“I need to get my spells,” he told her. “Then we run for it.”
She lifted the chain from around her neck, lined with his best defensive weavings and the key for the KLOC. He stopped her before she could remove it.
“Hang on to that one for me, okay?” He tucked the chain under the neckline of her shirt. “I have lots more that—”
The front door swung open. Lyre’s head snapped around—and then the spell hit him.
The room reeled and he crashed into the kitchen table. The legs broke and the entire thing collapsed, Lyre crumpled on top of it. Hot liquid ran down his forehead and into his eyes, blinding him.
Someone hauled him up. His vision blurred, then steadied, bringing the face in front of his into focus.
Ariose’s eyes were chips of topaz, hard and ruthless.
His brother spun him around and pushed him down on his knees. Facing the rest of the room, Lyre lifted his throbbing head. Clio was on her knees too, a hand pressed to her temple. Standing in a half circle in front of her were three more daemons. Three more incubi.
Madrigal stood on the right, Andante stood on the left, and in the center, Lyceus regarded Clio with that calculating stare that never, ever faltered.
“Check the rest of the house,” Lyceus commanded, his attention on Clio.
Andante obeyed their father’s order without question, sweeping across the main room and down the short hall to check the bedroom and bathroom. The house was small, so he was back in only a minute.
“One of the bodyguards is dead in the bedroom. Stab wound.” He glanced at Clio, clearly wondering who the killer was. “The other isn’t here.”
“And the ‘secret’ spell?” Madrigal asked. “Is that here?”
Lyre kept his expression blank. Was Madrigal referring to the KLOC? How would he know about it? Lyre remembered Clio telling him she’d knocked Madrigal unconscious—had he witnessed her stealing the spell from Lyre’s workroom?
His brothers couldn’t know about it. Chrysalis could never know it existed. Hades could never know.
“Where is your other guard?” Andante asked Clio.
She pulled her head up with effort, fresh blood staining her hair. “I don’t know. He betrayed us and fled.”
“Where is the weave you stole from Lyre’s workroom?” Madrigal demanded.
Clio pressed her lips together and said nothing.
“I can sense the residue of foreign magic, but the source isn’t here.” Andante looked at their father. “Lyre knows far better ways to kill people than with daggers, so I suspect she’s speaking the truth about her companion’s betrayal. If he fled alone and the spell is not here, then—”
Madrigal hissed. “Then the other bodyguard must have it.”
Lyceus considered Clio, then turned away. “Andante, find out what the spell is. I will begin the search for the bodyguard.”
Without a backward glance, he strode out of the house and into the heavy darkness.
Ariose grabbed Lyre’s hair and bent his head back. “So, brother, care to tell us what special weaving you’ve been hiding? Something that would leave such a fascinating residue throughout your house?”
“I’ve never sensed anything like it,” Andante murmured.
Clio twisted toward Lyre and their gazes met, reflecting their shared despair. They’d been captured and there was no escape. He had no magic and no weavings, and even if he did, he was powerless to use them. And Clio … what could Clio do against incubus master weavers?
Her hopelessness and grief ripped at him. Unable to bear it, he had to close his eyes.
Ariose yanked on his hair again. “Well, Lyre? Will you talk, or do we need to force it out of you?”
He clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t say a word to those bastards. They couldn’t know what he had created. The secret of the KLOC would die with him.
“Don’t waste your time,” Madrigal crooned. “There’s a much easier source of information right here.”
Lyre’s eyes flew open. Madrigal stared at Clio and his irises were already darkening. She scrambled backward on her knees, panic paling her face.
“I can make her tell us everything,” he purred. “We don’t need her for anything else, so any … damage … won’t matter.”
Andante glanced at Ariose, then shrugged. “Be quick about it.”
“That’s no fun,” Madrigal whispered. His night-black eyes burned with awakening lust. “But I can play with her more later, yes?”
Sharp fear cut into Lyre. No. No, Madrigal couldn’t do that to her. She was too inexperienced, too innocent. That amount of aphrodesia could tear her mind apart.
Her gaze was already fogging as his seduction magic infected her.
Then Madrigal’s body shimmered. He was dropping glamour. He was going to hit her with the full destructive power an incubus could unleash on another person’s very soul.
Lyre lunged forward so violently he tore from Ariose’s grip. He slammed into Clio, knocking her over, and his hand clamped over the back of her head. With the last dregs of magic he possessed, he sent a rough bolt of power into her skull. She went limp under him.
Ariose grabbed him and threw him backward into the table’s remains. Lyre slumped back, not even attempting to get up. Clio lay on the floor, unconscious. He’d used the magical equivalent of hitting her over the head, not a spell they could remove. Until she woke, her mind would be safe from Madrigal and the other incubi.
Madrigal knelt beside her, prodding her head and pulling her eyelids back.
“Unconscious. Probably for a few hours.” He turned a sneer on Lyre. “Ruining my fun again, brother?”
Andante stepped up to the edge of the table. Ariose joined him on one side, Madrigal on the other. His three brothers stared down at him with identical, merciless eyes.
“Well, Lyre,” Andante murmured. “If we can’t interrogate her, I guess we’ll have to make do with you.”
As he lifted his hand, magic sparking over his fingers in the beginnings of a cast, Lyre closed his eyes. Don’t be a fool, Reed had begged him.
He couldn’t help it. He’d been a fool his entire life. Why change now?
But still, he wished Dulcet had done a proper job killing him. It would have worked out better for everyone, himself included.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Clio came awake all at once, aching in every limb. She would have given anything to return to consciousness slowly, to drift back to reality like rousing from a deep sleep where memories and awareness gathered one by one, but her brain snapped back to the present without any reprieve.
Grief, as tangible as a blade lodged in her heart, was waiting for her upon waking. An impossible heaviness dragged at her chest, crushing her lungs. She couldn’t breathe properly. All she could do was cry—horrible, body-wrenching sobs.
Kassia was dead. She was dead.
That inescapable, soul-tearing truth blazed inside her. Her best friend. The one person in the world who’d cared about Clio with no strings attached. With only a half-brother who wouldn’t let her come home, Kassia had been her family for the last two years.
And she was dead. Murdered by her cousin. Betrayed and killed without a chance to defend herself. Why had Clio let Kassia step in front of her? Why hadn’t she pushed ahead, gone through the door first?
Through her sorrow, Clio took in her surroundings. A cold stone floor. A matching stone wall behind her. Dull steel bars formed the other three walls of the small cube. Five identical cells were lined up next to hers, filled with shadows barely touched by the dim light leaking from a narrow window above the only door into the room.
A prison. A dungeon.
But she didn’t care. Fear failed to penetrate her anguish, and she huddled against the wall and cried until exhaustion scraped across her nerves and no more tears fell. Too weary to move, she stared dully at the row of empty cells. So this was it. This was where she would die. Somehow, it was comforting to know she would be gone soon and this pain
would end. She wouldn’t have to keep going without Kassia.
Slowly, the sharpest edge of grief lessened enough that she could feel the first whisper of fear. Again, she looked at the other cells. Empty. Where was Lyre?
Her last sight of him flashed through her mind: held on his knees by his brother, blood running down his face, his black eyes dull with despair. Bereft of magic, completely helpless.
She touched the back of her head where pain had stabbed so deeply. Lyre had hit her with a spell—knocking her unconscious. To protect her. To stop Madrigal from using aphrodesia to force her to answer their questions. How much had that act of mercy cost Lyre?
Her hand slid down, and her fingers brushed the cold steel band around her neck. A collar. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the growing terror. It was a magic-dampening collar, one of Chrysalis’s principal inventions that blocked daemons from accessing their magic. She couldn’t cast spells or activate weaves. She couldn’t even use her asper.
Beneath her shirt, Lyre’s chain of spells and the clock key rested against her skin. They hadn’t taken it from her? Maybe no one had checked to see if she was armed. They wouldn’t have expected her to be carrying Lyre’s weavings, and with the magic-dampening collar, it didn’t matter what lodestones she had.
Pressing her back to the wall, she drew her knees up to her chest and let the despair roll through her in dark, icy waves. Was Lyre dead? Or was his family interrogating him for information on his clock spell—the existence of which she’d revealed to Madrigal? Were they hurting him?
What would they do to Clio? Kill her? Torture her? Would they blame her for Eryx stealing a one-of-a-kind weaving with devastating power?
She bit down on her lower lip until she tasted blood. Eryx had stolen the clock spell. The KLOC, as Lyre called it. Did Eryx understand what it could do? How dangerous it was? If he brought it to Bastian, would they use it and accidentally wipe out all the magic in Irida’s capital?
No, they couldn’t use it. Not without the key. Eryx didn’t know about the key, or he would have stolen that too.
Given enough time, Bastian would deduce that he needed to wind the clock. He was smarter and better educated than Clio. If he figured out how to use the spell, he would unleash it and do untold amounts of damage before he realized what he held.
The door clattered and she shot to her feet—or she tried to. Her stiff legs buckled and she ended up in a heap in the far corner of her cell. Terrified, she curled into the smallest ball possible.
Two daemons clad in black uniforms walked through the door. Two more followed, moving sideways with a third man between them—a prisoner with his arms chained in front of him. A final pair of guards followed the others into the space adjacent to the six cells.
Light cut across their faces, illuminating the new prisoner—the dried blood streaking his face, the angry red bruise darkening his cheek, the stormy gray eyes.
Clio gasped in recognition and huddled even farther into her corner.
The guards led Ash to the cell beside hers and pulled the door open. One roughly shoved the draconian forward. He stumbled a step as though losing his balance—then slammed his shoulder into the nearest guard. The daemon hit the bars with a clang.
Swearing furiously, two more guards grabbed Ash and pulled him away from the one he’d body-checked. Ash snapped his head back, his skull crunching against a daemon’s face. Wrists still chained, he wrenched free, spun, and slammed a roundhouse kick into the belly of a third man. He flew backward and bowled over two others, leaving only one guard standing.
Then, with an icy, taunting smirk, Ash strolled into his cell and sat back against the far wall.
“Bastard,” the uninjured guard muttered.
Hauling his comrade out of the way, the daemon slammed the cell shut and locked it with a flash of magic. Gathering themselves and muttering profanities, the six guards left the room with more haste than dignity. The door shut again and the lock clanked loudly, the sound echoing with finality.
Clio pressed into her corner. Ash was wearing the same clothes she’d last seen him in, and the only change in his appearance was the blood and bruises on his face. It looked like someone had hit him. Maybe multiple someones.
He adjusted his chained wrists, then turned to study her.
She shrank like a mouse caught under a cat’s paw. They stared at each other in silence, his dark eyes unreadable, his expression empty of emotion—no pain, no fear, no despair. She wondered what he saw on her face. Finally, he looked away, gazing at the blank wall instead.
“You did something stupid.” His deep voice shivered through her.
“What?” she whispered hoarsely.
“You did something stupid,” he repeated, “to end up in here.”
She sucked in a trembling breath. “Something stupid … like murdering a warlord’s bodyguards at Samael’s fancy party?”
A corner of his mouth lifted in a faint smile. Not even a flicker of remorse touched his features.
She relaxed her tight, defensive ball and stretched her legs out. “Where is here, exactly? Is this a dungeon?”
“It’s part of the bastille. A holding room where new inmates wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For their sentence to be determined.”
She swallowed back her terror. “How do you know that? Have you been here before?”
A shadow of emotion crossed his face, something dark and hard and seething with hatred. “Many times.”
She rested her chin on her knees and whispered, “I’ve never been in a prison before.”
He said nothing, closing his eyes. His calm somehow worsened her fear, as though her heart needed to beat twice as fast to make up for his lack of panic.
“How long will we have to wait?”
“Don’t know.”
“What sort of—of sentence … will they …”
“It depends on how stupid you were.”
She bit down on her sore lower lip to contain her protest. The Rysalis brothers might have captured her because of Eryx, but no matter how she looked at it, breaking into Chrysalis had been stupid. She should have escaped instead of saving Lyre. Then Kassia would be alive. And Lyre … Lyre would probably die anyway. It had all been for nothing.
“Why did you attack those guards?” she whispered.
“Which ones?”
“At the palace … and the ones just now, I guess.”
He twitched his shoulder in a shrug. “Why not?”
“W-what?” She stared at him. “Don’t you care that they’ll punish you?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you afraid of pain?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you afraid to die?”
“No.”
Her head spun. “Does anything frighten you?”
His eyes opened, his head turning toward her again. “Are you going to ask irritating questions the entire time we’re in here?”
She met his stormy gaze and knew something had the power to frighten him. But he wasn’t about to tell her what.
“How else will we pass the time?” she asked, managing to sound just a little arch.
He thumped his head back into the wall, even though the impact must have hurt. “I’m not answering any more questions.”
“Where’s your little dragon?”
He said nothing, holding to his declaration.
“Why have you been here so many times before?” She waited a beat. “What kind of mercenary are you? Why do you work for Hades if they lock you up in here? Don’t draconians hate reapers? Who’s that Raum guy you were with at the—”
He growled, the low, vicious sound sending a violent quiver through her.
“Okay, answer one more question, and I won’t ask anything else.”
His glower turned on her and she involuntarily shrank back before catching herself. He couldn’t reach her. Heavy steel bars separated them, and a magic-dampening collar even thicker than hers glinted
around his neck.
“Just one,” she cajoled.
“No.”
“I just want to know … you had those guards beat, so why did you walk into your cell on your own? You could have escaped.”
“Escaped to where?”
She frowned. “Huh?”
He said nothing more, and she gave up. Silence fell over the room, broken only by the slow drip of water from somewhere. Without conversation to distract her, the terror and despair crept in again, chilling her until she was shaking. Wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing hard, she again looked at Ash.
“One more questi—”
“No.”
Her gaze fell and she lowered her face, resting her forehead on her knees. “Are they going to kill me?” she whispered to her lap.
A moment of silence, then an aggravated sigh. “I told you, it depends on what you did.”
“I broke into Chrysalis and stole a secret spell from Lyre’s workroom.”
Another minute passed, and she could feel his focus on her, but she didn’t raise her head.
“Tell me everything,” he murmured.
She wasn’t sure why, but she did. The words tumbled out, a halting rendition of events from Dulcet kidnapping her up to Eryx fleeing with the spell, leaving her and Lyre to be captured by the Rysalis family. She didn’t mention how Lyre’s spell worked or the details he’d shared about its potential destructive power. Or their kiss.
Ash was silent for so long that she eventually looked up. He was watching her with a hint of a frown. “Chrysalis probably dumped you in here for safekeeping while they work on Lyre.”
“Work on—”
“That spell he made—they’ll want it. They’ll force him to give up the secret, then they’ll probably kill him. You …” He pondered silently. “To Chrysalis, you’re inconsequential, important to them only as the catalyst that revealed Lyre’s hidden weaving.”
A flicker of hope cut through her horror at Lyre’s fate. “If I’m not important, then they might—”
“They’ll kill you. Probably as soon as they’re done with Lyre.”
The Night Realm (Spell Weaver Book 1) Page 30
