The finished pages were lying flat and unbound, her most familiar enchantment on display. TheRiseincantation had been printed in uniformed letters—ruined by a depiction of the devil.
One that looked just like her own.
One that looked just likeher.
With tortured eyes and a sinister smile, the nightmare wrapped around the detailed illustration of necromantic patterns to be painted, and Lux followed a trail of inked smoke down to a note printed across the bottom of the page.
To guide the dead risks leading an evil darkness home.
Beware those who venture this way.
“Oh, so now the devil found me outside the Beyond all those times and cursed me itself, is that it?”
Of course Mothlock’s tweaked manuscripts would have it declared all her fault. Lux’s teeth ground together. All that talk of dark brilliances. All that talk of madness. They sought to frighten others to bury their gifts or give them up, meanwhile pivoting only for her.
“Ah, at last. I don’t like to confess my faults, but my memory is not what it once was.” With her admission, Riselda dug into a drawer beneath a cabinet. A sharpclick,and a drawer within a drawer popped free. She reached inside.
Lux bit down on her tongue when Riselda unrolled the scroll’s copper edges. When she whispered, “The estate ismine.”
Suddenly, Lux’s fury over this vault—over everything in it—transformed into a singular mission. She pushed past Shaw’s inspection of the wall, beyond the cabinet alight with lifeblood, until she came again to the slain attendant. To the lamp set beside him. She picked it up, stared awhile into its blue flame, and then she spun and threw it with all her strength.
Straight into the printing press.
“Lucena!”
But Lux could only grin. The freed flame leapt upon the newly printed parchment, the seeping oil dousing the contraption. All of it went up in a flare of fire and sweet smoke.
Riselda twitched when a shattering of glass sounded. Lux didn’t. She watched Shaw stride toward her,The Risen—the original—in his grip. He said, “There’s a second door, a hidden staircase I would guess. It probably shadows the one we came up on.”
“Locked?”
“Not anymore.”
Something wild grew inside her then. She couldn’t explain it at first, hoping it wasn’t hysteria, but as the printing press continued to burn, the manipulated version of her beloved book gone to ash, and Riselda looking on it all with outrage and disgust, she focused instead on Shaw.
The growing fire dragged every bit of gold to the forefront of his eyes. Highlighted the crimson splashed across his chest. Its heat licked her profile, and she knew they needed to leave or be burned along with everything else, but—
“I should tell you that I love you,” she said.
The printing press bowed then crashed into a heap. Sparks leapt and caught at the edges of the room. Riselda squawked in protest, running to the cabinets housing memorabilia of an abandoned life.
Shaw hooked his fingers in the lace of Lux’s collar. She expected him to drag her to him, but he didn’t. He stepped forward instead. Until their chests met, and she was sure she would die both from the contact and the wait for him to speak.
She couldn’t believe she’d found the courage to say it aloud. Finally.
She couldn’t believe—
“I almost told you the day you left.” He stared down at her, and though the fire had turned the color of his eyes into the warmest shade imaginable, the heat from his gaze belonged to something else entirely. Her lips parted, and he tracked the movement. “That night in the mayor’s prison, Lux. When I told you—”
“I remember what you said.”
His mouth shifted into a half-smile. “I love you too. I can hardly believe it.”
She smiled to match. Her heart felt full to the brim. It remained so even as she asked, “Do you think we can survive this?”
“The fire or the society?”
“Caring about one another so much.”
