Page 50 of The Mirror of Beasts

This time, the door was left open.

A knot in my gut I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge began to tighten. If the little weasel wasn’t down there …

What does it matter? Let him have run back to Madrigal with Merlin’s prophecy. Good riddance. It would only show this had never been about amends. I would gladly be proven right.

I shook my head and stepped through.

Seven years ago, the basement had been crowded with towering stacks of wooden crates and wilting boxes with empty shelves waiting to be filled. I hadn’t been able to stay long enough to explore; the chamber stank to high hell of the poison they’d recently used to annihilate the dynasty of rats battling the Hollowers for ownership of the building.

Back when the library was a sorceress’s vault, this had been the central chamber, and it still bore some signs of that: the clawed-out curse sigils on the walls, small alcoves where each treasure had been carefully stored, a chandelier made of unidentifiable bones, and a long, winding staircase in the shape of a massive serpent.

I descended slowly, taking a quick look around to get my bearings. It was just as cold and dank as I remembered, but the Dyes had improved the space, throwing old, faded rugs over the cracked mosaic floors and installing candle-like sconces on the walls that flickered on when I passed a motion sensor.

Gone were the boxes and crates, and the empty shelves were now aligned in neat rows, filled to bursting. Immortalities—leather-, skin-, and scale-bound—were chained to the shelves. The air was choked with the smell of decay and old blood.

And there were … so many. So many more books and Immortalities down there than I remembered or imagined.

The tension in my stomach released with my exhale.

Emrys stood at the far side of the room, his hands braced against a gorgeous old desk. His lips moved silently as he scanned the book in front of him, assisted by the light of a Tiffany lamp.

“You …” I stopped on the bottom step, outraged. “You bastards.”

“That’s practically the family motto at this point,” he said idly. “You’re going to have to be more specific with your grievance.”

The sheer amount of material they were hiding down here was staggering, but it was all the more infuriating to know that this collection was just overflow from the even larger one at their estate. Immortalities and relics completely lost to the rest of us.

I snaked through the shelves, trying to capture in my memory the names listed beneath the Immortalities.

“Haven’t you been down here before?” Emrys asked, leaving his work to walk along the far end of the shelves, watching me. “I would have thought you’d sneak down here just to prove a point.”

“Not since its esteemed days as a rat graveyard,” I said. “Was the point of keeping this collection here just to remind the rest of us that we’re powerless peasants?”

“I’ll try to remember to ask my father that before I eradicate whatever is left of his shriveled soul,” Emrys said.

He returned to the desk, and with one last, long look around me, I joined him.

“You can’t kill what’s already dead,” I reminded him. That had been one of Nash’s favorite lines during ghost stories.

“I know,” Emrys said, running his finger down the book—some sort of log—in front of him. “That’s why I think we’re looking for the Mirror of Shalott.”

My lips parted, annoyance stinging me like a wasp. I moved to the other side of the desk, facing him. “You did not figure that out.”

He only smirked.

“When did you know?” I demanded.

“I suspected it right away because of all the creatures on its frame,” he said, turning the record around and leaning toward me. “But I wanted to find out who currently has it before I brought it to the group.”

Liar, I thought, the word echoing in my bones. If I hadn’t come down here, if I hadn’t seen what he was looking for, would he ever have told us his theory? Or would he have slipped away before we’d realized he was gone?

I held his gaze, suddenly aware of how close our faces were. “Are you sure it wasn’t to beat us to it?”

His frown deepened, and for a moment, just one, I could have sworn his gaze dropped to my lips.

I felt that glance everywhere, a flush of heat spreading from my core. Shadows gathered around us until the Immortalities, the walls, the desk, everything but him, faded.

“Were you worried I’d left again?” he asked, his voice low. Warm. He was watching me through his lowered lashes, his throat bobbing as he leaned that little bit closer. I barely heard him say, “And here I thought you didn’t want me around …”

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