Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(52)

Jess did, unfortunately, though it seemed to him there were always more terrible surprises left in the world. “How long before they find you?”

“I’m not sure. They’ll have searched for me inside the Tower first, probably most of the day. If the Obscurist is involved, it won’t be long now.”

“Then we don’t have much time.” His body felt hot and cold at once, and the feeling in his stomach was like that of standing in a very high spot, looking down at the drop. He took her hand and held it. “Morgan, please. I need to know if you can ever forgive me.”

“For sending me to the Tower?” she asked, which was blunt and painful, but he nodded. “Most days I don’t blame you. Some days I do. I tell myself they would have caught me eventually, that you just spared me pain and injury and maybe even death fighting the inevitable. But it still hurts. As long as it does, I can’t . . .”

“Can’t feel the way you used to,” he finished for her, and she slowly nodded. And there it was, the drop he was falling off of, a long spiral down to an inevitable painful impact. “All right. That’s fair enough.” All the nerves in his fingers seemed uncomfortably aware of the feel of her skin, the softness, the warmth. The way her hand curled around his and held on.

“No, it isn’t fair at all,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jess. It isn’t that I don’t care for you—I do. I just—”

“Let me make it up to you. Come with me,” he said. It was an impulse, a wild thing he couldn’t quite control. “I’ll take you away somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Away. Anywhere.”

“Jess, they’ll find me.”

“Then we’ll run.”

“They’ll find me. Until I can get this collar loose, it’s no use even trying!”

“And if you do get it off?”

“Then maybe things will be different,” she said. There were tears glittering sharply in her eyes. “This isn’t easy. I’m sorry.”

Jess stepped closer, and she didn’t back away. He eased hair back from her face and let his fingertips linger. After imagining her for so long, having her here seemed more like a dream, except for the velvet evidence of her skin. Easy. Nothing about how he felt for her was that. He knew he loved her, but it was shot through with dangerous thorns: guilt, jealousy, fear.

It occurred to him in that moment that for all his missing Morgan before, he’d missed nothing but a fantasy. As Glain had said: a challenge, distant and safe. But this girl, standing in front of him now, was far more real, honest, and complicated.

And he wanted her more than he ever had.

They were so close, too close, and Morgan’s eyes widened. She stepped back and brought their conversation back to the practical. “I almost forgot. There’s a Translation Chamber in the Basilica Julia; it’s private, only used for access to the prison, and only to and from the Alexandrian Serapeum.”

“Wolfe remembered a Translation Chamber,” Jess said. “Nic didn’t believe him.”

“It’s very secret. But I think I might be able to change the destination and take us somewhere besides Alexandria. If I can get free of the Iron Tower again and join you.”

“You’re free now.”

“You’re not ready to rescue him yet. Are you?”

“No,” he admitted. “We’re not even completely sure he’s there. We keep looking for proof.”

“I wish I had more to tell you,” she said. “I’ll keep looking. I’m sure I can crack some more of the codes that the Artifex uses—” She broke off with a gasp and touched the collar at her neck. Her gaze met his and held.

“They’re coming,” he said. She nodded.

“I can’t let them see you with me, or you’ll be arrested. If I escaped and ran on my own, that’s one thing, but the penalty for you . . .”

“Maybe they’d put me in the cell beside Thomas. That’s one way to do research.”

“It’s not funny! Jess—” He kissed her. After a second of surprise, she kissed him back, warmth and sweetness and a frantic kind of passion that said more than words. And then she pushed him away. Hard. “Go now. They can’t find you with me. Please, just go!”

He turned and ran. When he looked back, he saw Morgan walking calmly to the opposite end of the block, where a steam carriage glided to a halt and armed High Garda poured out to surround her. She didn’t fight them.

Look back at me. Just look back, Morgan.

She didn’t.




Jess waited all night for a Codex message from Morgan or Khalila or Dario.

No messages came.

By dawn, he was desperate enough to use his Codex to try to send a message himself, despite the fact that he knew it would be monitored. He tried Khalila first, then Dario, but neither replied. Something’s happened, he thought, and the fear climbed his spine as if it were a ladder, to lodge cold in the back of his brain. They’ve been taken away. Or . . . or worse. Would the Archivist risk another tragic accident in a matter of days? Or would he simply have them vanish, and make up whatever story he needed to pacify their loved ones?

Jess imagined how that polite, pretty fiction would sound in his case. The Archivist’s sorrowful letter would arrive in formal calligraphy, and it wouldn’t tell the truth, like, Your son was dismembered by an automaton—so sorry, but talk of some quiet, mundane death. Illness, probably. He morbidly pictured the scene back at home, where his mother and father would receive news of his death with the same quiet stoicism they’d used to greet the death of his older brother, Liam. Maybe Brendan would actually be sorry to lose him.