“Do you see Ashcroft’s eyes?” Nathaniel murmured. “His mark is gone. He hasn’t summoned Lorelei back.”

Then he can’t use magic to fight us, she thought. Heartened, she raised Demonslayer over her shoulder. The glint of light on its blade caught Ashcroft’s attention. As though he had been expecting them, he spread his arms and gave them a boyish smile.

“Miss Scrivener,” he called out. “Nathaniel! I was hoping you would come. You’ve played such an important part in this, I wanted you to see. Isn’t it splendid?”

Behind him, a section of balcony disintegrated, the shattered railings and bookshelves floating in midair around the rift. The grimoires were slowing the destruction, but they couldn’t overcome the Archon’s power.

“You have to stop the ritual!” she shouted back.

He laughed. “Stop the ritual?”

“You’re going to destroy everything. The library is falling apart!” She thrust Demonslayer at the slivers of Otherworldly sky twisting above them. “If this is what the Archon is doing already, what do you think is going to happen when you let it out?”

“Oh, Miss Scrivener. If only you understood.” His blue eyes shone with sincerity. “Watch.” He unclasped his wounded wrist and tilted it until a droplet of blood splattered onto the tile. The blood vanished instantly, as though it had never existed. He extended his arm, showing her that the cut on his wrist had healed, leaving the skin unscarred.

“Do you see now?” he urged. “Once I’ve bound it, leashed it to my command, anything will be possible. I will change the world.”

There was no reasoning with him. Nathaniel seemed to have had the same thought. His whip snapped out, the flame crackling and sputtering. Silas crouched lower on his shoulder and closed his eyes, as though concentrating on lending Nathaniel all of his strength.

Ashcroft laughed again. This time, there was a hint of mania to the sound. He swept his arm through the air, and an arc of light sliced toward them, growing wider as it came.

Impossible. How—?

She didn’t have time to think. She threw herself down on one knee in front of Nathaniel, raising Demonslayer above her head. The sword hummed as it sheared through the light. When she rose, its blade glowed red-hot, the leather grip uncomfortably warm and sticky in her grasp, as though it had begun to melt. Shaken, she realized it might shatter if she tried blocking another spell.

A second arc of light flew toward them. They dropped to the floor, watching the beam pass inches above their noses, near enough to slice several fine white hairs from Silas’s tail. It sailed all the way across the atrium before it sizzled out of existence. For a moment Elisabeth thought it hadn’t struck anything. Then a statue slid sideways and crashed to the floor, severed cleanly at the ankles.

To create the spell, Ashcroft hadn’t even spoken an incantation.

“How is he doing this?” Elisabeth cried.

Nathaniel’s jaw was clenched, his face glistening with sweat. “The Archon’s power must be bleeding into him. Even without a bargain, it’s overflowing like a fountain.”

And before long, it will drown him.

They rolled apart, barely avoiding another arc as it carved a hissing groove through the floor between them, parting the marble as smoothly as a knife slicing into a pat of soft butter. Then another, sending them scrambling back. Nathaniel didn’t have time to cast a spell, even if he had the strength for it. The attacks came without pause, too relentless for them to do anything but react.

“Silas—” she began, but the look in his yellow eyes silenced her. He couldn’t transform without leaving Nathaniel helpless. One of these arcs, dodged a fraction too slowly, would leave Nathaniel dead before he struck the ground.

It was up to her, then.

Within the circle, the Archon’s light had grown brighter, spilling out over the tiles. It seemed to have grown several feet taller. And its outline was clearer, now: she could make out the shape of wings, and a corona around its head that might have been a crown. More debris drifted toward its orbit, fragments of bronze and marble from the balconies joining the sparkling river of glass that encircled its body. Piece by piece, the library was coming apart.

Heedless of it all, Ashcroft wore a blissful expression, his eyes clouded by a glowing white haze. The light seemed to burn within him, blazing from the inside out. When Elisabeth ducked beneath his latest attack and sprang upright, her face hard with resolve, he smiled—not at her, at the Archon—and raised his arms in a gesture of supplication.

She started forward. Beams of light shot from above like falling stars, splashing on the tiles around her feet. The missiles darted down as swiftly as arrows, too quick to follow, impossible to dodge. She could only keep running. For a moment she felt breathless, invincible. Then, behind her, a sound that made her heart stop: a cry of pain. Nathaniel.

“Keep going!” he shouted.

His whip licked past her and wrapped around one of Ashcroft’s wrists, wrenching him off-balance. She slammed into Ashcroft a split second later, knocking him to the floor so forcefully that his head cracked against the tile. Before he could regain his senses, she shoved him onto his stomach and yanked his arms behind his back. Remembering the shackles Nathaniel had worn in Harrows, she drew her greatkey’s thick-linked iron chain over her head and knotted it around his wrists, tightly, without any consideration for his hands, which would redden and swell in moments. Then she hoisted him up by his collar, pressing Demonslayer to his throat.

He shuddered as the glow faded from his eyes. Then he blinked, dazed, trying to focus. “You cannot kill me, Miss Scrivener.”

“This time, I will.” She barely recognized her own voice, thick with fury. Nathaniel’s cry still rang in her ears. “If I have to—if that’s what it takes.”

“Ah, that isn’t what I meant, I’m afraid.” His eyes rolled up toward the disintegrating dome. “Unless I bind it, we’re all going to die together.”

Automatically, she looked to Nathaniel. Her mouth went dry at the sight of him sprawled on the tile, clutching his knee, his teeth bared in a grimace. Blood darkened his trouser leg. Silas had returned to human form, and had yanked off his own cravat to tie it as a tourniquet around Nathaniel’s thigh, but there was something about his movements—the way his fingers paused, and his gaze lingered on Nathaniel’s face—almost as though he knew. . . .

No. “What is he saying?” Her heart threw itself against her ribs, frantic, painful, again and again. She turned back to Ashcroft. “What do you mean?”

“The Archon’s summoning can’t be revoked. Not upon my death—not by anyone. It isn’t an ordinary demon; there is no going back. Now do you understand? You must let me finish. You must allow me to bind it.”

No. That couldn’t be true. He had to be lying.

Because if he wasn’t—

She remembered the way Silas had looked at Nathaniel as they’d run toward the Royal Library. We shall try, he had said. She wondered if he had known—known that their cause was hopeless since the moment the summoning began. Her gaze shifted back to Silas, and their eyes locked. He had never looked more ancient or more stricken with regret.

“I am sorry, Miss Scrivener,” he said.