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I hadn’t realized Orla was with us. I blink a few times and finally take stock of our surroundings. We’re in the entrance hall, just around the bend from the Founders Hall again. There are only three of us. For whatever reason, the Ridding has seen fit to separate the group and leave Orla, Lonan, and me together.

“Vesper,” Orla says sharply, “snap out of it.”

I blink at her, not sure what she’s referring to. And then she slaps me.

Lonan leaps to his feet, shouting at Orla as a ringing fills my ears. But then my vision clears, and the whiteness that I hadn’t even realized was there disappears.

“What are you doing?” Lonan shouts at Orla, gaze murderous.

She levels him with a coolness that a serpent would envy. Say what you will about my stepsister—the girl has bite. “You’re not safe here,” she tells Lonan. “You need to get as far from her as you can.”

Lonan narrows his eyes at her. “I’m not going to do that.”

She steps into Lonan’s space, her eyes burning, and pokes him in the chest with an accusatory finger. “I’m getting sick and tired of you abandoning your good sense when it comes to her. You’re our captain and a good one, but when it comes to her, you’re stupid.” Lonan’s eyebrows rise slightly at Orla’s tirade. None of our cohort, save me, have ever dared to speak to him like that.

“For Saints’ sake, get out of here before she loses her self-control. You saw what happened back there as well as I did. The siphon’s nature took over Poppy, and she didn’t know what she was doing. We can’t lose you too. Now put Gault and this school first for once and get away from her!”

Lonan studies her for a moment and then nods. “Thank you, Orla,” he says. And there is more than simple gratitude woven into those words—regret, shame, apology.

She rolls her eyes and shoves him away. “Boys,” she mutters.

Lonan glances at me, his deep, shadowed eyes full of something so intense that it twists my stomach, and then he’s gone, sprinting away from us, sword glowing in his hand.

The hunger abates as Lonan runs out of sight. I can smell Orla’s blood too. The hunger is still there, but it isn’t nearly as intense for her as it was for Lonan. I’ll bet her blood tastes like sour lemons. Still, she’s doing us both a favor, and I’m grateful.

Orla and I are left alone in the hall, and a new emptiness settles in my bones. So much has been lost in such a short amount of time. And the heavy, terrible reality of it hits me.

Unconsciously, my best friend’s name falls from my lips. “Poppy.”

Hugo’s lifeless eyes. His neck covered in blood. My knees go weak.

“There’s no use thinking about Poppy.” Orla sniffs, turning her expression cold. But I know she isn’t that heartless. She and Poppy were friends. Somehow Poppy was able to break past that prickly exterior when I wasn’t. “Sooner we all accept that, the better.”

But I can’t accept it. Poppy would do everything in her power to save me if our situations were reversed. She’d learn everything she could about siphons. She’d research . . .

I turn abruptly on my heel and head down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Orla calls, hurrying after me.

“The library.” Obviously.

The doors of the Gossemort library are locked. Orla rattles them, and they shake in the frame. We can barely see through a checkerboard of glass panes into the jungle of books beyond—and it is quite literally a jungle.

“Never opened the library before?” I ask her.

She grumbles, “Ollinde usually does it. I said please.”

I roll my eyes at her. “Not enough. You have to flatter it, not bully it.” I whisper, “It’s a very sensitive library.”

“Yes, I know.”

Every student at Gossemort has at one point or another gotten into a tiff with the library. The words Ordo ab Chao arc over the doors in bronze filigree—“order from chaos.” The library has always seemed to interpret that saying to mean, “If you want your books, you’d better be nice to me.”

I might not be the demurest person at Gossemort, but I’ve watched Poppy coax the library open plenty of times. I curtsy before the doors, bowing low. “Dearest, loveliest library, archive of knowledge and wisdom, we respectfully request access to the treasures you hold in your hallowed halls.”

The doors click open, and Orla scoffs as I push open the doors. We tiptoe inside, stepping over branches and searching the shadows. It’s much overgrown since I was last here. The thorns and brambles obscure the books, locking them in tight. We make our way to the center of the room until finally we’re standing in the crossway between the main shelves, where the floor forms a mosaic of a rose beneath our feet.

It feels strange to be here so late, when the pretty greenery is instead a maze of jagged shadows and threatening hiding spots. There’s a new knot in my stomach since the second trial—I’ve seen plenty of death tonight, but the threat of danger never seemed so close or so likely to take me or any one of my friends.