But as the group surged towards it, Catherine hesitated and caught Irene’s wrist. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ she said. Her chin was set, her face full of determination, but Irene could see the panic in her eyes as voices echoed in the shadows behind them. ‘Lord Guantes might catch me, but he can’t kill me, I don’t think . . . My uncle would hunt him down. Or maybe I can walk out of here to another world on my own – after all, I’ve seen it done plenty of times.’ But Irene knew her apprentice by now, and she knew wishful thinking when she saw it. ‘I’ll manage. You go,’ Catherine insisted.

‘Stay here a moment,’ Irene ordered her apprentice – gripping her wrist, in case she decided to run off in a fit of heroism. Yes, Catherine had indeed found a door. It was labelled in various languages, Fragmentary Texts: No Admission. Well, a door was a door, and there were enough books in this archive for Irene to force a passage to the Library.

Irene set her free hand on the handle and focused her will. ‘Door, unlock,’ she ordered. ‘Open to the Library.’

Slowly, all too slowly, the lock mechanism clicked open and the door shivered under Irene’s hand. This close to chaos it was hard to make a door open to the Library. Hard, but not impossible, and she’d done it before from Alberich’s own sanctum. With great reluctance it swung open into a well-lit, pale-walled room, its shelves neatly filled with black-bound books.

The light cast by the Library illuminated the darkness, a beacon for their pursuers. Irene cursed silently. ‘Go through – now,’ she ordered the men, then turned to Catherine. ‘Give me your name,’ she demanded.

‘You know my name,’ Catherine began, then she stopped. ‘Oh.’

Yes. Irene required Catherine’s true name, and for a Fae that was a huge demand. It was a request for the keys to Catherine’s mind and soul. But Irene had an idea which she thought might just work. Vale had been contaminated by chaos once, and Irene had taken him to the Library to save him. She’d only managed this by using his real name. For the Fae, a true name – given at birth – had great power. No powerful Fae would reveal it, lest it be used against them – and none would ever pay that price to enter the Library. However, if Catherine trusted her . . .

‘What if I don’t want to give you my name?’ Catherine said, looking into the darkness of the archive. ‘I could run—’

‘Then I’ll shut this door and run with you,’ Irene said. But she knew Catherine understood their chance of escape would be vanishingly slim. ‘But if you can just trust me, I promise I won’t use your name against you. And I think this might actually get you inside.’

Perhaps that was what tipped the balance, besides the alternative being capture and possible slavery at Lord Guantes’ hands. Irene was offering the very thing that Catherine had wanted so much, for so long. She leaned in close, her voice barely audible as she whispered, ‘Talita.’

Irene nodded, and stepped across the Library’s threshold, still holding Catherine by the hand. They’d run out of time for half-measures. ‘Talita,’ she ordered, ‘come into the Library.’

As a sensation hummed through her body, Irene felt that something had fallen into place, like a key turning in a lock. And Catherine stumbled through the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.

Irene put one arm around her, holding her up. Or was Catherine holding her up, as her knees suddenly felt wobbly for some reason. Together, they looked back through the doorway into the dark archive. Their pursuers had found them, but were holding back, perhaps spooked by this door to nowhere they recognized.

Then Lord Guantes stalked into view, and there was murder in his eyes. ‘You—’ he started.

I’m doing you a favour, whoever you once were, Irene thought. And now there’s no Lady Guantes left to bring you back again and again. It’s over. Her voice was tired as she commanded, ‘You perceive that you are not Lord Guantes.’

The light streaming from the Library fell across Lord Guantes’ face, and it revealed a sudden weariness. His features seemed to lack substance and reality now, as if Lord Guantes were a photograph fading out of focus. The shadow of another face appeared behind the one they knew, belonging to a different man. A man who now remembered who he was – but he was fading away, and knew it. That man inclined his head to Irene in a salute.

And then he fell to dust, leaving only his clothing behind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Irene slammed the door to the archive shut. ‘Close!’ she ordered.

She turned to the others, to check they were all there – as though Alberich could have sneaked in and stolen them away while she wasn’t looking. Shan Yuan had collapsed to the polished wood floor, and Kai was tearing his shirt to shreds to bandage his brother’s bullet wound. Vale was still upright, but looked shaken – understandably, given what he’d been through. Catherine (better to think of her by that name, in case of accidents) still supported Irene, but her eyes roved avidly around the room and she clearly longed to lose herself among the neat bookshelves.

Irene herself was still upright, alive and sane – relatively. It passed all belief.

‘I’ll find the nearest terminal and ask them to send help,’ Irene said, with a glance at Shan Yuan. He was conscious, but the glare he shot her suggested he wasn’t happy about the way events had played out. Really, some people were never satisfied. He might have been kidnapped, imprisoned, shot and threatened with possession – and the obliteration of his personality – but he was safe now, wasn’t he?

She stopped for a moment to touch Kai’s shoulder, then headed into the corridor beyond. Vale was a step behind her, and Catherine followed Vale. That she’d been expecting, and she raised a hand towards the Fae girl. ‘No. You stay here.’

‘But . . .’ Catherine protested, managing to pack whole volumes of protest into one syllable.

‘I know you want to explore,’ Irene said, striving for patience, ‘but I need to report this – we’ve never had a Fae within our walls before. And I don’t want to spend the next year hunting for you if you get lost.’

The look of enthusiasm in her apprentice’s eyes made Irene realize she might have incited exploration, not curbed it. She sighed. ‘Please, Catherine. Wait here.’

The or else in her voice must have got through, for Catherine slumped a little and nodded, rejoining the dragon brothers.

Relieved, Irene went to look for a computer. She didn’t recognize the corridor that ran past the room. It was floored with distinctive mosaic tiles, arranged in a tessellated gold and brown pattern. Candles burned in sconces along the whitewashed stone walls, casting a gentle, forgiving light. She picked left at random, and two doors along she found what she was looking for – a computer terminal.

It only took her a moment to send a quick email demanding help, as a matter of urgency, and she could then turn and face Vale.

It had been a lie. What he’d said to Alberich must have been a lie.

But in his eyes she saw something far worse than complicity in a game, or guilt at an untruth. She saw a cold, compassionate pity. She managed to get out, ‘Why did you say what you did, back there?’