Liora found him in the Banned Wing. He was not reading to sit, but lying on the cold stone floor, back to the warded lectern, staring at the place where the black-covered book had rested. The air still retained a trace of its untangling, ozone-scented breakdown.
"You spoiled it," she breathed, half-accusation, half-wonder. She knelt, sweeping across the stone floor with loose tracing fingers the line of ash that was all that was left. "How? The wards. the nature of the creature. it should have been impossible."
Felix did not look at her. "It tried to digest me. I was convinced that it was a logical fallacy."
He spoke it so bluntly, so ghastly a certainty that Liora could only remain where she was. She had come with him seeking a friend, a companion to seek through the blackness. She had
