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Chapter 1

I’dfallenasleepinthe library again.

I woke to find the room ominously silent, the fields beyond the arched windows dark, the endless bookshelves shrouded in shadow, illuminated by nothing but the twinkling orbs that hovered silvery above the reading tables. It took me a moment to figure out I’d inelegantly collapsed on one such table gods-knew-how-long ago, cheek to book, the itch of drool in the corner of my mouth.

A half-conscious groan escaped me. Thank Zera’s merciful heart the encyclopaedia serving as my unwilling pillow wasn’t some rare and ancient manuscript. Lyn would have my head for drooling on it.

Only then, having analysed and discarded that most urgent danger of the situation, did I become aware of the fingers prodding my shoulder.

I blinked against the darkness and then against Creon’s winged silhouette towering over me. The tangled realm of my dreams was loath to let go of me, and reality seeped in slowly – a reality of towering piles of notes, ink-stained fingers, and frantic browsing through scrolls and leatherbound tomes. Dark room. Fingers.Just a short trip to the reading hall, I’d said.I’ll be back before the lights are dimmed, I’d said.

‘Oh,’ I muttered groggily. ‘What time is it?’

Creon’s fingers vanished from my shoulder.Late, he dryly gestured.

I glared at him. ‘I’d guessed that, thank you.’

He let out a silent laugh.Coming to bed?

With a muffled curse, I dragged myself into a sitting position, wincing at the objections of my stiff neck, my stiff shoulders, my stiff spine. Hours and hours hunched up on these rigid reading stools were starting to take their toll on my body. Before me, the open pages of my notebook were still painfully empty.

Perhaps I should have slept more than five hours the previous night, too.

‘I’ll be done in a minute,’ I said, grabbling for my pen with clumsy fingers. ‘Just need to finish this last summary, and then—’

Em.He sank to his knees next to me – the Silent Death, kneeling. Not so new a sight anymore, but it still shut me up annoyingly easily. His left hand moulded firmly to my bare knee as his right shaped his words; his eyes were as dark as the night outside, gleaming with what I could only describe as gentle menace.Time to sleep. You did enough.

‘I’m almost done,’ I said, with less conviction than I’d hoped. As the words fell from my lips, I was unpleasantly reminded that I’d told him the same thing last night, and the night before, and the night before that.

Iwasalmost done, but somehow the definition of “done” kept changing under my hands, like a slippery fish that wouldn’t allow my fingers to grasp it.

You’re panicking, Creon informed me.

The fact that he was right annoyed me more than the problem itself. ‘You’re supposed to keep your shields up. Naxi will be displeased if you’re sampling my emotions again.’

My shields are doing just fine.A wry smile grazed his lips.But you’re torturing yourself for the sole purpose of reading more Faerie texts. Don’t need demon senses to tell something’s wrong.

I laughed, damn him. ‘It’s not that something’s wrong. I’m just not sure if we’ve got enough to convince them.’

It’s either enough or it isn’t, Em.He pulled his hand from my knee, coming up to settle himself more comfortably on the edge of the desk. His dark wings spread restlessly behind his back, a shield between me and the world – hiding the two of us here in our cocoon of darkness, nothing but the silvery orb above our head to keep the shadows at bay.There’s nothing we can do in these last few hours that’s going to make the difference.

Which would have been a reassurance, if not for the nagging, aching suspicion that it simply meant I was doomed before I’d truly started. A few hours. And then our friends and allies would gather once again in the Wanderer’s Wing, exchanging whatever plans and intelligence we’d found in these last two weeks …

And I would have to make my proposal.

My desperate, impossible proposal.

I’d postponed it twice already. A month ago, I’d told myself I hadn't read enough, hadn't excluded the possibility there might be more information out there. Two weeks ago, I’d told myself I hadn't worked out a satisfactory line of argument yet, that no one would take me seriously with the garbled mess of troubles I was about to throw into their laps, and that I should at the very least present them with astructuredmess if I wanted to cause a stir so badly.

Now I’d structured and planned, argued and counter-argued until my head spun, and it still didn’t seem close to sufficient.

I don’t suppose you’ll suddenly agree with me that we don’t have to inform them at all?Creon signed, reading my mind as usual.

‘We can’t do that,’ I said sharply. If only we could – hell, how much I wished we could. ‘You know how much they rely on me. If I suddenly disappear …’

He shrugged.You’ll be back.

‘They won’t know how to reach us. What are they supposed to do if anything happens in the meantime?’