We found Thessaly at the bottom of the library stairs.
She was alive, which was the first thing I checked. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the sealed inner door and her knees drawn up and her hands pressed flat against the wood behind her, shaking so finely it looked like vibration rather than trembling.
“I did not go in,” she said before anyone spoke. “I came down here because it was the most defensible position in the castle below ground level and I did not go in. But something on the other side of that door.” She stopped. Pressed her hands harder against the wood. “Something on the other side of that door has been speaking for the last twenty minutes.”
Caelan looked at me.
I knew what was on the other side of the door. I had known since dawn when the pulse in the
