Chapter 24

I couldn't escape Emrys Dye, not even in my own mind.

I would have known the shape of him anywhere. The cut of his clothes, his broad shoulders. His chestnut hair. I followed him as he made his way down a darkened hall. It brought on an unwelcome wave of déjà vu. I'd lost count of the times we traipsed through the bleak underpaths of the tower together just like this, flashlight beams our only source of light.

But this wasn't the tower. This was a home—a grand estate, complete with portraits of glowering ancestors and mahogany furniture. Windows took shape, water streaking down them. Rain drummed against the roof high overhead.

Summerland House, I thought. It had to be.

He faced a set of imposing doors just off the entry, crystals and iron nails hammered into their faces in swirling patterns of lethal beauty.

Instinct revolted. I didn't want to follow him there. I didn't want either of us to. I knew, with the certainty of the sun's path across the sky, that this was a bad place.

But I didn't have a choice. I tried to catch his shoulder as he strode toward the door, but my fingers passed through him, and then it was too late. He reached for one of the silver door handles and, without knocking, stepped inside.

Refusing to follow him inside the study didn't work; the dreamscape shifted around me, drawing me into the waiting viper's nest. A silk canopy covered the room, as red as a sliced belly.

But my body had no form. Thunder raged overhead, drumming like a call to war. Garlands of holly and oak leaves were twisted into an unfamiliar shape around us.

Emrys took a step back, his pale face cast in eerie bloodshot light. "What in the hell … ?"

Behind you! I tried to shout.

I gasped as the first hooded figure slipped through the room's fabric shroud, a horrible, expressionless mask covering his face.

Emrys backed toward the door. The man stalked after him, with the slow confidence of knowing there'd be no escape. I didn't know how Emrys knew, how he figured out who it was, only that horror bloomed in his expression.

"No …," Emrys began. "Dad—"

He spun around, searching the door for a handle. There was no resistance as the blade slid into Emrys's turned back. He staggered to the right with a gasping cry of surprise and pain.

A silent scream tore out of me.

Wake up! I begged myself. Wake up!

I couldn't watch this—I didn't want to see this—

More and more hooded men in their wooden masks appeared, their blades gripped like prayer candles. The chanting began as a deep, uncertain rumble but gained strength as the next knife pierced Emrys's shoulder.

"Come now, night, come, thy king—"

"Don't," Emrys begged, twisting away. But there was another man there too. Another knife. "Don't—!"

I couldn't breathe. It felt like my chest was being crushed as Emrys lunged one last time for the door. I ran toward him, desperate to stop them, but my hands were as insubstantial as smoke.

A knife lanced between his ribs.

Another in his back .

Emrys coughed up blood as he collapsed to the ground. Even then, he was trying to fight, to pull the door open, to survive. He screamed, ragged and fading, as they fell upon him in a frenzy. His body rocked with the force of their clumsy, rough blows.

My knees collapsed under me as I turned away from the violence, pressing my hands against my eyes, but there was no escaping that sound—that wet suck of blood and skin.

In the sudden silence, I lifted my head from my hands and turned. My eyes burned with my sobs, but no tears came.

Emrys stared back at me, his gaze empty, his face streaked with his own blood.

I screamed and screamed and screamed, trying to launch myself at the men, to tear them apart with my own hands—

"Tamsin!"

Waking felt like my soul had suddenly returned to my body. I sat up with a sharp intake of breath, searching the dark air around me.

The attic. We were in the guild library's attic.

The cold stroked my face, soothing. Every part of me was shaking, and, with a start, I realized I was sobbing. My throat burned.

"Tamsin?" Neve queried softly. "It's okay, it was a dream—you're okay."

I threw a desperate look to my right. Emrys was still unconscious, but his chest rose and fell, his breathing finally evening out.

Alive. A surge of relief, of desperate joy, overcame me. There was a spark of life still burning in him, and suddenly, nothing else mattered.

"What happened?" Neve asked, wide-awake now. "What did you see?"

I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, trying to get the burn of bile out of my throat. "It was … it was nothing."

"Well, that was an awful lie, which is only more proof that whatever it was has you rattled," Neve said. "You haven't had a normal dream since Avalon. Was it about Olwen?"

I shook my head, drawing in a shuddering breath as her words sank in. My dreams in Avalon had all of the uncanniness of a sleeping mind trying to piece thoughts and memories together, but what I'd seen in them …

It had all come true.

Emrys's expression was peaceful; if he had dreams, they were at least kind to him.

"Emrys," I said loudly, my hands twisting in the fabric of my shirt. "Emrys." I turned to look at Neve, still feeling my heart race with the remnants of adrenaline and fear. "Why isn't he waking up?"

She could only shrug helplessly.

"I saw him die," I whispered.

"What?" Neve touched my shoulder, trying to focus my attention back to her. "Are you sure?"

"They kill him." The flash of the knives was still too close to the surface; I couldn't let myself wade back too deeply into those waters. "These … masked men. His father. It … They must have been the hunters. They were at the Dye family estate. They caught him by surprise."

"Do you think that's where they've based themselves?" Neve said. "It would make sense, especially if the property had a lot of land and few neighbors."

I pushed my still-damp hair off my face. "It does."

"Tamsin," Neve said. "Just because you had a dream, it doesn't make any of it real."

But it felt that way, I thought, clenching my hair hard enough to pull it out at the root. I'd experienced it on such a visceral level, it felt like part of me was still trapped inside the nightmare.

A sound like a steaming kettle filled the dark attic. Neve and I both looked up toward the roof, only to realize, at the same moment, that it was coming from below .

The library cats, I thought. They only hissed like that when there was a curse present.

Neve tilted her head in silent question. I motioned to where there was a decent-sized gap in the boards—wide enough, at least, to be able to see a sliver of the central chamber of the library.

Alarm trilled through my entire body, fraying the last of my nerves.

The shadowed figures stood at the very edge of the room below, just outside our limited range of vision, but I heard them all the same. The sharp intakes of breath, the restless shifting.

Everywhere, the library cats were scattering through the stacks of shelves, climbing up into their higher reaches. One cat, an orange tabby named Midas, was sent flying across the room, as if someone had given him a hard kick. He rolled and recovered, darting away with a hiss.

"We've come, as you have requested. What do you ask of us?"

Endymion Dye.

I pressed a hand to my mouth to keep from making a noise, holding myself as still as the statues in the atrium.

Endymion and the other former members of the guild drifted into view, casting their sickly glow onto the nearby shelves of Immortalities. They were laden with stolen weapons and shields, looking like the worst of the fell creatures that prowled inside the pages of the books around them.

The book spines shivered against one another as they passed, as if stroked by the death magic that had remade the riders.

"I have but one command to make."

Neve's gaze shot to mine, the voice stripping away every other emotion in them but fear.

Lord Death stepped forward out of the dark air, lowering the hood of Arthur's mantle to reveal himself to the others. I recoiled at the sight of him here, in such a sacred, safe place, even before Cabell's head of dark hair appeared beside him.

Cabell leaned against the nearest bookshelf, his eyes on the ornate rug. At the sound of a cat spitting nearby, his own hackles seemed to rise, and he crossed his arms over his chest in a defensive posture I was all too familiar with.

The riders, a dozen in all, knelt to receive Lord Death's orders. It became a terrible game to match their mutilated forms, the grisly alterations of their faces, to the Hollowers they had once been.

"It has come to my attention that you have all been keeping the knowledge of this library from me," Lord Death said, his gaze sliding over to Cabell, who bowed his head, shamed. "That you hid this supply of powerful weapons."

A rush of ice pushed through my blood as I understood what Cabell's expression meant.

He led him here.

And there my brother stood, saying nothing as this monster strode through our home as if he deserved to be there, and there I was, unable to so much as breathe.

"I wondered to myself why," Lord Death continued, "when you proclaim such fealty."

"My lord—" Endymion began.

"Silence." The word rose toward us like smoke, soft and silky, with a promise of something darker.

"I am left to assume that you do not believe that I can provide for all of your needs," Lord Death continued, "that you do not trust in me, do not have complete loyalty to our cause. Rather than destroy the scourge of sorceresses, you have preserved their memories. You have retained relics they have created."

He began to pace, using a finger to tip Immortalities off their shelf. One by one, they slammed to the floor.

"We only used their memories to find the treasures they stole," Endymion protested.

Lord Death stopped, turning his grizzled face toward them. "Then I'm sure you will feel no pain in destroying this shrine to them."

I sucked in a sharp breath, pressing my hand tighter to my mouth.

"Of … of course, my lord," Endymion said, bowing his head. The attic receded around me as Lord Death held out a hand and a silver-black flame appeared there.

Endymion knew what his master wanted and raised both of his palms, as if in supplication. The flame danced as it passed between them. Endymion rose to his feet and turned toward the shelf on his left.

Heavy footsteps sounded from the other side of the library.

No, I thought desperately, don't do it—don't come out.

But Librarian had been trained to defend the library and all its occupants, whether they had a heartbeat or not, and he wouldn't falter in it. Not even when he stood against the very same people who had tasked him with the role.

"Stop!" Librarian's tinny voice rang out. "Destruction of library materials is strictly forbidden by the guild's code!"

He had come prepared, a sword in one hand, a fire extinguisher in the other. The riders surrounded him, blocking his path to Lord Death. Even cast in jointed bronze, his face a mask of divine perfection, Librarian looked more human than the ghouls circling like a pack of ravening wolves.

Endymion held the flame to the nearest book, his face the very portrait of veneration as he looked to Lord Death for approval.

The dark flame caught with ease, racing along the edge of the shelf in a terrifying whoosh. Within moments, the entire shelf was ablaze.

As the fire spread, it wasn't any protective ward or spell that activated to protect the library, but the modern-day sprinklers. They dropped from the ceiling, raining water down over the fire, and the smoke detectors joined the cats' piercing yowls.

Do something, I thought, do anything … But I didn't know who I was speaking to—myself or Cabell.

The silver flames leapt from one shelf to the next with ease, spreading their caustic fingers over the varnish and old, brittle volumes. The air filled with a dizzying chemical stench.

Lord Death bestowed flames on all of his servants with a look of cold pleasure. Others, like Primm, took it upon themselves to smash the display cases of the relics, feeding the invaluable instruments, the scrolls, the fabrics, the weapons into the fires, or battering them with their sword pommels until they were beyond recognition.

The sound of pain that bellowed from Librarian was so human, so utterly tortured, that it felt like my body had caught fire too.

The automaton broke from the ranks of the riders, dropping the fire extinguisher and clasping his sword in both hands. He faced Lord Death like the last soldier left to defend his keep.

"Desist," Librarian said. "Or you and your ilk will be dealt with."

Lord Death laughed, reaching beneath the folds of his cloak to retrieve his sword. Instead of brandishing it, however, he held it out to Cabell.

The same dark magic whined and hissed over its blade, dancing like lightning.

No. The word became a stone in my throat. Please.

Cabell looked up through his curtain of dark hair, then straightened.

"You seem surprised," Lord Death noted.

Cabell spoke, but it was too quiet to hear over the cats, the roaring fire, and the alarms screeching like untuned violins. When he didn't move to take the blade, the pressure on my chest eased.

My brother was still in there, somewhere. Even as the fire raged around him and the cats fled the shelves, searching for safety, he resisted.

But, a small voice whispered in my mind, he's not stopping them either.

I read the words as they dripped from Lord Death's lips like venom. Look at me.

Cabell did.

The last, fading hope in me dimmed. His expression wasn't that of a devoted servant, unfailingly obedient. Indecision creased his brow, and he hesitated just long enough to force me to see it. To truly understand.

He was only my brother. He was only Cabell.

Someone imprisoned by another's magical influence would act without question. Someone struggling against an all-consuming tide of power would be desperately clawing for any moment to break free. They wouldn't take several unsteady steps toward the automaton, jaw clenched, spine rigid. The debate painted on their face in shadow and flame.

He was only Cabell.

"Young Lark … ?" Librarian queried softly, lowering his own sword.

And he made his choice.

Cabell drew in a breath—and drove his blade through the automaton's chest.