“Thirty,” Silas countered, in a soft, rasping voice.

Nathaniel answered immediately, without hesitation. “Twenty-five.”

“You would offer me so little?” Silas looked down at Nathaniel as though he were a crawling insect. His whispered words pelted like sleet. “Remember who I am. Before House Thorn bound me to its service, I served emperors and kings. Rivers flowed red with the blood of mortals I slew at their bidding. You are just a boy, and I debase myself folding your clothing and fetching your tea. Thirty years, or I will find a new master, one who will reward me in proportion to my worth.”

Nathaniel’s eyelids fluttered. Grimacing, he put a hand to his chest and gripped the bandages through his shirt. When he let out a gasp, Elisabeth realized he was using the pain to keep himself conscious. He was fading, and any moment now, he would give in. He would do anything to get Silas back, even bargain away time that he might not have.

She couldn’t bear it. Silas watched without pity, without even interest, the suffering of the boy who loved him, whose life he had gone to such lengths to save.

“Nathaniel’s hurt, Silas!” she exclaimed. “Can’t you see?”

Silas’s gaze disengaged from Nathaniel, slowly, as though he found it difficult to look away, and fixed upon her instead. Her breath caught at the emptiness in his night-dark eyes, but she didn’t waver.

“I know you still care,” she said. “Just hours ago, you sacrificed yourself for him. Don’t waste that by asking so much of him. What if he doesn’t have thirty years to give?”

“Miss Scrivener,” he whispered, and her skin crawled; so he did recognize her, after all. Somehow, that was worse. “You continue to mistake me. When I intercepted the Chancellor’s blade, I did so knowing that I would be summoned again, this time for an even greater reward. You see sacrifice where there is only selfishness.”

“That isn’t true. I was there.”

“If you wish to prove it,” he said, “you need only step inside the circle.”

She saw the truth, then: the strain gripping his muscles, the wretchedness struggling to break through his cold, hungry mask. If she stepped forward, he would kill her; he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. But he did not want to hurt her. He didn’t want to take three decades from Nathaniel, either. She believed that with her whole heart.

“Take the ten extra years from me,” she said.

“Elisabeth,” Nathaniel croaked. “No.”

She forged on, “You said yourself that my life was like no other you’d ever seen. You would like to taste it, wouldn’t you?”

Silas’s lips parted. In his black eyes, a flicker. Whatever battle raged within him left the icy surface untouched. Finally he whispered, “Yes.”

“Then take it. Let’s end this.”

She remembered the night that he had given her Demonslayer, when he had advanced on her and frightened her. It was like that again, watching some terrible light go out of him as his hunger retreated. His lashes lowered. Hooded, his gaze considered the floor. “You understand that I can only serve one mortal at a time. As long as I walk this realm, you will be marked. But you will receive nothing in return.”

“I know.”

“The same conditions as before, Master Thorn?”

Nathaniel was leaning on one arm, which trembled with the effort of holding him upright, and he didn’t have the strength to look at either of them. The silence spun out. She felt him trying to summon the energy to resist, to argue, finding his will sapped and his last reserves spent. At last, miserably, he nodded.

Silas stepped out of the pentagram and knelt before them. He took Elisabeth’s unbandaged hand and kissed it. As his lips brushed across her skin, a touch as silky as the petals of a rose, she felt the promise of the ten years she had pledged to him draw out of her body and into his—a dizzy, weakening sensation, like blood rushing from her head. Next, he took Nathaniel’s hand and repeated the gesture. She watched the silver flow back into Nathaniel’s hair, beginning at the roots, a trickle of mercury flowing through the strands.

“I am your devoted servant,” Silas said to him. “Through me, you are conferred the art of sorcery. Any command that you give, I shall follow.”

Exhaustion slurred Nathaniel’s words. “You hate following commands. If I order you around, you always make me regret it.”

A faint, beautiful smile illuminated Silas’s face. “Even so.”

Smoothly, he moved to stand, but he wasn’t able to complete the motion. Nathaniel had thrown his arms around him and now held him fast. Silas wasn’t accustomed to being embraced. That much was plain. He stood bent, frozen, his eyes wide, staring over the top of Nathaniel’s head, as if he hoped his gaze might land by chance upon an excuse great enough to relieve him of his present difficulty. When no such excuse presented itself, he raised his hand and carefully placed it atop his master’s tousled curls. They remained that way for a time, until Nathaniel’s arms loosened, then slipped from Silas’s waist. He had fallen unconscious.

Silas looked down at him and sighed. He arranged Nathaniel’s limbs and lifted him as though he were a child who had drifted asleep by the fire, and now needed to be carried upstairs to bed. He performed the maneuver with such familiarity that Elisabeth understood he had done it many times before, though doubtless when Nathaniel was much smaller. Silas bore his master’s weight easily, but the fact remained that fully grown, Nathaniel posed an awkward burden, to say the least.

“I will see Master Thorn settled.” Silas paused to sniff the air beside Elisabeth. “Then, Miss Scrivener, I shall draw you a bath. I believe supper is also in order. And—has no one lit the lamps?” He looked aggrieved. “I have hardly been absent for twenty-four hours, and already the world has descended into ruin.”

• • •

Life and order returned to the house. Light chased away the darkness that pressed against the windowpanes. Linens were stripped, beds tidied, the remainders of meals whisked away. The shards of mirror-glass vanished from every room. Finally, after running his index finger down a wall sconce and inspecting it for dust, Silas announced that he was going to put something on for dinner and vanished into the kitchen. Elisabeth sat for a few minutes alone with Nathaniel, watching him sleep. She was tempted to lay her head on the covers and join him. Instead, she forced herself to get up and head downstairs. She needed to talk to Silas.

She moved quietly through the house. Even so, when she neared the kitchen door, he spoke without turning around. “I have found the scrying mirror, Miss Scrivener.” His tone was mild. “In the future, I advise against using the laundry chute to dispose of magical artifacts.”

Abashed, she came inside and perched on a stool by the hearth. There were signs of Beatrice having made use of the kitchen: a cutting board with a loaf of bread beside it, the remains of diced vegetables. A pot simmered on the fire. When Nathaniel kicked her out, she had been making soup.

Silas was dressed impeccably in his servant’s uniform once more, his hair tied back, surveying Beatrice’s work with disdain. As she watched, he adjusted the cutting board so that it sat parallel to the edge of the counter. She searched inside herself for resentment, fear, anger toward him, and found nothing. He had always been honest with her about what he was.