Sorcery of Thorns (37 page)

Demonslayer drooped. In Elisabeth’s
moment of hesitation, Ashcroft’s boots scuffed against stone. Moving faster than she could have predicted, he dodged between the vines and vaulted over the edge of the pavilion.

She dashed forward and caught herself against the crumbled balustrade, heart pounding, tensed to give chase. She could overtake him easily: he appeared to have twisted his ankle leaping down, for he stumbled as he fled
through the tangle of roses. She could pursue him, and catch him, and end his plot for good.

Or she could run in the opposite direction, and find the help she needed to save Nathaniel’s life.

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
HE REMAINDER OF the night passed in a blur. First there was the disorienting brightness of the palace, followed by the startled faces of the guests Elisabeth encountered in the halls. After that she recalled shouting,
a flurry of action. A physician was summoned. Someone inquired after the wound on Elisabeth’s hand, but she claimed that the blood was Nathaniel’s, which got everyone outside in a hurry. The next thing she knew, she stood in the rose garden as two men carried Nathaniel’s limp body into a carriage.

His condition was serious. She could tell that much by the physician’s urgency, the cries that rang
out for help. She tried to go to him, but hands held her back. They needed to know what had happened.
The Chancellor
, she said, and no one believed her. Not until a man called from the top of the pavilion and held up Ashcroft’s sword, the gryphon on its pommel unmistakable in the moonlight.

Pandemonium. Lord Kicklighter’s booming voice cut through the din. A guest helped her toward the carriage—and
how
strange everyone’s finery looked, marked here and there with smears of Nathaniel’s blood. Her own gown had been ruined beyond repair. Silas would not be pleased about that; they had spent an entire day together shopping, and he had patiently sat through several fittings, during which Elisabeth had had to stand very still, so that the seamstress did not stick her with pins. She could clearly
picture his look of disapproval.

Then she remembered that Silas had been run through with a sword, and was gone.

She rode inside the carriage with Nathaniel and the physician. The wheels jostled over uneven ground, and once, Nathaniel groaned. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his hand felt freezing cold. She didn’t remember taking hold of it. The physician was busy applying pressure to Nathaniel’s
chest. He glanced once at her injured palm, then at her face, and said nothing.

They pulled up outside Nathaniel’s house, where a crowd had gathered. Half of the ballroom appeared to have followed them to Hemlock Park, now mixed with reporters and sorcerers wearing their nightclothes. Lights blazed in the homes all the way down the street, their windows flung open, people leaning out. Elisabeth
barely noticed the commotion, because none of it was a fraction as strange as what was happening to Nathaniel’s house.

All of the gargoyles had come to life. They prowled along the roofline and coiled themselves, snarling, around the corbels. The thorn bushes that grew in the unkempt gardens surrounding the house had stretched to tall, impenetrable hedges, rattling menacingly at anyone who drew
near the iron fence. Dark clouds boiled overhead.

“The wards have activated,” the physician told her. “The house recognizes that its heir is in danger, and will do anything
to protect him from further harm. The difficulty is, there’s no one else of his bloodline who can safely let us through. Miss Scrivener, does Nathaniel trust you?”

She watched the men lift Nathaniel from the carriage. In
order to reach his wounds, the physician had removed his shirt. His skin, where it wasn’t covered in blood, was as white as paper. His head lolled, and one of his arms dangled loose. His black hair fell like a spill of ink around his ashen face—black, without a hint of silver. The wrongness of it left her dazed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Yes. I think so.”

“It’s unconventional, but we haven’t
much time. Try approaching the house. If anything threatens you, retreat quickly. I’d rather not end up with two patients tonight.”

The hubbub quieted as Elisabeth stepped forward. Faces watched anxiously from the crowd. She recognized one of them as one of the girls who had gossiped about her in Ashcroft’s conservatory, who looked stricken now, clutching a friend’s hand.

During the carriage
ride, Elisabeth hadn’t let go of Demonslayer. It shone at her side as she crossed the threshold of the open gate, toward the thorn bushes, their crooked boughs looming above her. Instantly, their rattling ceased. A whisper ran through the hedge. Then the branches retreated, creating a path to the front door. One gargoyle sank down, and then another, lowering their heads like retainers welcoming the
return of their queen.

Silence prevailed. She walked up the path and ascended the steps. When she reached for the doorknob, the bolt clicked on its own, and the door swung open without a touch.

Stunned, she stood aside to let the physician pass. He hurried up the path, giving instructions to the men carrying Nathaniel, his fingers on Nathaniel’s pulse. A bespectacled young woman
hurried alongside
them, laden with bags and cases. Behind them, the branches closed back in, weaving together like threads on a loom, blocking out the crowd. The last thing Elisabeth saw before the thorns knit shut was a reporter gazing back at her. Wonder transformed his features, and his pencil had fallen to the ground, forgotten.

She followed the procession upstairs, unable to take her eyes from Nathaniel’s
unconscious face. There wasn’t room for her in his bedroom, so she stood outside, flattening herself against the wall every time the physician’s assistant passed with an ewer of water or an armful of blood-soaked linens.

No one said anything, but it was clear that Elisabeth was getting in the way. Numbly, she drifted back downstairs. She took off Nathaniel’s coat and hung it on the coatrack.
She noticed a few droplets of blood on the foyer’s floor and used her gown to wipe them up, since its ivory silk was already ruined. Afterward she sat on the bottom step, her head buzzing with white noise. Dimly, from upstairs, she heard the scuffle of feet accompanied by a tense exchange of voices. The grandfather clock ticked in time with the beating of her heart.

As of this moment, Ashcroft
was ruined. Everything would come out in the morning papers. The entire world would know him for who he truly was. But this didn’t feel like a victory. Not with Silas lost, and Nathaniel bleeding upstairs. Not with Ashcroft still at large.

No—the fight wasn’t over yet. It would be foolish to imagine otherwise. She sat for a moment longer, considering this, and then she rose and walked with purpose
into Nathaniel’s study, where she seized the magnifying device from his desk, flung it to the ground, and smashed it beneath her heel. She proceeded to the next room, where she found another mirror and tore it from
the wall. She didn’t stop there. A path of destruction marked her progress around the house. Glass cracked, shattered, exploded across carpets, bounced in glinting fragments down the
furniture. No mirror was safe. She took Demonslayer’s hilt to the one in the parlor, where she had spent so many hours studying grimoires, and watched her reflection splinter, then go tumbling to the floor. When she was finished downstairs, she made her way upward, leaving a trail of shards along the hallways.

It seemed as though she should feel something, but she did not. Her injured hand didn’t
hurt, even as blood ran freely down Demonslayer’s pommel. The mirrors in their cumbersome frames yielded to her without effort. It was as though she were made of light and air, barely tethered to the physical world, at once unstoppable and in danger of coming apart, burning up, floating away.

At last, she reached her bedroom. She picked up the scrying mirror. She tried to explain what had happened
to Katrien, who asked her a number of questions she couldn’t answer, because at some point, words had stopped making sense. When they were finished talking, Elisabeth wrapped the mirror in a pillowcase and dropped it down the laundry chute. Ashcroft wouldn’t be able to spy on her from there. Then she set about making the rest of the room safe, in the only way she knew how.

An incalculable amount
of time later, she came back to herself, Demonslayer clenched in her good hand, surrounded by broken wood and glass. She thought,
Silas isn’t going to like this.
Then she thought,
I will help him clean it up
.

The grief, when it came, struck her like a punch to the gut. She doubled over and sank to the floor, her breath coming in strangled gasps. She was not made of air or light. She was weakly,
devastatingly human, and she did feel pain, more than
she could bear. Silas was gone. She didn’t know what Nathaniel was going to do, or how she was going to tell him, or whether she could endure the look on his face when she did. She didn’t know if Nathaniel would wake again at all.

She wept until the world softened and blurred around her, and at last she knew nothing more.

•  •  •

When she
next opened her swollen eyes, it was to the sight of an unfamiliar woman sitting on a chair in the corner. Afternoon light shone through the curtains. Elisabeth looked down at herself in bed, easily managed because she had been propped up on the pillows. A bandage swathed her injured hand. Demonslayer lay atop the covers on her other side, her fingers still clenched around the grip.

“Dr. Godfrey
and I couldn’t pry it from you, even after you fell asleep.”

Elisabeth looked back at the woman. She wasn’t unfamiliar, after all. She was the physician’s assistant, thin and bespectacled, wearing a starched white pinafore. Dried blood streaked the front, but its presence didn’t seem to bother her.

“My name is Beatrice,” she said. “I’m the one who’s been tending to you.”

Elisabeth’s heart skipped.
She couldn’t take her gaze from the stained pinafore. “Is Nathaniel—?”

“He’s doing well. At least, as well as can be expected. Drink this.” She brought a glass of water to Elisabeth’s lips and watched her swallow some of it before she went on, speaking calmly, as if for her this was a perfectly ordinary morning, no different than a conversation over breakfast. “Magister Thorn lost a great deal
of blood, but Dr. Godfrey is confident he will recover. Sorcerers can survive remarkable injuries with the help of their household
wards. Even so, he shouldn’t get out of bed until his chest has begun to heal.”

Relief crashed over Elisabeth. She shoved herself upright, then froze, biting back a groan. Every inch of her body hurt. Even her bones ached. “There’s a mirror in his room,” she said.
“I must—”

Beatrice laid a hand on her shoulder. “Dr. Godfrey and I have already seen to it.” She added, more gently, “You told us what you had been doing last night, when we found you here on the floor. You don’t remember that?”

Elisabeth didn’t, and she preferred not to imagine the state in which they’d discovered her, but she was grateful they had taken her seriously. She looked down, gritting
her teeth against her body’s protests. “May I see Nathaniel?” she asked.

“If you’d like, though he won’t wake for hours yet. When he does, he may not be quite himself. He’s been given laudanum for the pain.”

She helped Elisabeth into a dressing gown and walked her down the hall. Elisabeth wasn’t sure she could have managed the journey on her own. While she tottered along like an old woman, Beatrice
told her how lucky she was not to have broken anything. “Most people would have, after taking such hard blows.” And then she looked askance at Demonslayer, still clutched in Elisabeth’s hand.

When they reached Nathaniel’s doorway, she could only stare. Nathaniel looked marooned in the broad expanse of his four-poster bed, with its carved pillars and dark brocade hangings. His face was turned
to the side, and the angle of the sunlight cut across his sharp cheekbone, making a sculpture of his features. Beneath the open collar of his nightshirt, bandages wrapped his chest.

Somehow, it didn’t feel right to see him this way. His breathing was so shallow that his chest barely rose and fell. His face was still: his brow smooth, his mouth slack. Blue shadows tinted the skin beneath his eyes.
It seemed as though he would break if she touched him, as though he had transformed into a substance other than flesh and blood, as fragile as porcelain.

Beatrice assisted her into the armchair pulled up near him and turned to go. She paused at the doorway, her bedside manner parting slightly, like a curtain, to reveal a hint of wariness underneath. “Is it true Magister Thorn has no human servants?”
she asked. “Only a demon?”

“Yes, but there’s no need to be afraid. Silas—that’s his name—he isn’t here any longer. Even if he were, he wouldn’t—” Elisabeth fought for words, gripped by an overpowering need to explain, to make Beatrice understand. It felt unacceptable that no one else knew who Silas was and what he had done. She finished with difficulty, “He sacrificed himself to save Nathaniel’s
life.”

Beatrice frowned, gave a slight nod, and left, unmoved by the revelation.
She thinks he acted under Nathaniel’s orders
. And as simply as that, Elisabeth realized no one would ever appreciate Silas’s final act. It was not a story that anyone would believe. He had vanished from the world like mist, leaving nothing behind except rumors: the dreadful creature that had served House Thorn.