Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

CLIO

An alluring fragrance drew Clio awake. She inhaled deeply and nuzzled her cheek into a soft pillow. The irresistible scent filled her head, a captivating blend of spices underlaid with an unexpected but delicious hint of cherry. It was heaven. She pulled in another breath as her eyelids fluttered open.

A bedroom? Anxiety pierced the silly cloud of contentment the scent had instilled in her, and she pushed up on one elbow, trying to remember where she was. The unfamiliar room was a mess, with books piled by the wall, an unstrung bow standing in the corner, and clothing scattered around—male clothes.

A navy shirt hung half off the bed on the other side as though its owner had pulled it off and thrown it toward the floor. She picked it up, hesitated, then gingerly brought the fabric to her nose. That spicy cherry scent teased her, and a familiar face materialized in her mind's eye.

Lyre. This shirt and the pillow smelled like him. Was this his bedroom? How had she gotten here?

She frowned at her nymph outfit, so much worse for wear than she remembered. Why was she wearing it? Wait. She'd put it on for Samael's fancy event at the Hades residence?—

Memories slammed through her. The little dragon under the table. The draconian mercenary. The warlord grabbing at him. Blood spraying everywhere. She'd fled, gotten lost in the halls, and wandered until—until someone had grabbed her from behind.

Dulcet.

She leaped from the bed and almost face-planted on the floor. Catching her balance, she looked around wildly. The last thing she remembered was Dulcet leaning over her in a dark room with a terrifying metal table in the center. She couldn't recall anything beyond the cold touch of his magic.

But this wasn't that room. And it smelled like Lyre, not Dulcet.

She dashed out of the bedroom and down a short hall. Barely seeing the cozy sitting room with a sofa and bookshelves, she locked on the table, where a familiar figure was slumped, head resting on one arm, fast asleep.

"Lyre," she gasped in relief, rushing toward him.

He didn't react, and as she reached his side, unexpected fear swooped through her, so intense her limbs trembled. She grabbed his upper arm and squeezed hard.

"Lyre? Lyre!"

She took in the dirt on his clothes, his split knuckles, the tears in his shirt with raw scrapes beneath. Completely losing her head, she gripped his shoulders and yanked him upright.

He slumped limply in the chair, head hanging over the back, arms dangling. Her heart jammed itself into her throat, and she put her cheek against his nose and mouth, waiting to feel his breath on her skin.

Nothing.

"No." She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. "Lyre, don't you dare be dead. Don't you dare! "

She couldn't find his pulse. He wasn't breathing. Panic screamed inside her skull. What did she do? What was she supposed to do?

" Lyre! " she yelled.

Unfamiliar magic pulsed through his body. With a violent gasp, his chest heaved. His eyes flew open, then rolled back in his head as he convulsed. She grabbed his shoulders and eased him to the floor. Laying his head back, she knelt beside him, tears blurring her vision.

"Lyre! Lyre, are you okay?"

He kept shuddering and gasping, unresponsive to her voice. Clearly, he was not okay. Remembering that throb of magic, she passed her hand across her eyes to bring her asper into focus.

Red-tinted magic spun through his body, the threads pulsing grotesquely in time with his rasping breaths. She'd never seen such a tangle of magic with so many fine lines. They were woven deep through him, hooked into his flesh. She touched his throat just above his shirt collar and stretched her senses out, feeling the shape and purpose of the magic.

A death spell.

But not just a death spell. It was so much worse than that.

Lyre's lungs heaved, and then his breathing weakened. His fingers contorted, dragging across the floor, and his whole body arched. The tendons in his neck stood out, straining against skin that had lost its golden warmth. His breath hissed through his clenched teeth.

Then he slumped to the floor and stopped breathing.

Quaking from head to toe, Clio kept her hand on his motionless chest and watched the threads of the spell flicker with reddish-gold power. The seconds crawled by, each one more agonizing than the last. Finally, at exactly thirty, the magic pulsed through his body.

He came back to life under her hand, heart hammering and lungs straining. Her fingers tightened around his shirt in furious despair.

A death spell that killed its victim, then brought them back to life to die all over again. And again. And again. It would keep killing and reviving Lyre until his body gave out and his heart could no longer beat.

It was the most revolting magic she'd ever seen. And she didn't know how to save him from it.

Staring intently, she analyzed the weave. Under her touch, Lyre gasped and trembled as the magic wrung the life from him once more. It was woven into him in a way she'd never seen before, as though his body had absorbed it into his very essence. Her fingers slid down his left arm, following the threads to their source.

She stopped at his wrist. A chalky substance that glistened like silver had dried on his skin. A wave of dizziness washed over her. Quicksilver. He'd been doused with a spell woven into quicksilver.

Dulcet must have done this. Lyre had gotten her away from his psychotic brother, but now… now…

She searched through the weave, desperately seeking a trigger or a flaw or a way to stop it. Lyre slowly, so very slowly, slipped toward death again, and when he quit breathing, she couldn't stop the tears from flooding her cheeks. She clutched his hand for the soul-rending thirty seconds until his heart launched back to life and he gasped for air.

"Lyre," she wept softly. "I'm so sorry."

She couldn't remove the spell. There was no trigger. No way to disengage or unkey it. It was buried deep in his body, and though she could have torn the magic from his flesh, it wouldn't save him.

The spell was killing him, but it was also keeping him alive. If she ripped the magic out, she would rip his life out with it. He would die.

Denial spun through her as she again searched the weaving for a different answer. If only she could stop the spell without removing it. If only she could destroy it in an instant, unmake it before it could take his life, erase it?—

She jerked upright. Erase it. Unmake it. She didn't possess that kind of magic. No one did.

But somehow, Lyre had created it.

The spell in the clock. The one hidden under the bookshelf in his workroom. It ate magic. It could devour the magic from his body without lifting the spell from his flesh first.

"Lyre." She put her mouth beside his ear. "I know what to do. I can save you. But you have to hold on, okay? You have to hold on until I come back."

As she leaned over him, his eyelids flicked open. Clouded amber eyes met hers, and his fingers squeezed her hand painfully. Then his eyes rolled back, and he went limp again.

Letting him go was one of the hardest things Clio had ever done. She darted into his bedroom, grabbed a pillow, and tucked it under his head. Crouched beside him, she stroked his cheek, then his lips, feeling his hot breath on her fingers.

"Keep breathing, Lyre," she whispered. "Keep living. I'll be back as soon as I can."

She ran to the door and found the whole house locked down in heavy wards. Locating the triggers, she unkeyed them one by one, slipped outside, closed the door, and rearmed the wards. She hesitated, terrified he would die while she was gone—die for good.

But if she stayed, he'd have no chance at all.

Whirling around, she sprinted away from the house and into the darkness of Asphodel, counting each passing minute in her head, knowing Lyre had far too few left.

Asphodel was a maze, but there was one landmark Clio knew—a tall tower she could see from the inn balcony. It rose above the other buildings, and using it as her guide, she ran through the empty streets.

She'd never been alone on the streets of Asphodel before, and the eclipse's deep darkness sucked away the lights of the buildings. Shadows pressed close, shifting and eddying like living things.

She ran down a short alley and into a wider street, orienting herself toward the tower again. If she could reach the tower, she could navigate from there. At the gate of the housing complex where Lyre lived, she'd woven a simple tracking beacon into a rock, a spell to guide her return.

A stitch cut into her side, but she didn't slow. She had no idea how much time Lyre had left. The blood magic weave would keep killing him every few minutes until he died for good. Who knew how long that would take?

"Hey, you!"

Clio slid to a halt. Whirling around, she discovered two daemons standing a dozen feet away from her, dressed in black fatigues with short-cropped hair and reddish-black eyes. Reaper soldiers, though unlike the ones outside Asphodel, they were in glamour. How had they gotten so close without her noticing them?

"A girl?" one muttered as he studied her.

"At least it's not that damn draconian. The sound of running made me think he'd come back this way."

"You wouldn't hear him on the move. Besides, he took off toward the entertainment district." The soldier focused on Clio. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I—I'm an envoy. I got lost after the party at the palace?—"

"That ended hours ago. You're the envoy of what territory, exactly?"

"Of … Irida."

"That's not a territory." He glanced questioningly at his comrade, who shook his head.

"It's …" She gulped. "It's an Overworld territory."

They exchanged sharp grins. "I heard we had an Overworlder visiting. So it's you."

"I need to return to my inn?—"

"No, I think we'll take you back to the Hades residence. Can't have Overworlders running around in the dark."

Clio inched backward. She'd hoped that revealing she was a supposedly important envoy would convince them not to mess with her. Obviously not.

Giving up on caution, she spun on her heel and bolted.

Darkness flashed across her path, and she slammed into something hard that hadn't been there a moment before. Bouncing off, she landed on her backside in the middle of the road.

The soldier stood directly in front of her, smirking.

She scrambled to her feet and looked back. The second soldier was right behind her. But they'd been a dozen paces away just a second ago.

Teleportation. Reapers' caste ability.

Realizing she couldn't outrun them, Clio lifted her chin with determination.

"Don't get any ideas," a soldier said. "We don't want to hurt you."

"We don't want to seriously hurt her," the other corrected.

A spark of red magic flashed across his fingers, and Clio had a mere heartbeat to make the most difficult choice of her life: Bastian or Lyre. Her brother or the incubus who'd saved her.

If she let the soldiers capture her and take her back to the Hades palace, Lyre would die. If she fought back instead, she would sacrifice any chance of accomplishing her mission for Bastian.

Red magic spiraled over the soldier's fingers.

Clio flung her hands up and cast.

The fancy shield she'd mimicked from Viol snapped around her, and the soldier's binding spell bounced off it with a sizzle of sparks. Green magic twirled around Clio's fingers, and she cast an identical copy of the soldier's red binding. The threads spun around his torso, and he toppled over with a surprised yelp.

"The hell?—"

She whirled on the second reaper. He sprang back a step, and then darkness flashed over him. He disappeared and reappeared a dozen yards down the street, already casting.

Clio imitated his gestures, following half a second behind and mimicking each thread as it formed. Magic burst from his hands in a swirling discharge, and hers erupted immediately after. The two spells collided in the space between them and exploded. The boom rocked the surrounding buildings.

Shouts echoed from nearby. Daemons were coming to investigate.

She needed to get away. She needed to move fast —and that reaper had just shown her the fastest possible way to travel.

Clio slapped her palms to her chest and focused on the reaper across from her as he began another spell. But she wasn't watching that. She fixed her astral perception on the shimmer of red magic over his body, the essence of his energy invisible to everyone but a nymph.

Digging her fingers into her sternum, she gathered the look and feel of that energy. And she mimicked it.

Her aura flashed from green to red, and cold shivered across her skin as her energy shifted, becoming that of the reaper's. Unaware of what she'd done, the soldier lifted his hands to unleash an explosive cast.

Clio stepped forward. Icy magic plunged over her body, and the world vanished as she teleported.