But then he placed his hand against a stone on the wall and pushed down. I braced my legs apart, and my lightning encircled my wrists as I prepared to destroy whoever might be on the other side of the outward-swinging door.
Samael poked his head out before exiting and turning back to me. “It’s the library.”
“The library is massive; anyone can be in there,” I growled.
I had no idea what he was playing at, but it felt like a trap.
“I know,” Samael said. “That’s why I went through it earlier and killed the soldiers stationed here.”
“Someone could have found their bodies,” Tucker said.
“I locked the doors after retreating from here.”
“And you don’t think that could draw attention?” Callan asked. “Or that someone couldn’t have come along to unlock them.”
“Both things are possible, but we’re not staying in here or leaving through those doors. Besides, if it had drawn attention, the duke’s men would be in here right now,” Samael said.
“They could be, and we just don’t know it yet.”
“No, if they’d discovered the bodies, then they would already know you were free, and everyone in the palace would be on alert if that were the case. We’d hear them shouting up and down the halls, and they’d be tearing all these rooms apart.”
He had a point, but it was impossible to trust him.
“We’re not leaving the library out the main doors. There’s another tunnel in here,” Samael said.
Samael walked away through the dimly lit library. He stopped near a shelf and turned to look back at us.
“Can we trust him?” Callan asked.
“Absolutely not,” I replied. “But he does want revenge on the duke, and he’ll help us get it.”
“Will he turn on us?” Lawrence asked.
“Not now; it’s too late for him. Even if guards stumbled across us and he declared that he’d just discovered us, he knows I wouldn’t keep it a secret. He’s also aware the duke isn’t a fool; he’d never believe Samael’s lie. So no, we can’t trust him, and he’ll do everything he can to use us to his advantage, but we can rely on him… for this.”
“That’s reassuring,” Callan muttered.
My lips twitched toward a smile as I ran an index finger over the healed skin of my missing ring finger. At one time, my wedding ring resided on that finger, but Veni had cut it off and left my finger, with the ring, in the forest. I missed the ring more than my appendage.
I shoved aside the twinge in my chest as my thoughts briefly turned to Ellery. I had to get back to her, and if I had to rely on Samael to get me there, then so be it.
“It’s probably the most reassuring thing we have going for us in this place,” I said. “Plus, Samael knows this palace far better than the rest of us. We have a better chance of getting out of this with him than without him.”
“Are you looking to escape the palace or find the duke?” Tucker asked.
I didn’t respond; I still didn’t have an answer to that. We were too close to walk away, but there was no way we could reach him without getting caught. He was too well protected.
I stepped away from the opening and waited for the others to exit before closing the bookcase behind them. Samael was still waiting for us by another shelf when we joined him.
He led the way through a row of books, stepping around the body of a decapitated guard he’d stashed behind an ottoman. Samael had gone after Veni’s fighters with ruthless determination; I admired it.
“They probably never saw you coming,” I remarked.
“Oh, they saw me coming,” Samael replied. “They just didn’t see that I was there to kill them.”
“They trusted you,” Callan said.
Samael glanced over his shoulder at the musician. “You’re not making that same mistake.”
