Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

CLIO

"So," Lyre drawled, "what exactly would you like to see?"

Clio followed him down a long hallway lined with doors. A handful of daemons walked past, unabashedly gawking at her. Again, they were all in glamour. Was that a rule here, perhaps?

"Everything?" she answered uncertainly.

Lyre glanced over his shoulder at her, and those amber eyes sent all her thoughts spinning out of her head. Was he doing that on purpose?

"‘Everything' is not happening," he said implacably. "I don't have all day."

"All night," she muttered.

"What?"

"Don't you mean ‘all night'?" she repeated with more volume. "It's not daytime. Or is it always dark here?"

He stopped and turned halfway to face her, pale locks of hair falling across his eyes. He brushed them aside, and she was glad her mask concealed her staring. She couldn't help herself. It wasn't just that he was insanely handsome. An irresistible magnetism emanated from his very being, and he didn't merely draw her attention—he submerged her mind in an intense awareness of him until she could think of nothing else.

"It is daytime," he said. "Did you do any research before coming here?"

She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic, but he spoke again before she could ask.

"You're here for military-grade spells, aren't you? So the types that would interest you are…" He tucked the binder under his arm and counted on his fingers. "Offensive, defensive, utility, enhancement, ailment?—"

"Ailment?" she interrupted. "As in a disease?"

He sighed like she was a complete dunce. "An ailment weaving imposes a condition on its target, like a paralysis or sleep spell."

"Oh." She was familiar with those spells, just not his terminology. And she didn't appreciate his assumption that she didn't know a thing about weavings.

He started forward again. "I guess we'll start there."

She trailed after him silently. Bastian had ensured Clio was well educated on weaving techniques, but she wasn't sure whether she should reveal her knowledge to Lyre. What would be more advantageous?

At an intersection of corridors, he swung left. The halls quieted, fewer and fewer people crossing their path as they headed deeper into the building.

"Can I assume you're familiar with magic-dampening collars?" Lyre eventually said, the bored drone back in his voice. "Used primarily to block the use of magic, they're our foremost ailment-type export. We produce collars in several strength levels, as well as various forms of magic-dampening restraints."

He stopped at a door marked AI – Dampening 1-3 Surplus and drummed his fingers across it. Magic shivered over Clio's senses as a spell disengaged. He popped the door open and hit a switch just inside.

A fluorescent light flickered on, illuminating a narrow room that stretched surprisingly far back. Metal shelves filled with simple crates lined the walls. Clio's eyes widened as she looked from crate to crate, each loaded with dozens of shiny silver collars or metal cuffs. Hundreds of them.

She knew about magic-dampening collars. They were the primary tool human law enforcement used against daemons on Earth—though even with the collars, humans didn't have an easy time imprisoning a daemon. She'd never considered where those collars came from. How many of them did Chrysalis's weavers produce each year?

"Fascinating, right?" Lyre intoned.

She backed sharply away from the threshold. As he shut off the light and closed the door, she squinted down the long hall. AI-something marked most of the doors. Ailment weavings.

"You mentioned utility and enhancement magic," she prompted once he'd rekeyed the protective spell on the door.

"Chrysalis specializes in combat enhancement weaves that increase a user's strength, speed, endurance, and so on. We also offer a variety of illusion spells for covert operations and…" He trailed off with such a bored sigh that she almost felt bad for him. Apparently deciding she wasn't worth the effort of finishing the sentence, he went on in an even drier monotone. "Utility weavings encompass a broad range of spells, but you'd probably be most interested in ones like tracking, communication, and signal spells for coordinating troops."

She almost asked, "What troops?" before remembering she was supposed to be preparing for a war. As much as she wanted to see everything, the longer she spent in Lyre's company, the greater the risk he would recognize her.

"I'd like to see your offensive magic next."

He cast her a sidelong look. "To the department of blood and mayhem, then."

She blinked, confused by his expression, but he was already walking. He led her to a steel door, and when she saw the stairwell behind it, her nerves started churning again—especially when he headed down the stairs.

In the basement level, their quiet footsteps reverberated off the concrete walls. The stuffy air carried a hint of something that smelled suspiciously like blood.

"So what did you want to see, specifically?" Lyre asked. "We have single-target, area attacks, covert offensive, weapon-based…" He waved in an all-encompassing gesture. "Do you simply want to kill your enemies, or do you want them to die screaming and cursing your name to their gods?"

Her steps faltered. "What?"

"We supply weaponry for every sort of war. The ‘honorable' kind, where you slaughter your way through witless soldiers until someone gives up, or the other kind."

"Other … kind …?"

He glanced back at her, the gleam in his eyes cruelly mocking. "The kind where you and your enemy see who can commit the most horrific atrocities against the other. Would you like to blind them? Burn them alive? Melt their bones? Explode their skulls? Or would you rather shatter their legs and leave them to die slowly on the battlefield?"

She didn't realize she'd stopped walking until he faced her, hands in his pockets and an icy smirk twisting his lips.

"If you can imagine it, we have a spell that will do it. And if we don't have what you want—however unlikely that is—we'll make it for you. So?"

Her pulse quickened. He was one of the weavers who made those horrible spells, so why could she see condemnation lurking in his eyes?

"So?" he repeated.

"So … what?"

"What do you want to see?"

"I don't…" She drew in a shaky breath. She didn't want to see any of those awful spells—burning soldiers alive, melting their bones, exploding their skulls. Who would do that, even to their worst enemy? But she was here to copy a spell frightening enough to stop a war before it could start. Didn't that mean it had to be something horrific?

"Whatever you want," she mumbled. "Whatever you think I should see."

His gaze darted across her mask. Then he turned on his heel and started forward again. She forced herself to follow, longing to be back in her garden, surrounded by her plants with her hands buried in the warm earth, instead of being trapped within these cold, lifeless walls. She struggled to pull herself together. As repulsive as Chrysalis's magic was, she had a job to do.

"The most economical option for your needs," Lyre said, his tone flattening to dull indifference again, "would be to invest in large quantities of area attacks. These single spells come in numerous varieties—force expulsion, fire bomb, shrapnel—and depending on the type, they can be lethal up to twenty-five yards from the detonation point. The larger the damage radius, the more expensive the spell, obviously."

He rounded another bend into a wider corridor. On one side was a row of doors. On the other, a long window revealed the interior of a spacious room, where a dozen daemons in lab coats bent over sturdy tables, busy with their work.

Ignoring the window, Lyre moved to a door and tapped it to unlock the wards. OF – AA Explosive 1-5 Surplus declared its sign. He pushed the door open to reveal another storage room, this one full of smaller crates loaded with marble-sized steel balls.

Clio stopped in the threshold, her mouth hanging open in horror. These were all explosive "area attack" spells? There were hundreds. No, thousands. Enough to supply an army. Enough to annihilate an entire enemy force.

She'd never been more thankful that Ra was their enemy and not Hades.

She stepped past Lyre into the room. It was time for her to get to work. Closing her eyes, she casually passed her hand in front of her face, pretending to adjust her mask. Then she opened her eyes.

Light blazed in her enhanced sight, emanating from each crate. She turned to the nearest one, lifted her hand, then glanced questioningly at Lyre.

He was alight with magic too. A golden shimmer encased his body—the magic of his glamour and the aura of his power—and a haze of light shone through his dark shirt just below the neckline, where he must be wearing a necklace of spells. Similar spots glowed through his pockets. He wasn't as well armed as he'd been on Earth, but he was still packing a lot of magic.

"May I?" she asked, gesturing at the crate.

He shrugged. Taking that as permission, she plucked a steel marble out of a crate and held it on her palm.

All daemons could see magic, but not all magic was obvious. A cast—magic shaped and unleashed on the spot—was a glowing, visible conjuration to all daemons. But weaves—magic embedded into something else—could be subtle or nearly invisible depending on the skill of the weaver.

Then there was the complexity of weavings. They could be as simple as a single layer of magic or punishingly intricate, with dozens of constructs layered over each other. Daemons could see the top layer of a weaving or, at best, a layer or two below that.

Unless, of course, that daemon was a nymph.

Astral perception—usually called asper—was the nymph's unique caste ability. When Clio fixed her gaze on the small steel orb, the layers of the spell unraveled in her mind's eye, showing her each individual part. If that was all astral perception could do, it would be limited by a nymph's knowledge of weaving techniques, but it didn't end there. All nymphs could instinctively understand and interpret any and all magic they perceived with their enhanced sight.

It took her mere moments to absorb the weaving in the orb. She recognized the trigger point of the spell, the constructs that gave it shape and purpose—something involving fire—and an additional structure that determined the delay between activating the spell and the actual explosion. In its center was a glowing spot where the magic that fueled the whole thing was stored.

For most nymphs, that was the extent of what they could do. Clio, however, was a Nereid nymph, and the royal bloodline was special. Her ability went one step further: she could see all magic, understand all magic, and duplicate all magic.

She was a mimic, an ability so rare only a dozen nymphs alive possessed it.

She smiled at the spell in her hand. Now that she'd examined it, she could recreate it. That was the mimic ability. She didn't need years of training and practice to weave like a master weaver. She could duplicate this spell and every other bit of magic she laid her eyes on in Chrysalis. She would never forget or confuse them. Her brain stored spells like a filing cabinet filled with schematics that she could recall at any time.

She set the orb down and chose another at random from a different shelf. After a few seconds of study, she returned it to the crate and walked slowly down the aisle. The farther into the room she ventured, the more complex and powerful the spells became—and she could replicate every single one.

Chrysalis—and Hades—would burn Irida to the ground if they ever found out that a nymph mimic had stolen the blueprints of their exclusive weavings.

Lyre followed a few steps behind Clio, watching her. He had to know she was studying the weavings, but he had no reason to believe she could understand what she saw, let alone copy it. Even if he knew about astral perception, he couldn't know she was a mimic. No one but Bastian, their father, and a handful of royal advisors knew Clio existed.

She was almost at the end of the room when a voice broke the terse quiet. "Who opened this—oh, it's you, Lyre."

A daemon stood in the threshold, dark-haired and wearing a lab coat like all the other Chrysalis weavers. He glanced past Lyre and spotted Clio.

"Who is?—"

"Client," Lyre interrupted dismissively. "If you don't need anything in here, keep walking."

Clio blinked. Wow, rude.

"Um." The daemon hesitated, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Since you're here, could I trouble you to ask…"

Irritation snapped across Lyre's face, but he stepped closer to the daemon, listening to a question that got technical real fast. Something about weaving tetrahedron complexes?

Leaving them in the doorway, Clio walked to the far wall, surveying the shelves and the colorful glow of spells. Near the entrance, where the less destructive spells were stored, many colors were mixed together—reds, purples, blues, greens—reflecting the color of the weaver's magic, which varied depending on their caste.

Closer to the back of the room, the crates were filled predominantly with gold weavings—the same color as Lyre's magic. Had he woven these? How long would it take one daemon to weave so many?

As she stepped up to the last rack, she realized she hadn't quite reached the end of the room. Tucked beyond the last shelf was another door—solid steel with no visible handle or lock. Unremarkable to anyone else, but not to her eyes.

Her astral perception revealed a web of magic that crisscrossed the metal. Runes filled four overlapping circles that shifted in a spiraling pattern, and her instinctive understanding of magic warned her that it wasn't a friendly weave. The top layer, however, appeared to be a simple lock spell that delivered a painful shock if touched.

That top layer was faulty; minuscule gaps separated the components. It was a decoy. Any other daemon who examined the door would see only the lock spell. Thinking they could break it easily, they would touch the door and…

She raised her fingers, keeping a safe several inches between her skin and the steel, and traced a glowing circle. That. She'd never seen anything quite like that before, but she knew it would react to touch. How it would react was another matter.

Intrigued, she leaned in closer, peering intently at the weaving's underlayers as she tried to work out what it did.

"Don't touch that."

Lyre's voice shattered the silence right behind her. A squeak of fright escaped her as she jerked backward from the door—but her hand went the wrong way. Her fingers, already so close to the door, bumped the metal surface.

She cringed in terror, fully expecting the door to explode or her bones to melt or her skull to burst open. Nothing happened—until she tried to pull her hand away.

It was stuck.

She yanked on her hand, but it was fused to the metal as though her skin were superglued in place.

"I told you not to touch it."

A second rush of panic chased the first as she twisted toward Lyre. He stood two paces away, watching her with cool interest, his amber gaze unreadable.

She was trapped. She'd gotten herself stuck in a spell while alone in Chrysalis's basement with an incubus.