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Albert gave her an elegant shrug. “Why, I wondered, would Sera and Clementine do something so incredibly stupid after all this time? And on tonight of all nights? So of course I came straight back here. And look what I found.”

He waved a hand and Matilda drifted through the open door, hovering a few inches off the ground.

Sera’s heart plummeted. Matilda’s eyes moved, alarmed and outraged and practically spitting needles in Albert’s direction, but the rest of her was stiff and frozen, like he had bound her in invisible ropes.

“This is my fault, not hers,” Sera said at once. “She didn’t know why I brought her here.”

“Nobody doubts it’s your fault, Sera,” Albert tutted.

“And there’s no need to fear for the little old lady.

I’ll happily release her. You, on the other hand, have broken our laws again .

Exile’s no longer an appropriate punishment for you.

” His eyes narrowed in on the vial she was clutching to her chest like it was a lifeline. “I’ll take that, thank you.”

To her horror, Sera felt the vial wobble in her hands and then slip out of her grasp, yanked by the unseen force of Albert’s magic. She squeezed her fist tighter, desperately, but the vial was still slipping—

—and then it stopped.

Albert raised an eyebrow, then regarded Luke like he had noticed him for the first time. “Really? How long do you think that will stop me?”

Luke shrugged. In her panic, Sera hadn’t even noticed that Luke had cast a spell, but there it was. A shield, shimmering faintly between her and Albert, blocking his power.

“Aren’t you one of Verity Walter’s historians?” Albert asked curiously. “Larry? Lawrence? Something like that. Not that it matters. Do you think you’ll ever work in the Guild’s libraries again after this?”

Luke didn’t answer. He’d spent thirty-four years learning that icy, implacable calm, learning how to take away the satisfaction of someone seeing him react, but Sera knew him, and she also knew what it was like to go up against Albert Grey’s magic, so she knew exactly what it was costing him to protect her. Her throat closed up.

And I’m not even pushing very hard, Albert’s voice said in her head.

She jolted. She’d forgotten he could do that. She’d forgotten it was one of the very few things he’d ever taught her, long ago, and that she’d used the spell to send Francesca silly secret messages from all the way across the castle.

I could push harder, Sera. He’s already in pain, but I could push so hard I break him. It’s up to you.

“Luke, stop,” Sera said quietly, swallowing hard. “It’s done. He’s won.”

Luke looked at her, eyes searching hers, wondering what changed in the last thirty seconds. “What did he say to you?”

“Just let it go. Please.”

“Sera…”

She shook her head. Pleaded with her eyes. He stared at her for one more moment, then, defeated, let the shield fall. He staggered a little.

Sera faced Albert, hating him, and opened her clenched fist.

Albert twitched a lazy finger, and the essence of sunlight flew from her hand to his.

“The strand of sunset, I suppose?” He shook the vial lightly, examining the bright drops inside. “Tenuous, but I imagine it could have worked. I’m curious, though. Where did you think you were going to get a phoenix feather?”

Sera was spared the necessity of having to answer (or, rather, the necessity of revealing she didn’t have an answer) by the clatter of footsteps outside the library. The next moment, Howard burst in, anxious and out of breath, with Francesca in his wake.

“Father!” Francesca froze in the doorway, taking the scene in with something like horror.

Howard wheezed. “I thought—I thought I’d better…fetch the Chancellor.”

“Good,” Albert said genially. “You’re just in time, Francesca. Would you like to do the honours of deciding what consequences would be most appropriate for this latest of our Sera’s infractions?”

Howard’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets as he saw Sera without her mask for the first time.

“Sera? Sera Swan ? Oh.” He looked at Sera, and at Matilda, who was still frozen and definitely still fuming, and finally at Luke.

He cleared his throat. “I say, er, Albert, don’t you think that there may be some sort of misunderstanding?

Perhaps Miss Swan could, er, go back to Lancashire and we could forget this ever happened? ”

It was downright heroic, really, that Howard Hawtrey, who had every reason to side with one of his own, was even trying to stick up for her for Luke’s sake, but Sera knew it would do no good.

Sera looked at Francesca. Francesca looked back. She hadn’t yet said a word.

Finally, with only the smallest tremor in her voice, she said, “Father, let it go. Sera didn’t get what she came for. It’s over.”

Albert looked at her in disbelief. “What has gotten into you?”

“I’m the Chancellor of the Guild and I’ve decided on the appropriate consequences for this infraction,” Francesca replied, her voice a little louder. “She’s going home. It’s over.”

For a long, tense moment, Albert simply stared at her. She refused to meet his eyes.

Slowly, Albert turned back to Sera. He was seething, but he was also Albert Grey and he had gotten the most important thing he’d wanted after all, so he said, “Very well. You understand, of course, that you’ll never get your hands on essence of sunlight again. I’ll make sure of it.”

Then Albert dropped the vial of sunlight to the floor and crushed it beneath his heel.