Trust me, he had said.

She remembered the day that they had met, when he had offered her his hand, and she had hesitated, certain he would hurt her. But the horrors she had imagined, those evil deeds—he had never been capable of them. Not Nathaniel, her Nathaniel, who was tortured by the darkness within him only because he was so good.

The Malefict’s words repeated in her mind. The girl you love. The truth of it rang through her like the tolling of a bell.

Slowly, she climbed down from the cannon. Heat shimmered in the air, but she felt no pain. It was as though she had donned a suit of armor, become invincible. She stepped toward the emerald flames, and they parted around her, curving away from her body like cresting waves. Nathaniel’s hand waited, outstretched.

Their fingers met. He closed his eyes. That was when she saw it: Prendergast’s vial hung empty at his chest.

The Malefict howled in fury, sensing the trick too late. It surged toward them, mouth agape, its head looming closer and closer, fetid breath washing over them, as the magic seized them and Harrows spun away.

THIRTY-FIVE

ELISABETH, NATHANIEL, AND Silas materialized in an unfamiliar parlor, in the middle of a group of women enjoying their evening tea. At least they were enjoying it, until the severed head of the Chronicles landed on their coffee table.

It arrived with a crash that flattened the table’s claw-foot legs and rattled the porcelain in the parlor’s mirrored cabinets. Decapitated at the neck, its antlers shorn off, it looked like a boulder-sized lump of charcoal. Staring at it in shock, Elisabeth supposed that it had come near enough Nathaniel to get seized by the spell. But evidently Prendergast’s magic hadn’t been able to transport something as large as the Malefict’s entire body between dimensions—only the head had come along with them. As its muscles relaxed, its tongue lolled from its mouth, glistening on the carpet like a giant slug.

A teaspoon dropped. The women sat stunned, ink splattered across the fronts of their silk dresses. None of them said a word as the head began to disintegrate, spouting embers onto the wainscoting.

“Excuse me, ladies,” said Nathaniel. He bowed, which dislodged a trickle of soot from his hair. Then his eyes rolled up, and he collapsed face-first onto the floor.

Shrieks filled the air. Teacups went flying. As the women fled from the room, tripping over the carpet’s fringe, Elisabeth dropped to her knees at Nathaniel’s side and rolled him over onto her lap. Soot blackened every inch of his exposed skin. His charred coat was still lightly smoking, and the fire had singed his eyebrows. At some point he had gotten a cut on his forehead—she didn’t know when, or how, but it had covered his face in blood. She pressed her fingers to his throat, and relaxed when she felt the steady rhythm of his pulse.

“That was his plan?” she asked Silas, pointing at the Malefict’s head. As though being pointed at were the last straw, it slumped into a pile of ashes.

Gazing down at Nathaniel, Silas sighed. “Truth be told, miss, I suspect he did not possess a plan, and was simply making it up as he went along.”

“Ugh. Where are we? Has anyone a clue?” Nathaniel opened one gray eye, startlingly pale against his soot- and blood-covered face. He looked around dubiously, as though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to wake up yet, and then slowly opened the other, focusing on Elisabeth’s face. “Hello, you menace.”

She laughed, weak with relief. As she stroked his hair back from his sticky forehead, an unbearable tenderness filled her. “I love you, too,” she said.

Nathaniel’s brow furrowed. He turned his face to the side and blinked several times. “Thank god,” he said finally. “I don’t think unrequited love would have suited me. I might have started writing poetry.”

Elisabeth continued stroking his hair. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“I assure you, it would have proven more unpleasant for everyone than necromancy.”

She laughed again, helplessly. A weightless, sparkling joy filled her, like the sunlight of a spring morning after the rain had stopped and the clouds went scudding away, and the world felt new and clean and bright, transformed into a better version of itself, heartbreaking in its beauty. The immensity of the feeling made her ribs hurt. She swiped her knuckles across her cheek, conscious of Silas watching them.

Nathaniel looked at her sidelong. “Scrivener, I know I cut a devilishly handsome figure lying here on the floor all covered in blood—which I hear some girls find quite appealing, strangely enough, and if you’re one of them I’m not going to judge—but please stop crying. It’s only a flesh wound. I’ll be back to fighting evil any moment now.”

She sniffed loudly. “I’m not crying. My eyes are watering. You smell awful.”

“What? I never smell awful. I smell like sandalwood and masculine allure.” He lifted his head to smell himself, and gagged. “Never mind.”

“Perhaps you might consider not setting yourself on fire next time, master,” Silas said, pointedly.

A clatter came from the hall. A pair of footmen crowded the doorway, one of them clutching an antique sword that looked as though it had been torn down from a mantelpiece, and was now trembling violently in his hands. “Surrender peacefully, sorcerer,” he declared, after an encouraging look from the other, “and we won’t hurt you.”

Nathaniel squinted at him. “You look familiar. Are we in Lady Ingram’s town house?”

I hope so, Elisabeth thought. The ink stain on the carpet looked permanent.

“Er,” said the footman with the sword, uncertainly.

“Excellent.” Before Elisabeth could stop him, Nathaniel hoisted himself to his feet and cast around, wobbling alarmingly. She took one of his arms, and Silas the other. Not seeming to notice that he couldn’t stand on his own, he started for the doorway, explaining, “I aimed the spell to let us out near the Royal Library. We’re only a few blocks away.”

Elisabeth recalled the map of Austermeer, where Katrien had drawn a question mark beside the Royal Library at the center. “That’s where Ashcroft is going to finish his summoning,” she realized aloud. “It’s the middle of the pentagram.”

“Precisely. I’m hoping that I’ve managed to botch the ritual by taking part of the Chronicles with us. But it was so large, there might have still been enough demonic energy released back in Harrows.”

“Then we can’t waste any time.” A grandfather clock ticked in the corner. With a sense of unreality, she saw that it was only eight thirty in the evening. What had felt like years in Harrows had only been a couple of hours.

As they approached, the footman halfheartedly menaced them with his sword. He looked relieved when Elisabeth grabbed it by the blade and plucked it from his hand. She examined the weapon—useless—and stuck it in an umbrella stand on their way out the door.

They emerged into a midwinter’s dream. Laughter filled the night as a family trooped past, bundled in mittens and scarves, ice skates dangling from their fingers. A lone carriage sailed by in the opposite direction, the horse’s hooves muffled to near-silence by the snow. Candles lit the windows of the houses along the street, affording glimpses of the scenes within: a woman placing a baby into a bassinet, a hound dozing in front of a fireplace beside his master’s slippers. Elisabeth’s breath puffed white in the air.