“I never said I would kill him,” Alice said. There were things you didn’t do unless you absolutely had no choice, and killing a person was at the top of that list, no matter what terrible things he’d done to you. She remembered trying to explain herself to Flicker. I am better than Geryon. I have to be.

“This is only hypothetical,” Ending said. “Suppose you did. What then? What would happen to all the creatures in his domain?”

“Flicker told me,” Alice said, “that Geryon protects the fire-sprites from the other Readers. He asked me what I would do if I got rid of Geryon.”

“Precisely,” Ending said. “They are not so different from we labyrinthine in the end. If Geryon died, the other Readers would descend on this place, to claim me as a servant or bind me away. And, in the long term, we will always need the Readers. Someone has to maintain the Great Binding.”

“But if Geryon is only trapped . . .”

“It will be a long time before word gets out,” Ending said. “Fear of him will keep the others at bay. We will have a long time to work.”

“To work on what? What does this have to do with me?”

“As I said, we will always need Readers. I will always need a Reader to serve.” Ending’s tail lashed. “For a long time, I have been waiting for the right Reader. First of all, she would need to be powerful, powerful enough that, in time, she could become the equal of Geryon or any of the others.”

Alice blinked. Geryon had told her she was strong for an apprentice, but he hadn’t said anything like that.

“And second,” Ending said, “she would need to be . . . kind, for lack of a better word. Willing to treat magical creatures as equals. Someone with whom I could be partners rather than master and servant. Only such a person would be able to help me.

“For a time, I thought it was impossible. The Readers bring in their apprentices young. You’ve met some of them. The Readers teach them the old ways, molding them in their own image. When, by chance, I happened to find you before anyone else, and understood the depth of your talent, I knew what I had to do. I protected you from discovery as long as I could, so you would grow up outside the system. I hoped it would be enough.”

“Then Mr. Black found out about me,” Alice said, thinking back.

“Yes, my protection was fraying. And instead of reporting back to Geryon, Mr. Black sold the information to Esau. My power kept Esau’s fairy, Vespidian, from simply taking you for himself, but when your father left on the ship, I could no longer shield him.”

“Esau found my father, on the Gideon,” Alice said, chest clenching. “And he assumed I was with him.”