Unleash the Storm (Steel & Stone Book 5)

  “You’ll be a little too busy to come with me,” Lyre replied. “And since you’ll be the center of attention, I’d prefer you stay away from Chrysalis while I’m in there.”

  “You can summon me once you’re ready for fire, but you’ll need someone to guard your back.” Ash raised his voice slightly. “Well, Piper?”

  Her eyes went wide. She clapped both hands to her face, an embarrassed blush rushing into her cheeks. Crap. Hunching her shoulders, she reluctantly stepped away from the wall and slid the door open a foot. The two daemons stood side by side in almost identical poses with their arms folded. Lyre’s golden eyes were chilly and hard, but amusement glinted in Ash’s eyes.

  “Of course I’ll guard Lyre’s back,” she said in a small voice.

  Lyre gave an abrupt nod and turned to Ash. “I’ll start on something to deal with the estate wards, then I’ll see what else I can put together.”

  “Will you have time for anything else?” Ash asked.

  Piper tried not to show her confusion but Lyre’s gaze snapped to her.

  “I can weave death spells in my sleep,” he answered Ash, his eyes cutting her like golden knives. “I’ll have time. Don’t forget to talk to the draconians about the supplies I’ll need.”

  He looked away from her, cast one bitter glance at Ash, then strode past her and out the door. She sucked in a shaky breath as she pulled herself back together.

  “I’m not a good friend, am I?” she mumbled as Seiya’s warning circled in her head. Would Lyre forgive her for eavesdropping on the secret he’d kept from her for so long? Ash might have wordlessly invited her to follow, but she’d made the choice to eavesdrop when Lyre didn’t know she was listening.

  Ash unfolded his arms, relaxing his stance. “Lyre trusts you, but keeping secrets is too deeply ingrained in him. You would have found out anyway, and this was easier for him than having to actually tell you to your face.”

  “But he’s angry with me …”

  “I guarantee he’s angrier with me. Don’t worry, he won’t hold it against you.”

  She rubbed her hands together to warm them. “So Lyre used to work for Chrysalis?”

  “Chrysalis was as much a prison for him as Asphodel was for me. Even though he took a lot of Hades secrets with him when he got out, he did a very good job vanishing off their radar. Maasehet is the only daemon I know of to ever connect him with the Chrysalis master weavers.”

  She nodded slowly. That explained why, when Maasehet had sold Lyre back to his family, it had been Hades reapers waiting to claim him.

  Master weavers. It was strange to think of Lyre as a master anything. Even though she’d seen more than enough examples of his spell weaving abilities, she couldn’t reconcile that with the flirtatious, easygoing incubus she knew. Which persona was the real Lyre? Or were both equally real, just two different sides of one coin?

  Ash stepped closer, his fingers brushing down her arm. “Is everything okay? You looked upset while I was talking to the elders.”

  She met his questioning eyes and pushed away her dread that their time together was quickly drawing to an end. He had enough to worry about without adding her emotional meltdowns into the mix. She gave him a weak smile.

  “Just anxious to get my trip to Earth over with. We need to know what Hades is up to there.”

  His eyes searched hers for a moment more, and she wasn’t sure he was buying her white lie. Then he slid his hand to her back and guided her toward the door.

  “We should prepare some supplies for you,” he said as they left the small room.

  She followed him, putting everything else out of her mind. She had enough to worry about over the next cycle—three days on Earth to gather as much information as she could, and then they were going to war.

  * * *

  Piper strode down the corridor, trying to keep Seiya’s directions straight in her head. Her newly acquired weapons clinked quietly with each step—a long sword, two short swords, and an assortment of daggers and throwing knives to go with her pair of ryujin dragon blades. She looked ready to wage a war all by herself.

  Kiev and Teva were waiting for her. Despite her protests, Ash had insisted she not go alone. He and Lyre were too busy to accompany her, so Kiev would be her official escort. She might have protested more, but he and Teva would save her some serious travel time from the ley line to Brinford. Plus, Kiev was good company.

  However, she couldn’t leave just yet. She didn’t want to go while Lyre was still upset with her. She hadn’t seen him since he’d walked away from his conversation with Ash, and she feared Seiya was right that he wouldn’t forgive her.

  After a couple wrong turns, she found the correct room. The suite was the same style of draconian dwelling she’d seen in the abandoned city: a circular central room with a handful of smaller rooms attached. An open doorway revealed the incubus sitting at a low wooden table. He was bent over a gem in his hands but he looked up as she walked in. His expression wasn’t friendly. Glittering gemstones and a handful of arrows were scattered across the surface in front of him.

  Shame made her steps hesitate but she forced herself to keep moving until she reached the table. She knelt beside his low chair. He stared coldly at her.

  She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Lyre. I had no right to do that.”

  Silence.

  Her lower lip trembled. “I—I’m leaving now. I wanted to … to say goodbye.”

  She looked down at her hands clenched in her lap, unable to meet his icy stare any longer. She didn’t want to leave it like this. After all they’d been through together, she didn’t want to leave while he was hurt and upset with her.

  Fingers touched her chin lightly, lifting her face to his. The Lyre she knew and loved smiled gently at her. His thumb wiped a tear from her cheek that she hadn’t realized she’d shed.

  “You’re too curious for your own good, Piper,” he murmured.

  “I’m so sorry,” she choked, another tear escaping. “I just—just—”

  He pulled her into a hug, wrapping warm arms around her. The spicy cherry scent of incubus filled her nose as she hugged him tightly, squeezing her eyes shut against relieved tears.

  She pulled back to look at him. “You told me before that your secrets were yours to keep and I had no right to them, and you were right. I shouldn’t have listened in.”

  An amused twinkle sparked in his golden eyes. “Well, Ash practically invited you to follow us and then didn’t even warn me you were there.”

  Defending Ash probably wasn’t the response Lyre wanted to hear, so she nodded instead. He looked calm enough, but she was watching for his dissembling mask of easygoing incubus. Underneath that veil of amusement, he was on edge, waiting for her condemnation of what he’d once been and done.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t expect your bad pickup lines to work on me now just because I know you’re some famous spell weaver.”

  He blinked, then a laugh burst out of him. Humor warmed his eyes, his pleasure genuine with nothing hidden in his gaze.

  “If the bad ones won’t work,” he asked, “how about my good pickup lines instead?”

  She snorted. “Nope. Being a genius doesn’t win you any points with me.”

  He waved a hand. “Hardly a genius. I was the intellectual runt of my family. Even my youngest brother could weave a tetrahedron complex before I could.”

  “A … what?” She shook her head. “I need to get going, but there’s one more thing.”

  She pulled the gem-encased Sahar from her pocket and held it out to Lyre. He looked from the Stone to her, an unspoken question in his eyes.

  “You should take care of it. It’s not … not a good idea for me to carry it around.”

  He lifted it from her palm. “Still tempting you?” The words were soft, understanding.

  She huffed. “Sort of? I’m more afraid I’ll panic and try to use it to save my life, which wouldn’t go well.”
>
  “No, not well at all.”

  “It’s better that you hang on to it.”

  He set it on his other side, a big glittering amethyst among the tiny, sparkling gemstones. Pulling her eyes from the Sahar, she rose to her feet.

  “I have something for you too.” He stood with her and stuck a hand in his pocket. He pulled out two small gems. “New signal spells for you and Ash. I have the third and Seiya has the fourth in the set. Any one of us within a couple hundred miles will be in range.”

  She accepted the two stones. “That’s a pretty big step up from the range of Ash’s tracking spell.”

  “Genius weaver, remember? Of course I can do better than Ash.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a genius.”

  He smirked. “Only compared to my brothers.”

  She swatted his arm, then hugged him one more time. He returned her embrace without hesitation and she breathed a sigh of relief that her eavesdropping hadn’t permanently harmed their friendship.

  “Don’t take too long,” he said, stepping back. “I need my date for the big Chrysalis reunion.”

  She had no idea how he could speak so lightly of the upcoming battle. She managed a smile despite the surge of nerves in her belly. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  As she walked out, leaving him to his spells, she wished she possessed some skill or magic that could stop the coming war entirely. But the wheels were already turning and it couldn’t be stopped. All that was left to do was try to twist the odds in their favor, because she feared they were stacked far too high against them.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the bluish dusk, the lights inside the rundown stone church leaked a yellow glow through the cracks between the boards over the windows. At least someone was home.

  Piper glanced over her shoulder at Kiev. He was looking somewhat less dangerous than usual in glamour, but his expression was a mixture of bleakness and unease as he pulled his wrap over the lower half of his face. They hadn’t been able to see much of Brinford during their flight, but what they had seen made her stomach churn. If the city had looked like a warzone when she’d left, it now looked positively apocalyptic. Glowing fires had turned the horizon red but she wouldn’t be able to see the full extent of the damage until morning. Why was the city in such bad shape? Had the Gaians really done so much damage fighting the few daemons remaining in the city?

  Huffing and hitching her small pack of supplies higher up on her shoulder, she crossed the dusty front lawn to the doors and pushed one open. At the other end of the foyer, the church opened into a tall, echoing sanctuary. Quiet voices murmured from the far end where a small cluster of people sat on the floor in a circle, playing some kind of card game. Busy saving the city from the daemon war, clearly.

  As she walked into the sanctuary with Kiev trailing behind her, her boots clicked loudly on the stone floor. Several heads rose as the noise interrupted their game. One of the girls jumped to her feet.

  “Oh my god!” Melonie gasped. “Piper?”

  Managing a smile that was half grimace, Piper lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave as she crossed toward them. As the others stood, Melonie dropped her hand of cards and ran to Piper, grabbing her in a tight hug.

  “Oh my god,” she babbled. “You’ve been gone so long! Consul Calder was so worried that you were killed in Habinal City.”

  Piper flinched. She—or rather, Natania—had been partially responsible for the death toll at the Gaian facility.

  “Nope, didn’t die,” she said, forcing a casual tone as she patted Melonie on the back.

  “Were you there?” a far more belligerent tone demanded.

  She looked at Randy, who stood with his eyes narrowed and arms folded. Melonie released her from her hug and stepped back, looking uncertainly at Randy. The others joined them—Jerome and Lee, plus a handful of apprentices around the same age that hadn’t been at the church when she’d left.

  “I was there,” she told Randy neutrally. “We made it out just before the reapers closed in.”

  “Did you now?” he said, a challenging note in his voice. “They say there were no survivors—except for the ‘Hades force,’ of course.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said, ‘they say.’ Who’s ‘they’? Did you get this straight from the reaper army?”

  Irritation tightened his face. He waved a hand as if that wasn’t important and focused on Kiev behind her. His lips curled in a sneer.

  “Who’s he? Another daemon?”

  “Can’t you tell? Identifying daemons is practically the first apprenticeship lesson.”

  “He’s a draconian, isn’t he?” His gaze snapped over Kiev’s leather garb, numerous weapons, and face wrap, which disguised his age and made him look all the more sinister. Even in glamour, he was intimidating. Since he’d correctly guessed Kiev’s caste, she was surprised Randy was acting so aggressively.

  “It’s rude to talk about people like they aren’t there,” she said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Randy’s bluster faltered slightly before he pulled his sneer back into place. Ignoring Kiev, he jerked his chin in the general direction of her torso—clad in her shimmering ryujin outfit with draconian blades strapped just about anywhere she could attach a weapon.

  “Looks like you upgraded your daemon gear there, Piper,” he jeered. “Did you get it from your new draconian friend or were you cozying up with the daemons destroying the city?”

  “Wow, really?” She rolled her eyes. “You do realize that not every single daemon in existence is involved in the conflict in this one single city, right?”

  Lee started to snicker but stopped when Randy turned to glower at him.

  “Anyway.” Piper planted one hand on her hip. “Thanks for that warm welcome, Randy. Moving on, I need to see my father and uncle. Are they here?”

  “Not right now,” Melonie answered quickly. “They had a meeting but they should be back within the hour.”

  “A meeting with who?”

  “Don’t tell her,” Randy barked as Melonie opened her mouth to answer. “She doesn’t get any answers until she starts answering our questions.”

  Piper turned to face him, her expression hardening despite her efforts to remain friendly. “Your questions?”

  “Yeah, like what happened in Habinal City and where the hell you’ve been since then. What have you been up to all this time?” Randy folded his arms. “When the Consuls get back, they’ll demand the same answers.”

  Melonie grimaced at the floor and Lee looked uncomfortable, but Jerome and the other four—familiar faces but she couldn’t remember their names—were nodding in encouragement of Randy’s words.

  “In that case,” she said flatly, “I’ll save my breath and answer their questions when they get here.”

  Stepping back, she tossed her pack down on the nearest pew, then plopped down beside it and propped her boots up on the back of the pew in front of her. She smiled to herself as she realized she’d just mimicked Ash’s exact position when he’d been waiting for her in the church so many weeks ago. Kiev drifted over to the pew behind her but didn’t sit, his ice-blue eyes travelling across the apprentices.

  Randy and Jerome glared at her where she sat. She ignored them. Their attitudes probably should have bothered her more—last time they’d accused her of suspicious activity, she’d been furious and hurt—but she really didn’t care what they thought. She had a job to do and she would save her energy for that.

  Melonie looked between Piper and her peers and back again, then pushed past the guys and sat beside Piper on the pew.

  “Did you hear about the Consul Board?” she asked. “About a month ago, they—”

  “Melonie!” Randy shouted. “Shut it!”

  “No!” she yelled back. “She should know what’s going on, and it’s not like her father and uncle won’t tell her all this immediately anyway!”

  “But she—
”

  Kiev shifted, a small move that grabbed Randy’s attention. He paled under the draconian’s stare and snapped his mouth shut.

  Melonie turned back to Piper. “The Consul Board of Directors has dissolved.”

  Sitting up, Piper dropped her boots back to the floor. The news wasn’t a surprise but she hadn’t expected it to happen so fast.

  “The Ras tried to force the Board to push for a special government sanction,” Melonie continued, “to give prefects the right to kill daemons instead of just arrest them. Half the Board balked, some of the corrupt members were discovered, and the whole thing fell apart. All the Consulates in the region have been burned down or abandoned, and we don’t know what’s going on with the rest.”

  Piper tamped down on the surge of bitter disappointment rising in her chest. So it was over then. The Consulate system was done. She’d suspected it was coming, had even discussed it with Uncle Calder, but facing the reality of it was more painful than she’d imagined. Somehow, through everything that had happened, the vague, deep-down hope that someday she would complete her apprenticeship and become a Consul just like she’d always dreamed had lingered persistently in her subconscious. Losing that comforting vision of the future felt like someone had just knocked out one of the pillars that supported the foundation of her very being.

  “Well,” she said heavily, “no Consulates are better than Ra-controlled Consulates.”

  She wanted to ask more questions about the Consulates’ fall, but she had to stay focused. She had more important things to worry about than a system that had been failing before she’d left and was now beyond saving.

  “What’s been happening here in the city?” she asked instead. “It looks like a war zone out there. Way worse than when I left.”

  Melonie gave her an odd look. “It is a war zone. Didn’t you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “The daemon war is here.”

  She went still, staring at the girl. Kiev pivoted toward them, his sudden attention making Melonie shrink. She pushed her shoulders back again with obvious effort.