A chill ran down Elisabeth’s spine. Was he asking her to free him? Surely not. But she could think of no other reason why he would tell her this.

“As a child, Master Thorn once proposed the idea,” Silas said, very softly. “He liked the thought of setting me free, of allowing us to be equals instead of master and servant. I told him not to. I give you the same warning now, though I don’t believe you require it. Do not free me, Miss Scrivener, no matter what comes for us, no matter how unspeakable things become, because I assure you that I am worse.”

He held her gaze a moment longer, then straightened and inclined his head in a bow. “Good night, miss,” he said, and left her sitting petrified by the fire.

TWENTY-NINE

THE NEXT MORNING, Silas brought a copy of the Brassbridge Inquirer inside from the stoop. A gargoyle had been gnawing on it, but it was still readable, and her pulse sped to a gallop as she smoothed it flat across the foot of Nathaniel’s bed, pressing the torn strips back into place.

Ashcroft’s name was everywhere. Her eyes skipped between the front page headlines, unable to decide where to settle first. There was the column on the left: DEADLY DUEL THROWS ROYAL BALL INTO CHAOS. And then on the right: MAGISTERIUM SCRAMBLES TO INSTATE NEW CHANCELLOR. But the bold text crowding the page’s center was by far the most exciting: OBERON ASHCROFT, CHANCELLOR OF MAGIC, IMPLICATED IN GREAT LIBRARY SABOTAGE.

She bent over it and began to read. “Due to his multiple attempts to silence Elisabeth Scrivener, a key witness in the Great Library investigation, Chancellor Ashcroft is believed to be connected to the recent string of attacks. He is wanted for attempted murder and the illegal summoning of lesser demons. The Magisterium has assembled a perimeter around his estate, where he is believed to be hiding, but as of yet have not been able to penetrate the wards. . . .”

She trailed off, remembering what Ashcroft had told her when she’d first arrived: his wards were powerful enough to repel an army. Perhaps the Magisterium hoped he would surrender, but Elisabeth couldn’t see that happening. Ashcroft wouldn’t go easily. And on the pavilion, he had almost spoken as though it no longer mattered whether people found out about him—that if his plan succeeded, its results would make all of this irrelevant.

Quietly, Nathaniel moaned. She looked up, but he hadn’t woken. He was twisting in the throes of fever, his cheeks flushed, his hair damp with sweat. She watched him turn his head and mutter something inaudible against the pillow. His loose nightshirt clung to the lines of his body, but had slipped off one shoulder, revealing a glistening collarbone.

She rose and wrung out one of the cloths in the basin nearby. When she folded it and placed it on his forehead, she felt the heat radiating from his skin even before her hand drew near. He winced as though the wet cloth were painful. Tentatively, she stroked his damp curls, and at her touch, he sighed and went still. His breathing eased.

Something drew tight inside her, like a violin string awaiting the touch of a bow. Looking down at him, her heart ached with a song that did not have words or notes or form, but strained nonetheless to be given voice—a sensation that was not unlike suffering, for it seemed too great for her body to contain. It was much like how she had felt on the pavilion, when they had almost kissed.

She withdrew to the window, where she pressed her burning cheeks against the cold panes. Outside, snowflakes fell glittering past the glass. The snow had begun overnight, shortly after Nathaniel had woken screaming and delirious from a nightmare, and then subsided shivering in Silas’s arms. Unable to sleep afterward, Elisabeth had been awake to see the first flakes drift down. It had fallen steadily ever since. Now a thick coat blanketed the gargoyles, who shook themselves occasionally, sending up sparkling puffs of white. A shimmering layer of ice glazed the branches of the thorn bushes and the rooftops across the street. She gazed in wonder at the scene. She had never known a winter storm to arrive so early in the year.

With her face pressed to the window, she became aware of a distant noise, a sort of buzzing sound—shouting, she realized, distorted to a tinny vibration by the leaded glass. She frowned and squinted through the snow. The scene that resolved itself was so ridiculous that it made her blink, wondering whether her imagination had gotten the best of her.

A man was stuck in the hedge, his arms and legs tangled in thorn branches, shouting for help as a lion-shaped gargoyle prowled toward him. Her eyes widened when she saw that he was wearing a postman’s uniform. She tightened her dressing gown and pelted down the stairs.

The front door sprang open without a touch. A blast of cold air struck her, flinging snowflakes into the foyer. She barely noticed the frigid shock as her bare feet sank deep into the snow.

“Don’t hurt him!” she cried to the gargoyle, which was poised to spring, its stone tail lashing back and forth. The snarl fell from its whimsical face—apparently carved by someone who had never actually seen a lion—as she approached and laid a hand on its shoulder.

“Thank god you’re here,” the postman sputtered. “I didn’t realize that blasted hedge would come alive. Sorcerers, I tell you. Why don’t they use magic to collect their packages, and save us ordinary folk the trouble?”

“I don’t think they’re practical enough,” she said as she helped him free his limbs from the branches. “The last time I saw Nathaniel conjure an object, it nearly fell on my head and killed me. Thank you.” She turned the package he had handed her around, and her heart leaped at the name scrawled above the return address: Katrien Quillworthy.

The postman waved her off. He was already beating a hasty retreat through the passage that had opened in the hedge. “Just tell that sorcerer of yours to stop making it snow. It’s falling over the entire city, you know, not just in Hemlock Park. At this rate, the river will freeze solid by nightfall. Half the houses on my route are snowed in, traffic’s a nightmare. . . .”

She almost protested, but then she thought of the way Nathaniel had been muttering incoherently ever since his nightmare, shivering with violent bouts of chills. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d cast spells in his sleep.

She looked up at the milk-white sky with a renewed sense of awe. Snowflakes spiraled downward, settling on her hair and eyelashes. Silence had enveloped the normally bustling street, the quiet so profound that she could almost hear the ice crystals chiming in the clouds: a high, chalky, clear ringing, as though someone were tapping the highest keys on a piano far above the rooftops. Nathaniel did this, she thought.

In her head, she repeated what the postman had called him. That sorcerer of yours. Was that what everyone thought now? Suddenly she felt oddly clumsy, like the world had shifted a few degrees on its axis. Clutching the package, she hurried back inside.

She tore off the wrappings in the study, and held her breath as she unfolded the beautifully drawn map of Austermeer within. She had forgotten it was on its way. Katrien had put it in the post almost two weeks ago, at the start of their meetings, after she had found it gathering dust in one of the Great Library’s storage rooms. They had always planned to hang it above the fireplace.

Elisabeth stood on her toes and pinned it up. Standing back, she saw that Katrien had circled Ashcroft’s attacks in red ink. Knockfeld. Summershall. Fettering. Frowning, she scavenged a pen and inkwell from the desk and circled Fairwater, too. With the four libraries marked off, Harrows represented the fifth and final target of a near complete, almost perfect circle around the kingdom.