Silas finished inspecting his nails and glanced down the stairwell. “This mountain is full of pyrite; I expect the vault’s location was chosen for that very reason. The presence of so much iron inhibits my senses. I’m afraid I cannot say for certain.”

“If it helps,” Nathaniel said, “there wasn’t any trace of magic back in the arena. I don’t think anyone’s gotten past the Malefict ahead of Hyde.”

“Unless Ashcroft knows a secret way into the library,” Elisabeth pointed out. “Cornelius planned this from the very beginning. He could have had a hidden corridor built into the mountain—something only he knew about.”

“Is it possible for something like that to remain undiscovered for so long?”

“I think so. I found all kinds of secret passageways in Summershall, and the senior librarians didn’t have a clue.”

They fell silent as they stole forward. Nathaniel extinguished his flame when the reddish glow of Hyde’s torch reappeared ahead, outlining the fur draped over his shoulders. While they snuck after him, his purposeful stride rang from the naked stone. He held the torch high in one hand, the other clasping his sword, never pausing to look behind him.

Elisabeth held her breath. Any moment now . . . any moment . . .

Her heart leaped to her throat when the torchlight poured over an irregularity on the ground: a pair of boots protruding from an adjoining tunnel. Staring straight ahead, Hyde didn’t seem to notice. He kept walking.

The three of them paused, allowing Hyde to gain a few steps as they took in the sight of the warden lying collapsed in the tunnel. A woman, still armed, sprawled loosely on the ground. Her torch had fallen into a puddle and gone out. The dim, shifting light made it impossible to tell whether she was still breathing.

“She lives,” Silas whispered. “There is no injury. She is merely asleep.”

They looked at each other. The sleeping spell. The attack had already begun. And yet Hyde was nearly at the vault, and they had seen no sign of the attacker.

The truth struck her like lightning.

Elisabeth abandoned every pretense of stealth. “Stop him!” she cried, lunging after Hyde. “Stop him from getting inside the vault!”

Too late. The portcullis at the end of the passage slammed down, separating Hyde on the other side. She skidded to a halt.

He turned to face them through the grille. A smile spread across his face, grotesquely stretching his scars. The expression looked wholly unnatural on his features, yet there was something familiar about it all the same. It was a smile she had seen many times before: in the gilded halls of Ashcroft Manor, in the palace ballroom, on the rose pavilion by moonlight.

It belonged not to Hyde, but to Chancellor Ashcroft.

THIRTY-THREE

“I SEE YOU’VE FIGURED it out, Miss Scrivener,” Ashcroft said, his cultured voice uncanny on Hyde’s scarred lips. “Quite honestly, I’m surprised it took you so long. After all, you’ve met the Book of Eyes.”

The Book of Eyes.

At once, the missing pieces snapped into place. When Elisabeth had battled the Malefict in Summershall, it had taunted her with the truth of who had killed the Director. Irena herself had described the spells it contained: magic that allowed sorcerers to reach into people’s minds, read their thoughts, and even control them. How had the Book of Eyes known the saboteur’s identity? The answer was simple—it had encountered him before. Given his status, Ashcroft would have been one of the rare few trusted to study such a dangerous grimoire.

To carry out his plans, he hadn’t needed to work with an accomplice, or even leave the comfort of his manor.

“You’ve been possessing the Directors,” she said numbly. “You’ve been forcing them to perform the sabotage with their own hands.”

“Beg pardon?” Ashcroft leaned closer to the bars and frowned, rubbing Hyde’s ear. “You know, I can barely hear what you’re saying. Quite inconvenient, really. But no matter. I won’t have to wear this body for long.” Spinning the key ring jauntily on his finger, he turned and strolled deeper into the vault.

Blood roared in Elisabeth’s ears. Nothing felt real. She took in the vault as though she were dreaming: an immense natural cavern, the walls glittering with pyrite. Towering angel statues stood vigil along the walls, carved from obsidian, streams of molten iron pouring from their cupped hands to the floor below. A circular channel conducted the liquid metal around the room’s circumference like a moat. Ashcroft stepped Hyde’s body over a narrow black stone bridge, the edges of his coat wavering from the heat distortion. His movements were oddly clumsy, and once he even jerked sideways, barely regaining his footing before he pitched over the edge.

“Hyde is still in there,” Elisabeth realized in shock. “He’s battling for control.” And then she thought, This is what happened to Irena.

Without warning, a blast of emerald fire exploded past her, singeing the tips of her ears. It funneled through the grille and twisted after Ashcroft like a cyclone. But as it neared him, it fizzled out in a shower of green sparks.

Nathaniel dropped his arm and swore. “Too much iron.”

Moving in awful fits and jerks, Ashcroft flicked a residual ember from Hyde’s fur. “I know what you’re thinking, Miss Scrivener,” he said without turning. He had succeeded in crossing the bridge. “You’re wondering what it was like for dear, beautiful Irena when I entered her mind and forced her to betray everything that she loved. Poor woman—she never suspected anything. I cast the spell on her years ago in the reading room at Summershall. When you’re the Chancellor of Magic, it’s no trouble arranging a private meeting with a Director. My magic lived inside her for nearly a decade, waiting for me to activate it.”

Elisabeth sucked in a breath. As though it had happened yesterday, she recalled the choking smell of aetherial combustion that clung to the reading room’s armchair: the permanent residue of some old, powerful spell. Distantly, she was aware of Nathaniel steadying her.

“Irena struggled, too, of course. She was strong-willed, just like you. She was there with me the entire time, all the way to the vault, up until the very moment the Book of Eyes struck her down.”

A sound escaped Elisabeth, something between a scream and a sob. Ashcroft wasn’t paying attention. He had nearly reached the middle of the room.

A trio of massive obsidian columns dominated the vault’s center, stretching unbroken to the ceiling. A crossed key and quill had been carved into the floor between them. Ashcroft stepped on the symbol as he approached, raising Hyde’s torch. “Magnificent, is it not?”

At first she wasn’t certain what he was referring to. Then light flooded the nearest column. Vapors swirled inside the translucent stone, wreathing a shape that hung suspended in chains. As though agitated by Hyde’s proximity, the mist began to boil, and lightning flashed within its depths. Each flicker illuminated a grimoire’s cover, bound in glossy black scales edged with silver. The cover inflated and deflated steadily, as though the grimoire were breathing.

The columns weren’t meant to hold up the ceiling. Instead, they contained Class Tens.

“The Librum Draconum,” Ashcroft said, a hint of true awe softening his voice. “Created using the hide of a Lindwurm—the last dragon in Austermeer, hunted to extinction in the fourteenth century. The spells inside can summon cataclysmic storms and earthquakes, invoke natural disasters on a world-altering scale. . . .”