The pain on his skin had intensified slowly, but the disease still hadn’t taken his mind or his muscles, which meant that he’d been down here more than one day but less than two.

A key scraped and clanked in the side door, and he stood. It’s night outside, he thought. Surely Silvie and his mother hadn’t been foolish enough to . . .

The door swung open and Billos piled in, holding a lamp high. Followed by Darsal and, finally, Silvie.

He couldn’t find his voice to express either terror or relief, and honestly he wasn’t sure which he should feel.

“They closed the door behind us,” Silvie said, running past Billos. She snatched the key ring from his hand and tried two keys before springing the lock.

“You came back,” Johnis said.

She rushed in, kissed him on the lips. “That’s in case we don’t make it out.” Then she handed him an extra sword and pulled him stumbling from the cage.

“Nice of you to join us,” Johnis said to Billos and Darsal. “Thank Elyon for little sisters.”

“You think we’d leave you to run off with the books again?” Billos said, grinning. “Where are they?”

“The books? Where’s Rosa?”

“Waiting,” Silvie said. “Hurry! We have to go up through the library!”

“Wait, the books could be back in that room, right?” Billos ran for the door and disappeared down the hall.

“Billos!” Silvie ran after him.

“He’s right, Silvie,” Johnis said. “We should get the books.”

“Then we’ll be dead,” Darsal cried, taking up Silvie’s concern.

But they were already in the room. Weapons of all kinds hung on the walls around a large wooden table and reclining cushions. Johnis pulled Billos aside and hurried toward a large trunk set beneath a huge brass carving of the winged serpent, Teeleh. Why the Horde gave their images of the Shataiki a serpent’s body, Johnis had no clue. But he was sure by Karas’s reaction that the missing books waited below this one.

The trunk was locked. “Billos, your blade.”

Billos attacked the latch like a wolf, splintering the wood with a few hard jerks. The latch sprang open. Johnis jerked the lid up.

A candlestick in the winged serpent’s image rested on either side of the trunk’s red interior. And between the candlesticks . . .

Nothing.

Johnis stood back. “Gone.”

“They were here,” Billos said. “They had to be.”

“We have to leave,” Darsal snapped. “We can’t find the books if we’re dead.”

Silvie emerged from the stairwell. “Locked. They know! Get your swords ready. We have to go out the front—it’s the only other way.”

She led them at a full sprint back into the cage room, then up the stairs that led into the library.

“Silvie, slow down,” Johnis whispered, but she was too fast, determined not to be trapped in the dungeon again. “There’s Shataiki.”