She tore past the last of the potted orange trees and came up short. She could see the door at last, but her heart sank: it was wrapped around with black talons, curving along the walls, their tips pressing against the door, holding it shut. Her hand tightened on James’s wrist.

“Is that the door?” he whispered. She shot him a look of surprise—how could he not know? Hadn’t he come in the same way she had?

“Yes,” she said. “I have a seraph blade, but only one—we could try—”

James hurled the dagger, the runes along its blade shining. He moved so fast it was like a blur: one moment he was holding the blade and the next it had plunged into the demon’s membranous wing, shattering the glass behind it. Shrieking, the demon began to pull itself away from the wall.

James swore and drew two more blades: they were arcs of silver spinning from his hands. The demon screeched, a high and horrible noise, as the knives plunged into its torso. The creature spasmed—it seemed almost to be crumbling, its leathery seedpods pattering to the ground like rain. It gave a last choking hiss and vanished.

No longer held closed, the greenhouse door swung wide. Amid the shattered glass and the stench of demon blood, James ducked swiftly through the door, pulling Cordelia with him; together they tumbled out into the night.

They raced away from the greenhouse, through overgrown grass and tangled weeds. When they were some distance away, in a clearing near the entrance to what had once been the Italian gardens, James came up short.

Cordelia nearly stumbled into him. She was dizzy, her vision blurring. The pain in her leg had returned. She slid Cortana into its sheath at her back and sank to the ground.

They were in a small hollow of overgrowth; the greenhouse was a great dark star in the distance, capping a rise of garden. Dark trees leaned together overhead, their branches knotted. The air was clean and cool.

James went down on his knees, facing her in the grass. “Daisy, let me see.”

She nodded. James placed his hands lightly on her ankle, above her low leather boots, and began to raise the hem of her dress. The trim of her petticoat was soaked through with blood, and Cordelia couldn’t hold back a small noise as her ankle was bared.

The skin looked as if it had been torn with a serrated knife. The top of her boot was drenched in blood.

“It looks bad,” James said gently, “but it’s just a cut to the skin. There’s no poison.” He drew his stele from his belt. With infinite care, he touched the tip to her calf—the horror, Cordelia thought, that her mother would have experienced at the idea of a boy touching her daughter’s leg—and traced the outlines of a healing rune.