He moved on to the next column, bringing the torch close. He released a wistful sigh. Within the chains hung—nothing. No . . . there was something there, reflective and shifting, mirrorlike, its surface flowing like water. Trying to focus on it made Elisabeth’s head hurt.

“The Oraculis,” Ashcroft murmured. “Provenance unknown. Its spells allow one to see the future, or so the theories suggest, but everyone who’s read it has immediately taken their own life. A shame. I dearly would have liked to study it.”

He approached the third case. Through the translucent obsidian, the torch revealed the slick, pulsing skin of a beating heart. It clung to the grimoire’s cover like some hideous growth, its veins wrapped around the leather, sealing the pages shut. The veins bulged rhythmically, as though pumping blood—but the green glow that animated them was pure sorcery, the magic of House Thorn. Necromancy, keeping the long-dead heart alive.

“Ah. The Chronicles of the Dead.” Ashcroft tapped on the case, and smiled pensively when the heart spasmed in response. “Those who try to open it instantly succumb to its magic. Except for you, Nathaniel. This book is yours. It calls out to you, no doubt. How would you like to meet your ancestor’s work?”

“Don’t,” Nathaniel croaked. He gripped the bars, his fingers bled white.

Elisabeth’s senses came flooding back on a tide of fury. “It won’t work!” she shouted through the portcullis. “You won’t be able to control the Archon! It’s going to tear the world apart. When you summon it, you’ll be the first to die!”

Ashcroft paused, peering at them, a hand cupped behind his ear. “I confess I’ve never been any good at reading lips,” he said finally. He gave a rueful laugh. “You’re asking me to stop, aren’t you? Ah, Miss Scrivener, you do not understand. You cannot understand. This is the purpose handed down to me by my father, and his father before him, stretching back three hundred years. I am part of something far greater than myself.” He tilted his head back, gazing up at the column. “With the Archon’s power at my disposal, humanity will be transformed. No more sickness, or poverty, or war. It will be a marvel—a glorious era in which all is possible, and every dream made real. . . .”

He trailed off. Emotion shimmered in his eyes. Even wearing Hyde’s form, something of Ashcroft’s natural light and magnetism shone through.

He really believes what he’s saying, Elisabeth thought, horrified. In his heart of hearts, he viewed himself not as the villain, but as the hero.

Ashcroft cleared his throat. “Let’s see.” He paced in a circle, inspecting the Collegium sigil on the floor. “Cornelius faced somewhat of a problem with this library’s construction. How does one free a grimoire from an iron-filled vault several hundred feet beneath a mountain? Fortunately, the Collegium’s own technology provided the solution.”

He moved to draw Hyde’s sword from its sheath, and stopped abruptly. Hyde’s hand had clamped around the hilt, muscles bulging with resistance. His face purpled as the two minds fought for control. Hope filled Elisabeth’s chest like a breath in the midst of drowning.

“The iron must be weakening Ashcroft’s spell.” She turned to Nathaniel, who was white as a sheet, staring at the Chronicles. She didn’t think he would hear her if she spoke to him. Instead, she asked Silas, “Is there any way for you to get inside?”

Silas stood several paces back, a ghost in the darkness of the passageway. He stepped forward, reaching for the portcullis. Alarm clamored through her, but his hand stopped a hairsbreadth from touching the thick bands of reinforced iron.

“I fear not,” he said. “This gate was designed to prevent beings such as I from entering. Even if I could, I would not be at my full strength inside the vault.”

No wonder Silas had been hanging back. In the infernal red glow of the molten iron, he looked washed out, almost ill.

A ring of metal against stone yanked her attention back to Ashcroft. He had managed to free Hyde’s sword, though in doing so he had lurched forward, nearly dropping the weapon. As she watched in dismay, he dragged the blade, scraping, until it stood vertically above the Collegium sigil, his weight bearing down upon it. And then, like a key fitting into a lock, the sword’s point slid inside a hidden mechanism in the sigil. Sweating and trembling with effort, Ashcroft twisted it to the right.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a clank echoed through the cavern. The floor shook, gears churning unseen as the Great Library’s machinery awakened. A jagged crack raced across the ceiling. On the far side of the vault, one of the giant obsidian angels began to turn, not by sorcery but by the will of the cogs, its face motionless and serene. The stream of molten iron cascading from its hands slowed to a drip. Angled sideways, it created a blockage in the channel, and the moat slowly drained away at its feet.

In the place where the angel had once stood, a passageway now yawned. But Elisabeth had eyes only for the ceiling, where the crack had snaked across the cavern and split the rock above the portcullis. When she seized the bars and shook them, she felt a slight give.

Ashcroft was bent over now, Hyde’s face writhing grotesquely. He staggered to the Chronicles’ pillar and caught himself against it with a hand that clenched repeatedly into a fist. Using the other hand, he unsteadily raised his Director’s key toward a slot in the column.

There was still time. Ashcroft missed once, twice, the key glancing from the stone. Elisabeth threw herself against the portcullis. Metal groaned as it pushed outward an inch on one side, the grille flexing against her shoulder.

With his lips peeled back from his teeth, Ashcroft at last forced the key into place. When he turned it, a panel slid open. Green-tinted mist flowed out of it, pouring down, lapping over Hyde’s boots.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The convulsions of the dead, ancient heart filled the cavern, thudding inside Elisabeth’s bones. The stench nearly brought her to her knees. It was like standing at the entrance to a crypt, breathing in rot and stone and ancient magic, the smell of skulls crawling with beetles, of moss speckling crumbled tombs.

The portcullis screeched as she wedged her shoulder into the gap, using the passage’s wall as leverage. But she was too late.

Too late to stop Ashcroft as he reached inside, and plunged his fingers into the beating heart.

THIRTY-FOUR

THE HEART’S VEINS pulsed with emerald light. They began to spread, to grow, twining rootlike along the chains, sending branching tendrils outward. Elisabeth’s paralyzed thoughts fixed on the illustration of a nervous system that she remembered from one of Master Hargrove’s anatomical texts. The Chronicles was growing into a Malefict, beginning with its heart.

Within seconds, the Malefict’s expanding form crowded the inside of the column. Clawed fingers curled over the lip of the opening, their exposed tendons dripping ink. She remembered the shadows of those claws stretching across the Royal Library, reaching for the wardens as they wheeled its cage along the hall.

Ashcroft stumbled back, clutching his hand to his chest. Wild-eyed, he dove for the sword lying discarded beside the sigil. Not Ashcroft any longer—Hyde. Ashcroft had finished his work and relinquished his hold on the body, leaving Hyde at the mercy of the Chronicles of the Dead, just as he must have done to Irena after releasing the Book of Eyes.