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The two follow, and the door seals behind us with a soft click of finality.

27. Cassia

The floor of the archive lurches beneath me and Sera, shaking the very foundations of the room. Pain explodes in my chest with the force of a physical blow, though I know with a sickening certainty that it is not only my pain tearing through me. I also feel his. The air leaves my lungs in a violent, suffocating rush.

“Remiel!” I call, the name ripping from my throat as a scream.

As my power lashes out, waking from its dormant seething without asking for permission, the air pressure drops. A wind howls through the silent library, carrying the scent of ancient dust and tearing books from their shelves like they were panicked birds. The candles extinguish into a single breath of darkness.

Sera shoots to her feet, her chair clattering backward against the stones. “Cassia, stop it! You’re bringing the roof down!”

But I cannot stop. The connection is too wide open and feeding me the sensation of him bleeding on a cold pavement and his overwhelming despair. This agony only feeds the storm. Black veins within the marble floor glow, and the stones crack with the sound of breaking bones.

“What did we do?!” Sera screams over the wind. She tries to reach me, but the gale pushes her back. “This was a mistake! We need to stop!”

A heavy iron sconce rips from the wall and flies toward us like a missile of jagged metal. But Sera does not dodge or cower. She instead roars, a nonhuman vibration, as shadows erupt from her chest. These shadows do not drift like mine but surge thick and viscous, taking shape midair.

A massive obsidian panther leaps from her very essence, its eyes burning with the same emerald fire as hers—her familiar.

The beast lands on the table with a heavy thud and snarls at the storm, absorbing the impact of the iron sconce without flinching. Its tail lashes, swiping a flying book from the air. It stands over us as a shield of living darkness.

I clutch my chest, gasping for air that refuses to fill my lungs. “I-I-I feel his hurt,” I choke out while tears burn my eyes. “He is broken because I broke him.”

“Focus!” she yells, grabbing my shoulders with a bruising grip. The panther growls in agreement, its green eyes locking onto the swirling debris. “You are destroying the archive! Cassia, look at me and breathe!”

But I cannot look at her. Instead, I look up through the swirling debris and the chaos of my making to find the keeper sitting motionless.

It has not moved a muscle, its skeletal hands resting on the obsidian table while the wind whips its tattered robes. A scroll slams into its shoulder, but it ignores it with the indifference of a lighthouse in a hurricane.

The storm rages on, my power hammering against the walls, until the stones groan, and dust rains from the high ceiling in sheets.

“Enough,” the keeper says.

Its voice is not loud, but it cuts through the wind. It lifts one hand, and the air stills instantly. The wind dies, the flying books drop to the floor, and the dust settles in like a suffocating cloud.

Sera’s panther does not dissolve but settles, a silent and imposing sentinel. She stumbles and catches herself on the table, her chest heaving, while I heave my breath, my hands trembling uncontrollably. The ache in my chest dulls to a throb.

“You feel him,” it says, a statement rather than a question.

“He is bleeding,” I whisper.

“He survives,” it replies calmly. “He heals because angels are resilient. But this place is not.” It gestures to the cracked floor and the scattered books. “The walls hold the weight of infinite history, Cassiel, but they cannot hold your grief like this. Your power is awakening, and it is too big for this room or for your body.”

“I cannot control it,” I say as I look at my glowing hands.

“You must.” Its hourglass eyes bore into me, the sand within falling faster. “If you do not, you will bring the Crimson Keep down on top of us, burying yourself and your sister.” It points a long shadowy finger at the blank page before me. “The story is the vessel, so pour the poison into the ink or drown in it.”

Sera squeezes my shoulder, her hand warm. “Finish it, Cass,” she says softly, wiping dust from her face. “Finish it so we can get out of here.”

I nod with a stiff, mechanical motion and look at the keeper. “Valden,” I say, the name tasting of bile and old blood.

“Yes,” it says. “Tell us what happened to the sire.”

I take a deep breath and push the pain of Remiel’s injury into the back of my mind, locking it away to deal with the guilt later. And instead, I focus on my rage for the monster. “I went to Houska. I went to the gateway to Hell.”

I did not look out the window to see if Remiel had survived because the sickening snap of bones against cobblestones was an answer enough. I turned from the shattered glass and stalked out of the cold room, passing the specter attendant who pressed his gray back against the wall in silent terror.

But I stopped at the heavy iron doors. My reflection in the dark glass was a horror—horns curling from my brow, eyes swallowed by the void. I could not walk into the city like this, so I tried to shove the monster down. It fought, clawing at the inside of my ribs, but I crushed it with cold, brutal will. The horns receded. The obsidian claws retracted. I tried to wipe the crimson from my face with my sleeve. Only a pale, hollowed-out woman stared back.