Page 98 of The Mirror of Beasts

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I shook my head. My thoughts no longer felt clear, and it was too much effort to try to understand them. “Is that stupid?”

Neve gave a sad half smile. “Not at all. We’ll go get our things, and then we can leave when you’re ready.”

I’d seen so many ruins in my life, it hollowed me to my core to look around the library and see that it had become yet another one.

The rich wallpaper, the ornate rugs, the worktables that had borne the weight of countless books, were all scorched black. The loss of knowledge contained in this collection was staggering. Even if I dedicated my whole life to it, I wouldn’t have enough years to transcribe their contents from my own memories.

Ash and scraps of burned paper fluttered by me as I collected as much of the silver liquid as I could stand to. While I worked, Neve combed the shelves, searching for any injured cats. As I rose to my feet, a new feeling rose in me too.

The library had been our only true sanctuary in this great, vast world. It had been a place to escape to, to travel from, to learn, to be alone with one’s thoughts. Inaccessible to the outside world, it had been safe. It had been ours.

And Cabell had led his master right to it.

He’d turned his back on me, on all of us. He’d stood by and watched as others died and had done nothing to help them. The truth was agonizing in its clarity now, and I felt foolish and ashamed all over again.

He wasn’t under the sway of Lord Death’s magic, and he was never coming back.

When the anger came, I welcomed it. I let it fill the part of me that had held on to forgiveness, let it burn my hope away until it joined the ashes at my feet.

Because the next time I saw my brother, I would make him pay for what he’d done.

“Tamsin?” Neve called.

I found her in Librarian’s closet of an office, somehow mercifully untouched by the spread of the fire. She was bent over an open book there, one I recognized by the stained edges of its pages. The covers were two sheaves of oak bark with a layer of living moss coating them.

It was one of the earliest known records of the hidden magical world within Great Britain, and one of the Library’s oldest tomes.

I have chosen one you will enjoy.

Neve shifted, allowing me to squeeze in beside her. My eyes strayed to Nash’s empty coffee cup, with the faded CATCH OF THE DAY restaurant logo, left just beside the historical record on the desk. A slow, simmering fear began to build in my gut.

“Look,” Neve said, drawing my attention back to her. She was braver than I was, running her finger down the open page. The brittle paper was torn in places, as if insects had eaten away at it. The whole thing seemed like it would disintegrate if I dared to breathe in its direction.

In the illustration, a woman in long, flowing robes stood at water’s edge, brandishing a sword above her head. Light billowed around her, and in the dark shadows bordering the scene, I could just make out monstrous faces.

The first words beneath the illustration had been lost to a tear and an inkblot, but the rest was still legible. While the One Vision could translate the words, it was still difficult to parse the writer’s old-fashioned, spidery hand.

“Something something … light of the Goddess drives out the plaguing darkness. As the first priestess and protector of the isle, the Lady of the Lake wields the divine Caledfwlch, the mirror of mortality, judge and executioner of the pitiless wicked, savior of the ensorcelled, and the mercy of the innocent.”

I leaned in closer to the page, holding my breath. A woman’s face, ever so faint, was etched into the light radiating from the Lady of the Lake. The Goddess herself.

“The mirror of mortality,” Neve repeated, visibly fighting to keep her hope at bay. “You don’t think … I mean, it fits with your theory that it reflects you at the moment of your death … ?”

I let out a light, breathless laugh. Being forced to learn the other languages had taught me to think about the changing meaning of words over time. “Mortality can also refer to humanity as a whole. The mirror of humanity. Of beasts.”

“Then we just have to find it,” Neve said. “This … Caledfwlch.”

“It’s better known by another name,” I began, feeling some of that hope drain from me. Our already difficult quest to stop Lord Death had just become that much more impossible.

Neve’s lips pressed together, her eyes questioning.

“We call it Excalibur,” I said. “And it’s been lost for centuries.”

“You again?”

The Bonecutter looked neither surprised nor irritated at our sudden appearance in the doorway of the pub. Her eyes moved over us in quick appraisal before settling on Emrys’s pallid form. Neve and I struggled under his weight, lowering him to the floor as soon as it was safe to do so. I turned around and locked the door behind us.

In the late-afternoon hour, only three figures sat at the bar: Bran, endlessly polishing the pint glasses; the Bonecutter, making notes in her massive ledger; and Caitriona, glumly swirling a spoon through porridge.

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