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“The tower didn’t send us here for the fulfilment of our souls,” Edmund said.

Emmeline gave a dry laugh. “Everybody knows Santa Velia alchemists don’t have souls.”

Fern cringed in her seat. How could the twins speak thus in the company of others? Often, it seemed as though Edmund and Emmeline were in a tower of their own, not Santa Velia, but an invisible tower they carried everywhere with them. Anyone who wasn’t them was on the other side of the wall, as insignificant as a dog barking outside their battlements.

Edmund’s reaction to his sister’s words was to draw her to him by her shoulders, kissing her pallid forehead and speaking with his lips pressed to her skin.

“You have a soul, Emmy. It just lives within me.”

She laughed, soft and conceding, almost a sigh.

“You’re ridiculous. Don’t make me laugh.”

But as soon as he pulled away from her, she reached for her plate, picked at a small piece of meat with her fork and popped it in her mouth with a flourish.

“There, Teddy, anything for your happiness, anything at all.”

“Youare my happiness,“ Edmund said without a trace of insincerity, and handed her his wine.

The door to the dining room slammed open before Emmeline could reply. Raphaël Baudet entered as though a storm had blown him in like debris. His golden hair was indisarray, a heavy flush bleeding into his cheeks. The top buttons of his shirt were open, his Abyssal cross gleaming over his chest like a stab wound bleeding gold.

“Vittoria,” he said, her name like a prayer searing off his tongue. His wild eyes searched the room, blue like sea holly, powdery and almost purple. “Ah, have you—have you seen Vittoria?”

He asked the question to no one at all, and perhaps everyone.

Fern, already startled, sat up in her chair, and her eyes, almost of their own volition, sought Lautric. He, too, had straightened in his chair, and his eyes met Fern’s. Their shared thought, the memory of the scream they’d heard, flashed between them like electricity.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Fern asked.

“Perhaps she’s resting,” said Dr Essouadi, her gravelly voice a calm influence on the tension that had suddenly descended upon the dining room. “I told her she would need more time to recover from her injury. Poison isn’t something one can simply shrug off.”

Emmeline and Edmund shared a look that seemed to suggest bleak amusement, but Fern’s eyes were drawn back to Baudet as he spoke.

“She seemed worried, anxious,” he said, his voice a tremor of worry. “She’s not been sleeping well since the attack. The abomination left its mark on her in more ways than one, I think, and she… She told me she wanted to leave—she told me she wanted to leave, but I told her she must stay.”

His eyes were wide in the horror of his own words. Fern had never seen the young man more undone, moredistraught. And in his horror, she saw her own almost reflected, thinking of the night Josefa had spent in her bed, her fears murmured like confessions, Fern’s reassurance, which had been, ultimately, hollow and pointless.

“If she did not wish to stay, then why not let her go?” Edmund said. The gaze he lay upon Baudet was cool and unconcerned, a shocking contrast to the concern and affection he had shown his sister a mere moment ago. “We cannot all succeed. Let those of us who cannot withstand Carthane leave it.”

The muscles in Baudet’s jaw twitched, and his fists clenched at his sides when he turned to throw a look of pure hatred towards Edmund.

“Would you say the same thing, were ityoursister who couldn’t withstand Carthane?”

Emmeline did not flutter so much as an eyelash at his words. She picked at a bowl of cherries and sipped her brother’s wine, undisturbed. As for Edmund, he reclined against his chair, waving a dismissive hand.

“My sister has withstood far worse things than this accursed library.”

“I wonder how your sister would withstand being cut apart by a Sumbral abomination,” Baudet ground out, “and how flippantyou’dremain, Edmund, should you lose her.”

The bile in his tone suggested a threat rather than a supposition.

“It would take an extraordinary foe indeed, to rip my sister from me,” Edmund said, voice dripping arrogance.

The tension was mounting with every word the two men exchanged, and none of it was helping. Fern, whohad promised herself she would not make the mistake of entangling herself with the other candidates, could not shake off the desperate wail she had heard in the Arboretum. It clung to her like a snake wrapping itself around her throat, until she could barely breathe.

She stood so brusquely her chair fell back, startling everyone in the room.

“We need to look for her,” she said. She did not need to raise her voice for everyone to hear her. The iron of command was in her tone, and everyone listened to her speak. “Josefa disappeared, and now she’s gone. We have no idea what’s happened to her—we cannot let the same thing happen to Vittoria. We need to search for her.”