Page 3 of Librarian

“Thank you.” My hand lands on a well-used runeform. “Now back up.”

This won’t be quiet or subtle. I don’t have time to figure out what spells are laid into those bars and undo them.

So I’ll have to destroy them.

I can cast a spell that will silence the noise, but if anyone comes down here, it will be pretty obvious that they’ve broken out. Hopefully it will be enough of a distraction to hide the theft also taking place.

“Brace yourselves,” I warn them. “Solinci voconote.”

Sound disappears, leaving only the rush of blood in my ears as the pages of my grimoire flick onto a larger, more complicated runeform.

The next incantation leaves my lips, but no one hears it. Just like no one hears the way the lock mechanisms grind into themselves, magic sparking and cracking under the force of my magic.

Fuck. They really didn’t want anyone getting out of there. My hands flex, crumpling the doors into a mess of tangled metalbars. The silencing spell falls as soon as it’s over, so we can all hear the click of Anthea’s heels as she steps over the threshold with a chilling grin on her face.

“Invisibility scrap, if you please.” She holds her hand out.

Eddy creeps forward like she’s not sure if she’s safer in her cell.

“Not so fast.” I shift my weight, putting myself conspicuously between Anthea and the exit. “Explain everything. Start with why Eddy is down here, and then why your own mother tossed you away like garbage.”

Her brows furrow at that.

“She’s been a good little ensorcelled puppet from the day Mathias became vicegerent, sneaking down to the Vault so he could study the spells through her eyes, and none of you even noticed. It wasn’t even hard to make her leave the Arcanaeum so she could be replaced with a revenant.”

I don’t know what a revenant is, but I’m guessing it isn’t good. As for getting into the Vault… That sends a chill down my spine.

Mathias has Leo. He knows how to get into the Vault.

I snap my grimoire shut, but Anthea isn’t finished.

“And as for my mother… This wasalwaysthe plan, of course. If I couldn’t be heir, then who better to take the fall for Abe’s death? No one can suspect that the new Rector Carlton is anything less than a paragon of justice, ready to cut down anyone—even her own flesh and blood—to root out necromancy.” Her laugh is cold. Mocking. “Your precious Librarian signed my death warrant when she banished me.”

Her fury burns bright in her eyes for a second before it shutters away.

“You were never going to be the heir for long, Thea,” I remind her. “Pierce has always been more powerful.”

Which means her mother always planned for this. Isidora made the calculated decision to sacrifice her own daughter to become rector, the head of the council of parriarchs.

Did Anthea even kill Abe? If she did, it must’ve been on her mother’s orders.

Anthea’s chuckle is half-deranged. “You think so? It’s such a good thing a little necromancy evens the scales, isn’t it? Now, thanks for the rescue, Prince Charming, but I really must be going.”

“Wait.”

“I don’t have anything more to say?—”

My arm shoots out, blocking her when she tries to get past me. “Don’t be stupid. Out there, alone? Hunted by enforcers? You’re not going to last five seconds.”

“Oh. I know.” Her smile glows even brighter, somehow more sinister in the fluorescent light. “Don’t worry about me. I plan to go down in a blaze none of them will ever claw their way back from.”

She’s going to do something stupid. I can see it in her manic eyes. Anthea Carlton has nothing left. Whatever she’s planning is probably going to fail, because she’s not in the frame of mind to do anything more than chuck herself at the enemy.

And I…can’t let her do it. Even though the distraction would give me the chance to grab Kyrith’s grimoire. I can’t watch her throw her life away.

She dodges under my arm, and I let her, but only because my hand is in my pocket once more, a scrap at the ready.

“Ancun scuasi.”