Her stomach dropped. “Are you sure?”
“Unless they want to use your astral perception for their own purposes.”
“You know … how do you know about my …?”
He shifted his shoulders, the chains on his wrists rattling. His stare fixed on her and the fierce, demanding challenge in his eyes froze her lungs. “What will you do now?”
“D-do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I—I want to escape. But I can’t. I can’t get out of this cell, and the guards …” She tugged at the collar around her neck, bruising her skin. “I can’t. There’s no way.”
“And if you escaped the bastille, what then?”
“I can’t escape.” She pressed her lips together. “But if I could, I would find Lyre. I would get to him and find a way for both of us to escape this place.”
Ash nodded as though she’d proposed an entirely plausible plan. He rose, the sudden movement startling her, and crossed two steps to the bars that separated them. Crouching, he gestured. “Come here.”
Her mouth went dry. He loomed in the shadows, blood splattered on his face, his dark stare challenging her, daring her to back down, to succumb to cowardice.
Pushing to her feet, she walked to the steel barrier and knelt in front of him. He slipped his hands through the bars, the chains on his wrists clanging, and hooked two fingers under the collar around her neck.
When he whispered foreign words in an unknown language, disbelief rose through her. The phrases rose and fell in the measured syntax of an incantation, and she couldn’t understand what he was doing. He was wearing a magic-dampening collar. He couldn’t use magic, incantations included.
But apparently the rules didn’t apply to him, because the air sizzled around him and the collar burned hot against her skin. Then, with a flash of heat and a crackling hiss, the weight of the collar disappeared. Gray dust fell over her shoulders and chest, all that remained of the spelled steel.
She could feel her magic again, the hot pulse of power in her head that had been missing since she’d woken. She wiped at the dust on her shoulder and stared at the gray stain on her fingertips.
“Why are you helping me?”
He sat back against the wall and leaned his head on the stone. “The main exit is heavily guarded,” he said in the tone of someone commenting on the weather.
She studied him, struggling to understand his motivation. “Then how will I …”
“There are windows at the opposite end of the building,” he observed, settling in as though ready to take a nap. “Too small for most daemons to fit through.”
But Clio was small enough to fit. Was that what he was saying?
“The guards could return at any time.” He gave her a sharp look. “What are you waiting for?”
She rose to her feet and glanced down at him, at the blood and bruises. “Come with me.”
He lifted his head, stormy irises unreadable.
“Come with me. We’ll get Lyre, and the three of us can escape together.”
His gaze dropped from hers, and he closed his eyes—a clear answer.
“Ash …” Her forehead scrunched, and she remembered him walking into the cell. He could have escaped. He could escape right now if he wanted to. He didn’t need any help. The collar around his neck wouldn’t stop him, not when he could break them. The chains and bars couldn’t stop him either.
Something else was holding him prisoner, and that was what he couldn’t escape.
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. He would appreciate neither sympathy nor pity. He was risking further punishment by helping her, and she wouldn’t repay that by disrespecting his choice with tears or begging.
Straightening her shoulders, she strode to her cell door. The lock was a simple weave, and she broke it with a stroke of magic. She pushed the door open, then paused and looked back.
Ash watched her, that fiery challenge burning in his stare, daring her to fail, pushing her to fight.
“Thank you, Ash,” she whispered. “Good luck.”
He nodded.
Swallowing back her sorrow for him, she rushed to the door, broke the lock spell, and slipped into the dim hallway on the other side. Ahead, lights glowed and she glimpsed a large room. A murmur of voices warned of waiting guards.
She lifted her chin, gathering her strength and resolve. She would not fail. Lyre’s life, and hers, counted on this last chance Ash had given them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clio pressed her back to the wall and breathed deeply.
Most of the bastille lay behind her, endless corridors with dark cells that stank of terror and machine-filled rooms that reeked of blood. The haunting sounds were worse than the smells—the broken whispers, the hoarse weeping, the piercing screams. It was a place of nightmares and death, and she wished she had the power to burn the entire building to the ground. It shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t be allowed. But who could stop Hades from doing whatever they wanted?
Ahead of her, the halls changed. Clean steel walls inlaid with spelled crystals that emitted a soft white glow replaced the dank stone and smothering darkness she’d already passed. She could hear murmured conversations, far different from the weak, despairing cries in the rest of the bastille. These voices were conversational, sometimes jeering, sometimes laughing.
Not prisoners, but guards.
She’d already cast her best cloaking spell, but she wasn’t sure it would be enough. Her hand slid to Lyre’s chain of spells hanging around her neck. She’d checked each gemstone, figuring out what its weaving did in case she needed it. The spell he’d used to hide them from Dulcet was there, but that wouldn’t help her unless she was in a similar dead-end.
With one more deep breath, she crept down the hall. Ahead, one side of the corridor opened into a larger space, and that’s where the voices and light were coming from. Her path intersected the edge of the open room, then continued on.
Her back tight against the wall, she minced to the corner and peeked around it into the room.
Four large tables with stools, a counter along one side, and an icebox. A dozen uniformed guards lounged in the room, talking quietly, some with food, others just relaxing. A break room where guards could enjoy a respite from all the blood, torture, and death. Charming.
The room was well lit and she would be crossing it without cover. A cloaking spell made her difficult to notice, but it wasn’t foolproof. The chances they would spot her were too high. Should she backtrack and search for a different route to the exterior wall where Ash had promised she would find windows? How long would that take? She’d already taken too long, and it was so easy to get lost in the dark, winding halls.
Sliding her hand across Lyre’s chain, she considered her options. She could blast them and make a run for it, but that wouldn’t get her much of a head start. Her fingers dug into the front of her shirt as desperation clouded her thoughts.
A clink startled her. She jumped back, then saw the shining pink gemstone at her feet. She’d accidentally dislodged it from the pocket in her belt. She scooped up the mysterious illusion weaving. She still had no idea what it was, only that it was an area-affect spell—something that would involve everyone within its radius in the illusion.
She rolled it between her fingers—then a guard called a farewell to the others. Footsteps started toward her hiding spot. A guard was coming her way, and she had nowhere to hide.
With no better ideas, she crouched, activated the gem, and tossed it into the break room. It rolled across the floor with a skittering noise lost beneath the murmur of conversation. She peeked around the corner to find a guard standing three steps away, looking back over his shoulder at his comrades.
The gemstone stopped under a table and blinked three times, then golden light burst out of it. The glow raced across the floor and up the walls to the ceiling, coating everything. The guards launched to their feet, all shouting at once—then fell into speechless sile
nce. Clio stared too, her mouth hanging open.
The room was gone. Instead, four tables and twelve guards stood in the middle of a sunny meadow. Gentle hills rolled toward the distant horizon, and the sky stretched even farther, dotted with fluffy clouds. Long grass swayed in waves, and a pair of songbirds flitted above the stalks, chasing each other. Everything was cast in a golden hue, the greens and blues awash in amber and tangerine shades.
Clio finally remembered to breathe. She inhaled sharply—and tasted the fresh, sweet air of a spring meadow. Lyre had made this? He had woven this spectacular vision of untouched nature, devoting what must have been countless hours to creating an illusion more complex and encompassing than anything she’d ever seen?
A spell hidden in his secret cache, but not a weapon. Not a defense. It was a weaving with no purpose other than a beautiful escape to a different place far from this town. Without Chrysalis demanding he weave weapons and death spells, was this the kind of magic he would create?
A guard swore quietly, the epithet hushed with either awe or fear. Urgency sparked through her and she scanned the meadow again, searching for a sign of the corridor. Her eyes were absolutely convinced that the illusion was real and there wasn’t a single wall within a hundred miles.
But she knew where she was supposed to go. As the guards muttered in apprehensive bewilderment, she darted out of her hiding spot. Keeping low, she rushed through the grass, surprised she couldn’t feel the blades under her palms. Too absorbed in the illusion, no one even glanced her way.
Between one step and the next, it all vanished. The dark corridor reappeared just as her shoulder hit a wall—she’d been running at an angle. But she was past the room, and she broke into a sprint.
The corridor ended at a perpendicular junction, and another hall was lined with doors that hung open, waiting for occupants. The nearest room contained nothing but a table and two chairs—an interrogation room? High on the back wall, a square window with two bars across it glowed with faint yellow light.
Gasping in relief, she sped across the room, pushed the chair out of the way, and dragged the table to the wall. Climbing on top of it, she focused her asper and examined the wards on the glass and frame. She traced the arc of a construct, then tapped a thread. A spark of magic, and the ward dissolved.
She glanced back at the door she’d left mostly closed, then focused on the last weave, one that would paralyze anyone who tried to pass through the window. After a brief examination, she destroyed the weave, leaving just the bars with a pane of glass behind them.
Urgency spiraled through her head. The bars were fused right into the steel wall and though they weren’t thick, they were more than enough to stop her. With no other choice, she jumped off the table, backed up a few steps, and gathered her magic.
Her blast hit the bars and exploded with a sound like a gunshot. The glass and bars shattered. She leaped onto the table and heaved herself up. The window was tiny, and her petite frame almost didn’t fit. She jammed her shoulders in, the jagged stubs of the bars tearing at her clothes, and wiggled through. The ground outside was almost level with the bottom of the window, and she scrabbled at the damp moss carpet for purchase as she squeezed her hips through the frame.
A hand closed around her ankle and yanked her back.
The stubs of the bars scraped her torso and her chin hit the sill as she was pulled back into the room. She fell, landing on her stomach on the table amid shards of glass. Twisting around, she looked back and choked on a scream.
Three guards stood right behind her, one still holding her ankle.
In the instant she stared at them, her terror and despair vanished. Cold tranquility swept through her, and her mind cleared of emotion except for the ruthless, instinctive need to survive. To escape.
She slashed her hand out. The band of force struck the closest guard in the chest, flinging him back into his comrades.
They all pulled out black rods, the looped ends crackling with power—the same weapon Dulcet had used on Lyre and that Clio had slammed into the psycho incubus’s face. The guards lunged for her and she cast the shield she had learned from Viol.
Their weapons bounced off the barrier. Snarling, a guard raised his free hand and began to cast.
Clio raised her hand, mimicking his movements. Magic spun out from his fingers, and she followed. At the same time, she lifted her other hand and began a second, different cast.
He flung out his spell—an attack that would have blasted her back into the wall and bound her in place. She cast her identical spell and the two collided, exploding on contact. Then she snapped her other hand down, and the binding she’d created closed around the guard, locking his arms and legs together. He toppled over backward.
The other guards retreated toward the door, weapons raised and shields popping over them. Clio slid her fingers down Lyre’s chain, selected a gem by memory, and broke it off. A touch of magic activated it, and she tossed it at their feet.
A circle of light expanded from the stone, catching both guards in its radius. Soundless lightning erupted from the circle, raging across the guards’ bodies. They arched in agony, eyes bulging, and collapsed onto the floor, still in the circle. The paralyzing weave crackled over them, keeping them down.
Clio grabbed the window again. She squeezed into it, dragged her legs through, then scrambled free. Not wasting time glancing back, she bolted across the stretch of moss toward the wall surrounding the property. Darkness lay thick and heavy over the land, the long eclipse unbroken. The ground squished underfoot, wet with recent rain.
A flash of glowing light shot toward her.
She twisted to one side, and something grazed her upper arm. She hit the ground on her knees, and the arrow pierced the dirt behind her, the spell on its head sputtering out. Blood gushed down her arm where the arrow had cut across her bicep.
She scrabbled for the chain around her neck. Touching a gem, she activated the spell as she sprang to her feet. A thick cloud of darkness surrounded her, shadows that blended with the night. Another arrow whizzed through the air, missing her by a foot. She ran. Guards fired a few more bolts from the narrow towers interspersed along the wall, but they missed her by wider and wider margins, the illusory darkness hiding her movements.
She ran to the wall and pressed against it. The illusion weave moved with her, bound to the gem around her neck. While sheltered, she tore a strip off her skirt and bound it around her arm, tying it as tight as possible to staunch the flow of blood. Then she craned her neck to see the top of the stone barrier.
Too tall to jump. No rope or ladder.
She backed up a few steps to give herself a running start. Then, briefly closing her eyes, she let her glamour fall. It resisted as though this world was rejecting her true form, then tingles rushed over her body and strength filled her limbs.
She charged the wall and leaped, using a pulse of magic to launch her even higher. She grabbed the walls, hooking her claws into the rough stone. Her feet, bare without the shoes she’d been wearing in glamoured form, dug into the wall, and she climbed. Slipping and scrabbling for purchase, she hauled herself over the top, then dropped twelve feet to the cobblestones on the other side.
The moment her feet hit the ground she was sprinting, nearly flying, with the wind whipping over her skin and tugging at her hair. With the strength and agility of her true form, hidden by Lyre’s shadow illusion, she raced away from the bastille and into the dark streets of Asphodel.
Clio slowed from her breakneck run to an easy lope. Water sloshed in the canal beside her, and just ahead was a bridge spanning its width. Chrysalis was near. For the second time in one night—or rather, in one eclipse—she would break into the building.
She didn’t know for sure Lyre was in there. But if the Rysalis weavers hadn’t sent him to the bastille with her, where else would they be keeping him?
Lyre’s shadow illusion had sputtered out two blocks ago. She was sure there was a way to recharge it and reenga
ge the illusion, but she didn’t have time to figure it out. Luckily, Asphodel was quiet, its streets empty. The darkness of the eclipse seemed to soothe the denizens of this world into a restful state, and so far, the bastille hadn’t raised any alarms over her escape—at least, not that she could tell.
She trotted onto the bridge. The cobblestones shone with moisture, and the air had the cool bite of a recent rainfall, its freshness clearing the bastille’s stench from her nose. As she rushed off the bridge, a pale flash in her peripheral vision had her spinning around, her hands raised defensively. But there was no one there—only her reflection in a large puddle.
She stared at herself—at her true face she’d rarely seen in the last two years. In Irida, she had never used glamour. In fact, she hadn’t learned how until two years ago. But on Earth, she’d rarely lifted it, binding herself in a human form so she could blend in.
Now her face looked like a stranger’s … or perhaps a long-lost friend’s. Her skin, already fair, was now a glistening ivory. Pale greenish-gold markings ran across her cheeks and around the edges of her face, across her arms, and down her legs, hugging her hips and waist. She could see it all because, as was traditional for nymphs, she was clad in a simple white hip wrap and a matching band of fabric to bind her breasts. Barefoot and weaponless, she wore only her minimal garments and the fine, sparkling chains of gemstones looped around her neck, waist, wrists, and ankles.
They jingled with every movement—not helpful for stealth. Unlike Lyre’s chain lying atop hers, her collection of lodestones was useless. None of them held magic or weavings—they were purely decorative, though not all nymphs failed to make use of theirs.
She focused on her face again, on the waist-length waves of hair falling down her back. Her hair was still a soft golden blond, but in this form, it shimmered silvery white like sunlight reflecting on ripples of water. With her fair skin and shimmering hair, she looked like a creature of light that had no place in the darkness of the night realm.
The only spot that wasn’t pale was the stained cloth tied around her arm and the lines of dark blood dribbling from the drenched fabric.