Chapter 38

Chapter Thirty-Eight

LYRE

“I’m not with the Gaians,” Lyre announced loudly for every griffin, including their prince, to hear. “I was their prisoner. I’m not affiliated with them or helping them. In fact, I despise their very existence and would be happy to see them all dead.”

All the griffin soldiers stared at him.

Miysis raised an eyebrow, then glanced at his men. “You heard him. Remove that binding and resume your search. I’ll question him.”

The soldier dissolved the binding spell with a sharp poke to Lyre’s left wrist. Then he and his comrades dispersed, leaving a handful of griffins to guard the prisoners—and protect their prince.

Lyre stuffed his hands in his pockets as Miysis joined him at the edge of the clearing where, conveniently, no one stood close enough to eavesdrop on them.

“I like the down-to-earth grungy look,” Lyre told the Ra prince in an undertone. “It’s a nice change for you.”

“What are you doing here?” Miysis demanded.

“A series of poor decisions and really bad luck.” Rocking back on his heels, Lyre swept another glance over the Ra prince. “What are you doing here?”

“I was captured when those haemon fools attacked the Brinford Consulate.”

Miysis had been one of the delegates at that meeting? If Lyre had known the Ra prince would be coming to the Consulate, he would’ve taken his leave ahead of time.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Miysis said. “And I want a real answer.”

Lyre rolled his eyes upward, searching for a version of the truth that wouldn’t dig this hole he was in any deeper. “I was at the Brinford Consulate too. I’m helping Piper—you know, the Head Consul’s kid—find her father.”

He leaned sideways around Miysis to look toward the other end of the clearing, where a man leaned against a tree while a griffin administered healing magic to his leg.

“ That father,” Lyre added.

Miysis also glanced at the man. “He’s not Quinn Griffiths. He’s Calder.”

Lyre’s brow furrowed. “I’m confused.”

“Is that so?”

“You know I’m not lying.” Lyre shrugged. “Well, anyway, can I go now?”

“Obviously not.”

“Will you take this collar off me, then?”

Something not very nice glittered in the prince’s eyes as he smiled. “I like the helpless look. It’s a nice change for you.”

Lyre scowled. “Are you really going to be like that?”

Smirking, Miysis stepped closer. He peered at the collar, picked a spot, and sent a shot of magic into it. The spell woven into the steel broke apart, and Lyre’s sense of his power returned in a rush. He heaved a relieved sigh.

“You’ll have to break the band off later.” Miysis canted his head. “Now tell me what you know about the Sahar Stone. You wouldn’t be here for any other reason.”

Lyre gave the prince a sardonic stare. “I don’t have the Sahar. I’ve never so much as touched it.”

Shadows flickered over Miysis’s eyes as he weighed Lyre’s words and their truth. “But have you so much as seen it?”

“There’s at least one fake floating around,” Lyre replied instead.

“True, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t want anything to do with the Sahar Stone.”

“Also true. Still not an answer.” Miysis leaned in until he was all but whispering in Lyre’s ear. “Say it, Lyre. ‘I don’t know where the Sahar is.’”

Lyre scoffed. “Miysis, the last thing I want is to get between you and the Stone. Can you just leave me out of it?”

“You say that as though you were dragged here against your will.”

“That’s not entirely inaccurate.”

“Lyre, as much as I enjoy playing truth or lie with your fiendishly evasive tongue, I can’t turn a blind eye to your presence here. I need to know what’s going on.”

“I’m not being difficult for the hell of it.” Lyre pulled a hand from his pocket to rake his fingers through his hair. “There are several people in this vicinity who I don’t want to die, including you.”

“I’m touched.” Miysis’s eyes darkened to emerald. “Who else is here?”

As the two most powerful families of their realms, Ra and Hades were mortal enemies. Ash’s unwilling allegiance to Samael was known only to a few, but Miysis was likely one of them—and Lyre wasn’t willing to gamble Ash’s life on whether the Ra prince would allow a Hades assassin to live.

“Lyre.” Miysis’s voice dropped to a growl, and he grasped the front of Lyre’s shirt, pulling his face close. To the watching soldiers, their prince was threatening the poor, defenseless incubus.

Lyre merely arched his eyebrows. “No one will believe we don’t know each other if you keep flirting with me like this.”

Miysis ignored that. “I’m asking you to cooperate with me. Please.”

Please wasn’t a word the Ra prince normally included in his vocabulary, and he wasn’t using it now to sound extra sincere. It was a warning.

“I understand that you have obligations to fulfill,” Lyre said, his tone sobering, “but we both know what can happen when magic that shouldn’t exist falls into the wrong hands. The Sahar is that type of magic.”

“Be that as it may, it does exist, and I can’t take the risk that someone will unleash it.”

“No one knows how to use it.”

Miysis seemed to weigh something in his mind, then said quietly, “ Almost no one.”

Lyre’s eyes widened.

“If I know its secret,” Miysis continued grimly, “then someone else may know—or discover it. Do you understand now? I can’t let that happen.”

Lyre cursed under his breath. If using the Sahar Stone wasn’t an impossibility but rather a closely guarded secret, that changed everything.

“Tell me, Lyre,” the prince said. “Who else is here, and do they have?—”

The raucous noise of gunfire interrupted him. Releasing Lyre’s shirtfront, Miysis turned toward the sound—somewhere on the other side of the decimated Consulate.

“Go check it out,” he barked at one of his soldiers.

The griffin rushed out of the clearing. More gunfire, screams, a metallic crash. It grew quiet again. A minute passed with no indication of what was happening beyond the trees.

An electric haze of magic sizzled through the air a moment before the explosive boom of an unleashed spell reached them.

As the ground vibrated under their feet, Miysis shot a questioning look at Lyre. He didn’t move, listening to a second spell detonate. Did that explosive magic belong to Ash? Lyre could think of few daemons capable of unleashing that much power at once.

“Lyre,” Miysis hissed. “Do you know who that is?”

Magic erupted again—but instead of an explosive boom, it was a sharp crack. This time, it lit the sky with a flare of icy white power.

His gaze snapping to the sky, Lyre took a step back. The pale cast had already extinguished, but he could still sense it—and he’d never felt anything like that before. It hadn’t been Ash, that was for sure.

“Impossible,” Miysis whispered.

A final low-pitched blast shook the earth, but the white magic didn’t reappear in the sky.

Miysis turned swiftly toward his soldiers. “You two, guard the prisoners. Consul Calder, wait here. We need to locate the source of that magic.”

Lyre gazed at the darkness overhead. Unless he was very much mistaken, that flare of white light had been the Sahar’s power—and whoever had unleashed it just became the most powerful magic-wielder in the three realms.

Assuming they survived the next five minutes.

Lyre flicked a glance over his shoulder. Miysis and his soldiers wouldn’t take long to find the Sahar and its wielder.

He slid his fingers under the neck of his shirt and along the spell chain hidden beneath it. Snapping a gemstone free, he tucked it against his palm and sent a spark into its weaving. A faint pulse told him it had engaged. Three seconds.

He ran his fingers through his hair again—using the motion to covertly toss the gemstone into the foliage a few yards away.

Two seconds.

He stepped backward, closer to the trees.

One second.

Bang! With a flash of light and sound, the gem self-destructed into untraceable dust.

As Miysis and the griffins whipped toward the diversion, Lyre darted into the trees. Casting a quick cloaking spell over himself, he raced toward the source of the magic with no idea of what he might find.