Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(110)

Knowledge is power.

Knowledge was burning.

Wolfe was shouting something, but Jess couldn’t make it out. Nothing made sense anymore. They couldn’t lose. They couldn’t.

Books were burning.

Morgan was standing at the burning entrance with her hands flung wide. The Greek fire inside was trying to break past her, trying to consume everything. Every scrap of knowledge in the entire Great Library.

Glain stood there ashen, helpless, shaking. “My fault,” she said. “I should have known.”

Thomas put an arm around her. “No, Glain. My fault. I should have been faster to tell you.”

“Morgan!” Wolfe shouted. “Morgan, let go! We have to get out!”

“No,” Khalila said, and walked forward. She stood next to Morgan, looking at her, and turned toward the rest of them. There was something different about her now. Something . . . regal. Not Khalila, Jess realized. She spoke as the Archivist of the Great Library. “We haven’t copied everything. We will lose all if she lets go. She knows what has to be done.” She put her hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “We will remember what you do. I love you, my friend. But you are the only one who can accomplish this.”

Morgan looked over her shoulder, directly at Jess. In that moment, he loved her with all his heart and soul. And he wanted desperately to take her place, to let it be him instead. If he’d had the slightest chance of doing what she could, he would have plunged in no matter what it cost.

He didn’t have that power. She did. And he had to let her make her choice, just as she’d let him make his own.

But he could make sure she didn’t die alone.

She saw it in him, somehow. And as he stumbled toward her, he felt a sudden gust of wind push him back, sliding him across the marble floor and right into Thomas’s grip. “No!” he shouted, and tried to fight free. “No, let me—” Coughing caught him again, doubled him over. Blood poured out of his mouth in a sick wave. He tasted bitter foam and copper.

“Did you drink it?” Thomas asked him, and yanked him upright. “Jess! Did you drink what I gave you?”

He just shook his head. “Left it.” Thomas dropped him and headed for the shattered statue.

“Jess,” Morgan said, and he focused on her with an effort. “You have to live. Live for me. Tell Glain it wasn’t her fault. I’m the one who turned the valve.” She smiled, just a little. “I’m glad I loved you.”

She stepped forward into the hellish inferno.

They all cried out, Jess thought, all of them, denying what she was doing, but they couldn’t stop her. None of them dared. The blaze wrapped around her, and it started to burn her, and then the fire just . . . stopped, as if it had never erupted at all.

Because she cut off the oxygen that fueled it.

“Morgan!” Wolfe rushed forward, hit an unyielding barrier, and battered against it. Beyond that lay a melted ruin where the wing of the Archives had been, a hellish slurry of melted stone and ash. And Morgan, burned and shaking, who was killing herself along with the Greek fire that sizzled, hissed, tried to burn but was starved of its fuel.

Jess tried to watch, but his eyes had blurred again, and the foam bubbled up from his lungs. Bloody froth in his mouth. He coughed it out and kept coughing. Santi and Wolfe were trying to get to her. But he already knew it was too late. She’d make sure it was too late. She’d only let go when the last of the Greek fire had no chance of reigniting.

The barrier collapsed at last, and so did he, hitting the floor as Santi and Wolfe lurched over the line where Morgan’s power had been. The Greek fire liquid had turned into a thick brown sludge running over the floor, but it didn’t burn now. Harmless.

Morgan had saved the Great Archives.

She lay limp and blackened in Santi’s arms as he picked her up, and Jess whispered, “No,” and lunged forward.

When he fell, it was like dropping through a trapdoor of the world, into absolute darkness.



* * *



—

“Easy,” a voice said. “Jess. Swallow.”

There was an awful metallic taste in his mouth. Liquid. He tried to spit it out but a huge hand covered his mouth, and he had no choice but to swallow it. He gagged and coughed as the hand pulled away, but the taste faded, and what was left was a soothing weight that worked its way down his burning throat and into his chest. Heavy and cool. Comforting.

“That’s the last of it,” Thomas said. “Stay still. It should work soon. You might still need rest.”

Jess licked his dry lips and said, “What is it?”

“The antidote,” Thomas said. “I found it in Heron’s Tomb.”

Jess lay on cool sheets in a brightly lit room, and the lingering stench of Greek fire seemed to cling to everything. His head ached. His lungs burned. He felt tender all over. He just wanted to rest.

Then he remembered.

Morgan.

He pushed the mask aside and tried to get up, but nausea and weakness shoved him down again. I dreamed it. She’s all right. She has to be.

“Jess.” That was Anit’s voice. He looked over and found her sitting at his bedside next to Thomas, and she was holding his hand in hers. “Welcome back to the land of the living, my brother.”

“I—” His throat ached, and it would barely form words, but at least it wasn’t a bloody mess of foam now. He fumbled for the glass of water on the table beside him. Anit held it to his lips and fed him sips. “How long?”