Alice didn’t move. Anger squeezed her lungs and wrapped itself around her heart. For a fleeting moment, she fought down an overpowering urge to pull on her threads, to summon monsters into the world and blot this impudent sprite out of existence. It was, she imagined, how Geryon must feel, how all the old Readers must feel; utterly secure in the knowledge that everyone and everything around them existed only on their sufferance, because they chose not to wield their immense power. Their cruelty was the cruelty of elephants to insects—a casual indifference, until a bite began to itch, and then obliteration with a flick of the trunk.

And behind the anger, hiding in its shadow, a darker feeling she didn’t want to acknowledge. Guilt.

Alice forced herself to take a deep breath. I’m not like them. I’m not.

“I didn’t choose this,” she said. “I don’t mean to make excuses, but it’s the truth. Geryon killed my father and brought me to live with him. Once he knew I had the talent to be a Reader, he told me I could be his apprentice or have my mind erased.”

Flicker cocked his head. “Then why serve him? You can use the portal-books. You could go to any world you like.”

“He might follow me,” Alice said, but it didn’t sound convincing. Because Flicker was right, as far as it went. She probably could lose herself somewhere in the infinite worlds of the library, especially if Ending was willing to keep her secrets. But that wasn’t good enough. “And . . .”

His burning eyes were steady on hers. “And what?”

“And he has to pay for what he did. There’s no one to make sure he does but me.”

Flicker stared. Alice rubbed her face with her sleeve and sucked in a great lungful of the cold air.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “Why I’m going to the Palace of Glass.”

“You never got Pyros’ call for help, then.”

She shook her head.

“Then why risk your life for us at all?”

“I didn’t think you’d be willing to help, with the blue-chill out there,” Alice said.

“We wouldn’t have had any choice, if you’d demanded it in Geryon’s name.”

“I . . .” Alice hesitated for a moment, then finally shrugged. “I don’t know. It seemed fair.”

Flicker regarded her for a moment longer, then turned away again. “Come on,” he repeated. “Still a ways to go.”