Wolfe walked over to inspect something in the garden—mostly, Jess thought, to hide a sudden vulnerability. The Obscurist watched him with a gentle, sad expression, then turned from him to Santi and gave him a wan smile. “Nic,” she said. “I’m sorry. Seeing you here means you’ve given up so much today. You’ve worked so hard to secure your place in the High Garda.”

Santi shrugged. “I always said, if it comes to a choice between him and the Library, I’d choose him,” he said. “I love him. That means I protect him, doesn’t it?”

“It means everything. I’m glad you’re all right. You’re nearly as dear to me as he is.” Her words must have offended Wolfe, because he gave her a black look and moved farther away. His mother’s gaze followed him. Worried. “You took him into the basilica? What were you thinking?”

“I had to bring him with us,” Santi said quietly. “If I’d left him behind, he’d have been arrested and ended up dead, or worse. At least it kept him alive.”

“Perhaps, but it’s certainly taken a toll,” she said. “I can see it, though he’s hiding it well. I hope time here can help heal that.”

Santi considered that for a moment, then said, in the same level voice as before, “Lady Keria, I respect you, but if you try to betray him in any way, I’ll kill you. You understand? He’s had enough pain from this place, too. And from you.”

He’d finally pierced her calm, at least a little, and her eyes—so like her son’s—flashed. “Do you think it’s easy, watching your son suffer while you stand by doing nothing? Don’t you think I want him to understand—” The Obscurist stopped herself, let a beat of silence go by, and then said, “Very well. If I ever betray him again, or you, then by all means, kill me.”

Santi blinked, but said nothing. She managed to surprise him, Jess thought. And then the Obscurist’s gaze turned to their little group: Khalila, Jess, Morgan, Thomas occupying the whole of a second bench. Morgan kept her gaze fixed down on her feet as the Obscurist approached, until the woman’s fingers under her chin forced her head up again. Morgan didn’t flinch, and she didn’t look away once their eyes had locked, even while the Obscurist reached for the silk scarf around her neck and tugged it loose to reveal the fish-pale skin of her throat.

“Incredible,” the Obscurist said. “I’ve never met anyone with your power or your blind foolishness. If you think it gives you some kind of invulnerability, you don’t understand the stakes.”

Morgan slapped the Obscurist’s hand away from her scarf. The collared guards nearby tensed, hands closing tight around knives, but the Obscurist gave them a shake of her head. “I won’t be caged up here! I won’t be made into some slave—no, worse than that. Some mindless part in a machine, replaced when it breaks.”

“You’re far more than an automaton,” the Obscurist told her. “You’re worth more than most people who will ever be born on this earth, Morgan. Archimedes taught that of all the five elements, quintessence is the most rare, the most valuable, the one that transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary. We are quintessence. It’s a divine gift, and like all gifts, we must use it for the Library’s greater glory.”