glass sphere like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. So much mist poured from the sphere that she couldn’t make out the shape within. If this grimoire possessed a voice, it chose to remain silent. Perhaps it could only communicate using its illusions.

She forced herself to keep walking and not look back, even though she could almost feel the first grimoire’s needle scratching between her shoulder blades. When she drew near the section numbered on the catalogue card, her steps slowed, and her head tilted back. She swallowed.

A ladder ascended over three stories into the gloom, mist lapping at its bottom rungs. The call number suggested that the Codex was at the top, where the lamplight barely reached. She steeled herself and placed her boot on the lowest rung, ignoring the spiteful jeers of the grimoires on the shelves. As she began her ascent, they rattled their chains with enough force to make the ladder bounce and tremble. Wads of ink flew past her into the dark.

Part of her expected to reach the top and find the Codex missing. It seemed that she had come too far, and faced too many trials, for any aspect of this mission to come easily to her. But when she finally hauled herself up to the final rung, the Codex’s familiar scaled cover awaited her, encircled by chains. The secret to Ashcroft’s plan, close enough to touch.

She reached for the chains, and then froze. Her joints locked; her muscles refused to obey. She had come here to steal from the Royal Library, but now that the moment was upon her, every fiber of her body revolted. Once she crossed this line, there was no going back. She imagined getting caught, having to face Parsifal and Mistress Wick, who had both treated her so kindly. Her heart burned with shame.

“Think of it as more of a rescue mission,” Katrien had told her during their last, brief conversation through the mirror. “I’m sure the Codex would much rather be with you than with people who think it was written by a madman. Can you imagine what that would be like, knowing some sort of enormous secret and no one believing you?”

Yes, Elisabeth thought, with a wrench in her chest. For the Codex, this place must be as bad as Leadgate Hospital. Books, too, had hearts, though they were not the same as people’s, and a book’s heart could be broken: she had seen it happen before. Grimoires that refused to open, their voices gone silent, or whose ink faded and bled across the pages like tears.

The Codex looked as though no one had touched it in decades. Dust coated its chains, and a neglected case of Brittle-Spine had left its leather cracked and graying. It didn’t stir at her arrival, as though the passage of time had reduced it to an ordinary book.

Just like that, she found she could move again. “I’m here to help you,” she whispered. She gently unhooked its chains from the shelf. The other grimoires began rattling harder than ever, their nasty mutterings turning into desperate pleas as they watched their neighbor gain its freedom, but the Codex remained still, almost lifeless. It didn’t resist her as she tucked it, chains and all, into a sack tied to her belt.

By the time she climbed back down the ladder, the grimoires had stopped rattling. A profound hush had fallen over the archives. No sinister voices whispered. No ominous figures appeared from the mist. The silence didn’t feel hostile, but Elisabeth wasn’t going to linger. As she strode quickly past the cage from earlier, the pale face inside rotated to watch her.

“It’s been waiting a long time, that one,” it whispered. “So long since the Codex has known a kind touch, an open mind. But I see now that you are not the same as the other humans . . . you are different, somehow . . . yes, a true child of the library. . . .”

Elisabeth’s steps faltered. She wanted to listen to what the grimoire had to say. But right now, she didn’t have time to chat with books.

A mixture of relief and regret flooded her as she slipped through the gate, leaving the archives behind. She waited until a patrol had passed, then shimmied up the gate to restore the bell, weighed down by the Codex’s awkward bulk at her hip. The grimoire’s words echoed in her mind as she turned to go. A true child of the library. What had it meant? How had it known? The Book of Eyes had said there was something different about her, too.

She took one step toward the atrium. Before she could take a second, a hand shot from the mist and seized her cloak. With ruthless strength, it dragged her from the center of the hallway and into the same alcove she had hidden in before. But when the hand fell away, she didn’t bolt or reach for Demonslayer. Silas stood in front of her, luminously pale, crouched between the hooded figures carved into the wall.

So he didn’t abandon me after all, she thought in wonderment. But where has he been?

Before she could ask the question aloud, he held a finger to his lips. His yellow eyes flicked toward the hallway.

Lights shone through the mist. Wheels groaned as something heavy rolled along the corridor, accompanied by footsteps. The sounds swirled eerily, distorted by the stone and the mist, but they had to be coming from the direction of the vault. Elisabeth held her breath as the first warden emerged into view. She had a lantern in one hand, a drawn sword in the other. More wardens followed, a good dozen in all. Near the head of the procession strode Mistress Wick, elegant in her long indigo robes, and a man who could be none other than the Royal Library’s Director. Medals decorated his blue coat. Gray hair fell loose to his shoulders, concealing some of the brutal scars that slashed across his face. Two fingers were missing from his hand, which rested on the hilt of an enormous broadsword.