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“But it is foolish to view the world as it could be?” he said.

There was gentle remonstration in his tone, and Fern opened her mouth to contest him before realisation dawned. She was having a debate with Léo Lautric—whatever his true agenda was, it was not intellectual progress and the betterment of the world.

This was another one of his subtle, troubling manipulations, like the gentleness of his arm around her while they danced or his murmured invitation to escort her back to her rooms.

She stepped back, putting distance between them both physical and metaphorical, saying, “I’m merely a little surprised to find a scholar and advocate of Wild Magic in the Sumbra Wing of the Carthane Athenaeum, that’s all.”

“I’m here for the same reason you are, Miss Sullivan.” Lautric smiled sweetly. “To read.”

Fern thought of the books she had come to seek—the books for her research thesis—and she thought of the books Vittoria had given Lautric that night, and she glanced at the volume in his arms.

She did not trust Lautric any more than she might trust a flame-cast shadow, but part of her enjoyed this conversation. The mystery of him, lies within lies, wassomething she wanted to unravel until the truth of his nature was laid bare.

Curiosity was a noble thing, but it famously killed cats, and Fern did not have nine lives to spare. She bowed her head.

“Please forgive the intrusion,” she said. “I won’t distract you from your reading for one more second.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Lautric said. “You may intrude upon me at your heart’s leisure, Miss Sullivan.”

Fern’s heart did nothing out of leisure, and hearing itself mentioned, it lurched in her chest.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I should get back to my own work.”

“Yes,” he said.

Fern turned away and marched briskly to the directory. The eye in the statue’s ribcage seemed to examine her as she flipped through the heavy pages, her heart beating with uncomfortable speed. She forced herself to concentrate on the lists of titles and writers she’d come to find, doing her best to ignore both the statue and Lautric.

When she was done, she turned away from the statue and sighed with relief to find Lautric gone.

Chapter twenty-four

The Shadow

Fern spent the restof her day in the Sumbra Wing gathering books for her research, only realising she had once more missed dinner when she noticed that the room had grown dimmer and night had fallen. She checked her watch. It was already nine o’clock in the evening. She hadn’t even heard the dinnertime bell.

Since she wasn’t hungry yet, she stayed a while longer. She found most of the books on her list with relative ease, but some books were misplaced, and others hard to reach. There seemed to be no archivists in this wing, and whoever was in charge of it had done a poor job. Fern herself would never have allowed such a lack of organisation under her supervision.

It slowed her progress but did not stop it, since she was determined. Eventually, she found all the books on her list but one.

The one book she had come here to find.Unmaking Sumbra.

Just likeSymbolism of In-Between Doors—and many other books regarding Sumbra—onlyone copy existed.Carthane owned that copy, and it had never left, for the book had come from one of Carthane’s own Gateways.

Fern could not begin to imagine what it might have cost to wheedle such a book from an entity of Sumbra.

Except that when she finally reached the place where the book ought to be, she found nothing there. Just rows upon rows of slightly dusty books, not one of them the text she was looking for. It was crucial to her research—it was practically her thesis—so Fern went back to the directory to double-check the location. She had made no mistake.

She noted down the neighbouring books and cross-checked them in the directory. They were all in their correct places.Unmaking Sumbrawas simply not amongst them.

A shock of irritation went through Fern. After everything, after waiting so patiently, to come to this impasse was intolerable.

She forced herself to calm down and think rationally. Perhaps somebody had borrowed it. An archivist, maybe even Dr Auden himself. Fern would need to check the book cards and maybe the borrowing directories, but she’d need to request access to those. She could not ask Professor Saffyn, since he had still not returned, and she wondered if she could approach Dr Auden instead.

She checked her watch. It was too late to request a meeting with him, and she wanted to check on Josefa anyway. Her search would have to wait for now; heavens knew it had waited long enough. She could be patient; she had no choice but to be.

With a sigh and a hard pit of disappointment in her stomach, she gathered her things and returned to the Mage Tower.

On her way backto the Mage Tower, her mind shuffled through recent events like cards, presenting them to her in hands.