“It’s the sorcerer,” a warden called out. “There he is!”

Elisabeth had been afraid of this. With no evidence of Ashcroft’s involvement, Nathaniel appeared to be responsible for the Chronicles’ escape. As wardens pelted in their direction, she stepped in front of him, Demonslayer at the ready. Silas leaped from his shoulder, human again before he struck the ground.

Demonslayer clashed against the closest warden’s sword, the vibration shuddering up her arm. He had the advantage of skill, but she was taller and stronger. Parrying recklessly, she managed to block his strikes until their blades locked.

“He isn’t the saboteur!” she shouted over their crossed weapons.

The warden didn’t listen. Veins stood out in his face as he pushed against her, his sword screeching dangerously along Demonslayer’s edge. Her stomach turned when she realized she might have to start fighting him in earnest—perhaps even risk killing him. She couldn’t hold him off for much longer without one of them getting hurt.

Nearby, Silas neatly sidestepped another warden’s swing, appearing behind him in the same breath. He seized the man’s wrist and twisted. There came a sickening crack, and the warden yelled and dropped his sword. Before the weapon fell, Silas had already moved on to the next attacker in a blur of movement. One by one, wardens dropped like chess pieces around Nathaniel, left moaning and cradling their broken limbs.

Wind sliced across the courtyard. Nathaniel raised his head, his hair wild, his eyes rimmed with an emerald glow. Fire danced along his fingertips. He looked like a demon himself. Through bared teeth, he uttered the final syllables of the incantation.

Elisabeth gasped when she lifted from the ground, the toes of her boots weightlessly brushing the flagstones. Electricity snapped through the air, crackling over her clothes and standing her hair on end. The energy built and built until she thought her eardrums would burst—only to release in a rush that pulsed through her body, accompanied by a boom of thunder that felt as though the sky had plunged down to slam against the earth. Gravity yanked her back to the ground as a bolt of lightning flashed on the opposite side of the wall. It struck once, twice, three times, and kept going, each blinding, sizzling blast twisting between the Malefict’s antlers and coursing down its body in rivers of green light.

When the lightning finally ceased, her vision was too full of smoke and blotched purple afterimages to see what had happened. But she was able to venture a guess when a tremor ran through the courtyard, as though something heavy had fallen, and a cheer rose from the ramparts.

With a great shove, Elisabeth heaved the warden away. He stumbled, appearing uncertain. More wardens had arrived on the scene, but they hung back, staring at Nathaniel.

His chest heaved. Sparks flickered over his body; miniature bolts of lightning crackled between the tips of his fingers and the flagstones. As if that weren’t enough, he was grinning.

One of the wardens started forward.

“Stand down,” snapped a voice from above. A stocky woman with close-cropped hair stood on one of the stairways that zigzagged up the inner side of the rampart, watching them. She vaulted over the railing and landed beside Elisabeth. “The battle isn’t over yet,” she said in a tone of authority, “and these two aren’t our enemies. Those of you who can still walk, clear a position for the sorcerer on the rampart. He’s a magister. We need him.” When none of the wardens reacted, she shouted, “Move!”

Before Elisabeth could respond, she found herself hastened alongside Nathaniel toward the stairway. The warden in charge watched them askance. “You had better not make me regret this. Have either of you seen the Director?”

“The Malefict killed him,” Elisabeth said hoarsely.

She looked grim, but unsurprised. “I suppose that means I’m the Director now.” She paused, glancing at Silas before her eyes flicked to Nathaniel. “That’s your demon, I take it?”

“Ah,” Nathaniel said, shaking a few last sparks from his fingertips. Deliberately, he avoided looking at the injured wardens still rolling around in the courtyard, clutching their broken legs. “I’m afraid so, Director.”

The warden—the new Director—was frowning. Elisabeth braced herself for disaster. But all she said was, “He’s a bit small,” and turned back ahead.

Their boots clattered on the metal grating. When they reached the top, smoke billowed over them in rancid clouds. Amid the haze, the wardens toiling over the cannons were little more than dark smudges picked out by the glow of torches. Elisabeth rushed to the crenellations and looked down. A smoldering mass lay crumpled at the base of the wall, surrounded by toppled barricades, whose spikes combed the smoke as it streaked away in the wind. But the fallen Malefict wasn’t disintegrating into ash.

“It isn’t dead,” she shouted back.

“I would be greatly obliged if you could make it dead, Magister,” the Director said. “As quickly as possible, for all our sakes.”

Veiled in smoke, Nathaniel and Elisabeth exchanged a look. She knew the truth: there was no way to contain a monster this dangerous. Ashcroft hadn’t given them a choice. She imagined the Chronicles getting loose and rampaging through Brassbridge, smashing towers with its claws, leaving a trail of dead and dying in its wake. How would that compare to an invasion of demons? How many casualties, how much destruction? She did not know. It was as though she stood behind a scale, blindfolded, and it was her responsibility to weigh one disaster against another, to choose the way in which the world would end. As she and Nathaniel gazed into each other’s eyes, the fate of thousands hovered in the air between them, and there was no time to speak or even think—only to act.

“Yes,” she said, each word an agony. “Do it.”

“I doubt more lightning will work,” Nathaniel said, turning back to the Director. “I’ll have to try something else. Give me a moment.” He closed his eyes.

Elisabeth’s free hand clenched as she stepped back beside Silas. He was gazing out over the rampart, expressionless, the wind stirring his hair, which was beginning to come loose from its ribbon. She grasped at one last hope. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” she asked him.

“I am not capable of miracles, Miss Scrivener.” His lips barely moved, as though he were truly carved from alabaster. “I cannot fight the creature; it is the creation of my former master. Baltasar’s orders forbid me, even centuries after his death.”

She hesitated as an idea occurred to her. Silas’s claim wasn’t entirely true. If she freed him from his bonds, he would no longer be constrained by Baltasar’s orders—by anything. He could stop this from happening. He would have the power to save them all.

“But I would not,” he murmured. “You know that I would not.”

His tone stopped her cold. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t certain what she was sorry for, precisely—for the thought she had had, or for the hunger in Silas’s eyes.

He inclined his head. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened. “Down,” he spat. “Down!”

It was the first time she had ever heard him raise his voice. Everything turned sideways as he seized her and Nathaniel and flung them to the ground. The Malefict rose up over the rampart, smoke pouring from its mouth and slitted nostrils, eyes fulminating a foul, necromantic green. Silas pressed them flat as a colossal arm swept over the crenellations. Wind howled over Elisabeth, battering her senses, tearing at her clothes. A horrible sucking grayness dimmed her consciousness; she felt as though her life were a guttering candle being buffeted by a gale. Her hearing faded, and her vision dimmed. There came an eruption of green flame before the world split apart, shattering like a kaleidoscope.