No—the fight wasn’t over yet. It would be foolish to imagine otherwise. She sat for a moment longer, considering this, and then she rose and walked with purpose into Nathaniel’s study, where she seized the magnifying device from his desk, flung it to the ground, and smashed it beneath her heel. She proceeded to the next room, where she found another mirror and tore it from the wall. She didn’t stop there. A path of destruction marked her progress around the house. Glass cracked, shattered, exploded across carpets, bounced in glinting fragments down the furniture. No mirror was safe. She took Demonslayer’s hilt to the one in the parlor, where she had spent so many hours studying grimoires, and watched her reflection splinter, then go tumbling to the floor. When she was finished downstairs, she made her way upward, leaving a trail of shards along the hallways.

It seemed as though she should feel something, but she did not. Her injured hand didn’t hurt, even as blood ran freely down Demonslayer’s pommel. The mirrors in their cumbersome frames yielded to her without effort. It was as though she were made of light and air, barely tethered to the physical world, at once unstoppable and in danger of coming apart, burning up, floating away.

At last, she reached her bedroom. She picked up the scrying mirror. She tried to explain what had happened to Katrien, who asked her a number of questions she couldn’t answer, because at some point, words had stopped making sense. When they were finished talking, Elisabeth wrapped the mirror in a pillowcase and dropped it down the laundry chute. Ashcroft wouldn’t be able to spy on her from there. Then she set about making the rest of the room safe, in the only way she knew how.

An incalculable amount of time later, she came back to herself, Demonslayer clenched in her good hand, surrounded by broken wood and glass. She thought, Silas isn’t going to like this. Then she thought, I will help him clean it up.

The grief, when it came, struck her like a punch to the gut. She doubled over and sank to the floor, her breath coming in strangled gasps. She was not made of air or light. She was weakly, devastatingly human, and she did feel pain, more than she could bear. Silas was gone. She didn’t know what Nathaniel was going to do, or how she was going to tell him, or whether she could endure the look on his face when she did. She didn’t know if Nathaniel would wake again at all.

She wept until the world softened and blurred around her, and at last she knew nothing more.

• • •

When she next opened her swollen eyes, it was to the sight of an unfamiliar woman sitting on a chair in the corner. Afternoon light shone through the curtains. Elisabeth looked down at herself in bed, easily managed because she had been propped up on the pillows. A bandage swathed her injured hand. Demonslayer lay atop the covers on her other side, her fingers still clenched around the grip.

“Dr. Godfrey and I couldn’t pry it from you, even after you fell asleep.”

Elisabeth looked back at the woman. She wasn’t unfamiliar, after all. She was the physician’s assistant, thin and bespectacled, wearing a starched white pinafore. Dried blood streaked the front, but its presence didn’t seem to bother her.

“My name is Beatrice,” she said. “I’m the one who’s been tending to you.”

Elisabeth’s heart skipped. She couldn’t take her gaze from the stained pinafore. “Is Nathaniel—?”

“He’s doing well. At least, as well as can be expected. Drink this.” She brought a glass of water to Elisabeth’s lips and watched her swallow some of it before she went on, speaking calmly, as if for her this was a perfectly ordinary morning, no different than a conversation over breakfast. “Magister Thorn lost a great deal of blood, but Dr. Godfrey is confident he will recover. Sorcerers can survive remarkable injuries with the help of their household wards. Even so, he shouldn’t get out of bed until his chest has begun to heal.”

Relief crashed over Elisabeth. She shoved herself upright, then froze, biting back a groan. Every inch of her body hurt. Even her bones ached. “There’s a mirror in his room,” she said. “I must—”

Beatrice laid a hand on her shoulder. “Dr. Godfrey and I have already seen to it.” She added, more gently, “You told us what you had been doing last night, when we found you here on the floor. You don’t remember that?”

Elisabeth didn’t, and she preferred not to imagine the state in which they’d discovered her, but she was grateful they had taken her seriously. She looked down, gritting her teeth against her body’s protests. “May I see Nathaniel?” she asked.

“If you’d like, though he won’t wake for hours yet. When he does, he may not be quite himself. He’s been given laudanum for the pain.”

She helped Elisabeth into a dressing gown and walked her down the hall. Elisabeth wasn’t sure she could have managed the journey on her own. While she tottered along like an old woman, Beatrice told her how lucky she was not to have broken anything. “Most people would have, after taking such hard blows.” And then she looked askance at Demonslayer, still clutched in Elisabeth’s hand.

When they reached Nathaniel’s doorway, she could only stare. Nathaniel looked marooned in the broad expanse of his four-poster bed, with its carved pillars and dark brocade hangings. His face was turned to the side, and the angle of the sunlight cut across his sharp cheekbone, making a sculpture of his features. Beneath the open collar of his nightshirt, bandages wrapped his chest.

Somehow, it didn’t feel right to see him this way. His breathing was so shallow that his chest barely rose and fell. His face was still: his brow smooth, his mouth slack. Blue shadows tinted the skin beneath his eyes. It seemed as though he would break if she touched him, as though he had transformed into a substance other than flesh and blood, as fragile as porcelain.

Beatrice assisted her into the armchair pulled up near him and turned to go. She paused at the doorway, her bedside manner parting slightly, like a curtain, to reveal a hint of wariness underneath. “Is it true Magister Thorn has no human servants?” she asked. “Only a demon?”

“Yes, but there’s no need to be afraid. Silas—that’s his name—he isn’t here any longer. Even if he were, he wouldn’t—” Elisabeth fought for words, gripped by an overpowering need to explain, to make Beatrice understand. It felt unacceptable that no one else knew who Silas was and what he had done. She finished with difficulty, “He sacrificed himself to save Nathaniel’s life.”

Beatrice frowned, gave a slight nod, and left, unmoved by the revelation. She thinks he acted under Nathaniel’s orders. And as simply as that, Elisabeth realized no one would ever appreciate Silas’s final act. It was not a story that anyone would believe. He had vanished from the world like mist, leaving nothing behind except rumors: the dreadful creature that had served House Thorn.

The injustice of it overwhelmed her, stung her eyes like needles. For a long time she sat in silence, her head bowed, blinking back tears.

Fabric rustled. Beside her, Nathaniel had stirred. She held her breath as his eyelashes fluttered, even though his movements appeared less a conscious effort to wake than a reaction to a dream. Impulsively, she reached over to brush a lock of hair from his forehead. The strands slid through her fingers, softer than silk. She had so little to give him, but at least she could let him know that he wasn’t alone.