Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Kyrith
Ireappear in the Vault, directly beside Mathias and…Eddy?
The lich has one hand out, palm facing the altar, and the other planted in his grimoire as he chants. Eddy is back-to-back with him, so she sees me first.
Instinct has me reaching out, trying to shove myself between them to protect her. She catches me mid-motion. There’s no give in her cold, steely grip, and it turns punishing when I try to wrench free, pinning me in place until I lose hold of my physical form again.
Even then, she plants herself firmly between me and Mathias, who’s not even paying attention. Why would he be?
The dagger is visible. The last of its defences wavering.
No. If he gets his hands on it, then it’s over. I can’t let that happen.
I launch myself at him, but Eddy is there, catching me the minute I regain my physical form.
What’s going on? Why? Why would she do this?
I stare, uncomprehending, into her blank face, searching for a hint of malice. A reason. Anything.
It’s like looking at a creepy doll.
“Eddy?” I gasp.
“How pathetic.” Betrayal guts me all over again as Pierce’s voice drags my attention to my left.
He has a split lip, and the fresh runeform on his cheek is weeping blood down to his jawline. His mother is just behind him, her manicured nails digging into his shoulder.
Pierce broke the covenant.
He…betrayed me? Suddenly, the ease with which Mathias broke the wards over the dagger makes a sick kind of sense. Even if Eddy wasn’t reporting back, Pierce knew all of the protective spells I cast.
It’s only then that I realise…the chanting has stopped. The only noise that remains is the piercing ringing in my ears.
I turn, already knowing what I’ll find.
Mathias is holding the dagger like one might a long-lost child, cradling it between aged fingers.
“No!” I dive for it, but my ghostly body is suddenly so heavy that I end up on my knees on the flagstones. That same pain pulses through me in waves that roll into one another, draining me.
“Ah, Kyrith. There you are.” His voice strengthens as he speaks.
His hair is filling out rapidly, the wrinkled skin of his hand smoothing out as his posture straightens.
With every second, I feel the Arcanaeum—already exhausted—growing weaker and weaker.
When he finally stops, the man who meets my stare is very much the same one who stabbed me in the heart all those years ago.
The moment his golden eyes meet mine, the stinging agony doubles, though his grimoire is abandoned in the air by his side.
The dagger. The dagger is the key to the Arcanaeum and I…
I am the Arcanaeum, and he’s torturing us.
All around me, the walls shake, the building crying out silently as books topple from their shelves.
“So kind of you to join us,” he says, as easily as if he were discussing the weather.
“Get. Out. Of. My. Arcanaeum!” I snarl, straining with every fibre of my being for the magic that would let me banish him.
“Tut tut tut. Your Arcanaeum?” He swirls the dagger, balancing the point on his finger for a second before clasping his hand around the golden blade, pressing the ruby-red gem in the pommel to his lips and inhaling.
“It takes more than some garish decorations to really claim mastery of such a magnificent institution.”
“Argh!” My scream rips out of me, and I shoot a pleading glance up at Eddy. “Please,” I whisper.
Whatever ensorcellment he used—because I refuse to believe this is really her doing—she can fight it. She’s strong.
Mathias gives me a warm smile, the kind one might give to a toddler that’s being silly. Then, in a swift motion, he leans forward and pulls a golden light out of Eddy’s chest with his fingertips.
Her body slumps to the ground at our feet.
No. No. She can’t be dead. That’s not—
It’s not Eddy.
The illusion covering her peels away, revealing someone else entirely. An old woman, already decomposing beneath an unmistakable pink and yellow cardigan.
A revenant.
Mathias must’ve used this corpse to spy on us.
But how did he fool the Arcanaeum?
I struggle with the question until my gaze lands on her hip, where a familiar scarlet grimoire is holstered.
Clever. The Library identifies people by magical signature, and an arcanist’s spellbook is loaded with their power.
That book, along with the hundreds of scarlet runeforms carved across her skin, would’ve done the trick.
Was the poor woman dead before he carved her up like that? One can only hope. The wounds have wept blood across the fabric of her clothes.
We never watched ourselves around her. Why would we? She was Eddy.
So where is North’s twin? How long has she been gone?
“I can see you trying to work it out.” Mathias shakes his head. “But you see, dear Edlynn has been under my command, in one way or another, for some time now. If you hadn’t been playing house with all of those dashing young men, you might’ve noticed.”
“Where is she?” I grate out, hands fisting against the stone. “Let her go. She’s nothing to you.”
Mathias shrugs. “The good thing about worthless liminals is that they make wonderful sacrifices.”
I want to throw up, a feeling that only redoubles as he crouches down to my level and pinches my chin between his fingers. Our eyes meet, and his narrow, like he’s searching for something.
“You know, I always wondered what it was about you that allowed the ritual to go awry. Now, I’ll never know. A pity, really.”
“Is this really necessary?” Pierce drawls. “She’s beaten. You have the Library. You may as well keep her as an assistant or something.”
Mathias drops my chin, but I can’t raise my head. It’s too heavy. The best I can manage is to roll it to one side to meet Pierce’s dispassionate stare.
His mother’s hand leaves his shoulder, landing in the pages of her own hovering grimoire.
“Ingaesh,” she growls.
Pierce’s spine goes ramrod straight, his eyes watering under the torture spell. His jaw is clenched, but he doesn’t make a sound. How is he still standing? He doesn’t even look surprised.
“Forgive my son’s impertinence,” Isidora says. “He’s apparently lost his manners while he was gallivanting around with the half-dull heirs.”
Mathias’s congenial smile returns. “It’s perfectly all right. I don’t mind answering him.”
The lich points the blade at me, then raises the tip. I’m forced up like a puppet, the agony increasing tenfold.
“Liminals need to be put in their place, or they get ideas above their station. Did you like playing at being something better than you were, Kyrith? Five hundred years of pretending someone like you could be worthy of shepherding this great repository of knowledge?”
I try to open my mouth, reaching once again for power that should be there, only to be rebuffed.
I’m paralysed.
“No, you won’t be doing that,” Mathias chides. “We’re here to correct a mistake, you see.”
He turns the tip of the blade to point at the altar, and my body glides along the same path.
No. Not again. Not like this.
“Don’t do this.” I lock eyes with Pierce. “Please, Pierce.”
But he does nothing. Simply stands there, rigid under the influence of his mother’s magic. I’m not even sure what he could do besides flee and save himself. The magister holds all the cards now.
Mathias laughs. “Surely you should’ve learned that begging was useless the first time?”
“Fuck you,” I growl.
The dagger gleams in the purple firelight as he directs me until I’m lying against the stone again. At my ankles and wrists, the shackles squeak as they snap shut, but they’re superfluous. I’m not even sure why he bothered when the dagger’s command is so absolute.
I can’t move. I can’t even shut my eyes to spare myself.
The spire looms over me, magic still pulsing painfully through me as I flicker.
Ghost. Human. Ghost. Human.
On the outside, I’m stoic. Inside, I’m thrashing, horrified as his grimoire flicks through pages of runeforms until it finds that spell.
Mathias lifts the blade, beginning a chant I’ve heard repeated every night for hundreds of years. The volume rises alongside my fruitless panic.
At least Lambert, North, Dakari, Leo, and Jasper are all far away from here. They’re safe. They know what they’re up against. I managed to confusticate most of the books.
The fight drains from me at the reminder, and I whisper a silent mental apology to the Library itself.
I tried.
I tried so hard.
We both fought with everything we had.
It just…wasn’t enough.
Then the dagger plunges down, punching into my chest like a lightning bolt. The spire above pulses…and I’m lost.
Librarian
The Arcanaeum Book 3
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