Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

CLIO

Airless black oblivion closed around Clio, suffocating and terrifying. It lasted for less than a heartbeat before the world returned in a pop of light and sound.

Disorientation hit her in a wave of dizziness. The guard's broad back filled her vision, his arms still raised, ready to cast—except his target had disappeared.

Clio slammed both hands into his spine and cast the same binding spell she'd learned from the other soldier. Bands of magic whipped over him, and he fell on his face with a muffled curse.

Holding tight to the cold energy of her new aura, Clio teleported again. It was ridiculously simple. She picked the farthest spot she could see, stepped forward into nothingness, and appeared where she wanted to be.

She teleported fifty feet at a time, flashing down the streets until she reached the base of the tower. Stopping there, she gasped for air, trembling with sudden exhaustion. Her aura shivered back to green as she lost her hold on the mimicked energy. Mimicking a caste ability wasn't something she could memorize and use again like a spell, because a caste ability wasn't a spell at all. If she couldn't see and sense the other daemon's aura, she couldn't match her energy to theirs.

She braced an arm on a wall, breathing heavily. Teleporting was even more tiring than sprinting. A hollow burning in her chest and a deep ache spreading through the rest of her body warned that she'd depleted much of her magic reserves.

Pushing away from the wall, she jogged along the canal's edge. Somewhere behind her, the fallen soldiers had probably been discovered. Would the second guard understand what she had done?

Reaching an intersection of streets, she looked around. A few blocks away on her left was the inn. On her right was the bridge to the business district of Asphodel, where Chrysalis waited.

She didn't have time to go back to the inn to look for Kassia and Eryx. Her bodyguards could be anywhere. She was on her own—but no sooner did she turn toward the bridge than she heard a shout.

"Clio! Clio! "

Kassia came charging down the street, Eryx on her heels. Her friend's eyes were black, and her expression was a mixture of fury and relief.

"Clio!" Kassia skidded to a stop in front of her. "We saw you from the balcony. Where were you? Where did you go? What happened?"

"We can talk about that later. Come on!" Gesturing for them to follow, Clio ran across the bridge and into the business district.

Increasing his pace, Eryx jogged alongside her. "Where are we going?"

"We're breaking into Chrysalis."

Kassia gasped.

"To steal magic?" Eryx demanded eagerly. "Yes! It's about damn time!"

"No!" Kassia grabbed Clio's arm and stopped her in the middle of the street. "You can't break into Chrysalis!"

Eryx slid to a halt and sprang back to Clio's side. "Breaking in and stealing magic is what we should've done the moment the weavers refused to show us those prototypes. We can get Clio's eyes on some spells and be out of here in a few hours."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Kassia snarled. "We're trapped in the Underworld ."

"We aren't trapped," Eryx said baldly. "I wasn't supposed to reveal this short of an emergency, but I know of a ley line in the valley—not the one we came through."

Clio's jaw dropped. "How do you know that?"

Eryx pointed toward the unseen mountains. "It's at the opposite end of the valley. The moment we're out of Chrysalis, we can head straight for the ley line."

"That's perfect," Clio said before Kassia could fire questions at Eryx. "Let's go!"

She launched back into a sprint, urgency pounding in her head. How long had it been since she'd left Lyre?

Kassia fell into stride beside Clio, Eryx a step behind her. "What exactly is your plan?"

"I'm stealing a spell, but it isn't for Bastian. It's for Lyre."

" What? " they both yelled.

"Keep your voices down!" Clio glared at them over her shoulder. "Dulcet abducted me from the Hades residence. He was going to do who knows what to me, but Lyre rescued me. Except he's got a death spell on him now."

"Then he's dead," Eryx said.

"Not yet. I need to get a special weave from his workroom that can save him."

"What about our mission?" Eryx growled, fury darkening his irises.

"I don't know," Clio replied flatly. "But Lyre fought his own brother for me. I won't leave him to die."

A vein pulsed in Eryx's cheek, and Kassia didn't seem to know what to say either. But it was too late for them to argue: the Chrysalis building loomed ahead in the shadows.

The front entrance was dark, and lights glowed in only a few windows. The building was closed. Good.

Choosing a side entrance, Clio reached for the metal door.

"Are you sure about this, Clio?" Kassia whispered.

In answer, Clio pressed her hand to the door and dissolved the ward. She was getting faster at parsing Chrysalis's weaves.

They slipped into the dim corridor, and Clio cast a cloaking spell over herself. Kassia and Eryx copied her, following in silence. She was kind of surprised Eryx was still accompanying her. She'd half expected him to storm off.

Slinking through the halls as swiftly as she dared, Clio headed in the general direction of the lobby. They found it empty and silent, the reception desk abandoned. A sleepy quiet filled the building, lulling her into a false sense of security, but she didn't relax. She had seen lights in the windows. Some weavers were still working tonight.

She, Kassia, and Eryx hastened toward the stairs and up to the second level, then down another hall. With her asper, Clio could see any spells that might stop them. Chrysalis was too reliant on their magic. They didn't even have security guards.

After only one wrong turn, Clio found the right corridor. She remembered it well—mainly, hitting the floor on her butt after Lyre had activated his wards. He'd been so furious. She hoped he would forgive her for breaking into his spell cache a second time.

The door to his workroom glowed bright gold, layered with weavings. Eryx and Kassia spread out to stand guard while Clio worked. Two spells she disarmed, but the third one was blood magic—keyed to Lyre's blood to prevent anyone else from disarming it. She had no choice but to destroy it instead, pulling apart the weak spots in the weave that only she could see. Lyre really didn't want anyone in his workroom while he was gone.

As she pushed the door open, Eryx and Kassia rejoined her. They exchanged a few quick words, then Kassia turned and went back down the hall.

"Where's she going?" Clio asked distractedly as she stepped into the dark room and felt along the wall for the light switch.

"She's standing guard for us. The other direction is a dead end, so I'm staying with you."

Clio found the switch and smacked it. Light bloomed. She almost asked Eryx why Kassia was acting as a sentry and not him, then she realized Kassia was probably equally worried about Eryx taking off on his own.

"Don't touch anything," she told him. "There are defensive wards everywhere."

Leaving him in the middle of the room, she went straight to the bookshelf and pulled the books out. The panel was visible, devoid of any wards just as she'd left it. She popped it off and shoved her hand inside.

It was empty.

No! She'd assumed the lack of spells meant Lyre hadn't noticed she'd broken them. But he had. And instead of respelling the hiding place, he'd moved the clock .

She lurched backward, head whipping side to side as she fought to keep her panic under control. Where had he moved it? Where would he have put it? She raced to the desk, crawled under it, and disarmed the spell on the tile, but the clock wasn't among his cache of emergency magic either.

She almost backed out, leaving the tile open, when she realized Eryx was crouched a few steps behind her, watching. She pushed the tile back into place and rearmed it, then scrambled out.

"What's in there?" he asked.

"Just some defensive magic," she lied as she circled the room. "The spell I need destroys weavings."

"Destroys them how?"

"It unmakes them."

His brow furrowed. "Is that different from dissolving a spell?"

"It's the difference between dousing a fire and making the fire vanish like it was never there."

"Why didn't you mention a spell like that before now?" he demanded accusingly.

"It's not a weapon, let alone a war spell. It would hardly scare Ra into leaving Irida alone." Clio pressed her hands to her forehead, unable to think through the burning urgency in her head. "I can't find it. He moved it. I can't see any weavings where he might have hidden something."

"Well, if you can't see it, then the magic isn't here."

Eryx was right. She wasn't missing the magic—there was no magic. Lyre knew she could see any ward he created, so he must have hidden the clock in a way that wouldn't tip her off. Something that didn't require a protective ward.

Where could he have hidden it? She scanned the table, the bookshelves, the sofa and coffee table, the heaps of junk in the corners?—

Her attention hooked on a pile of books. It was slightly neater than any of the other piles. Rushing over, she shoved the books aside until she reached the bottom of the pile, where a metal box was buried.

Grinning—that sneaky incubus wasn't sneaky enough to foil her—she gave the box a quick examination. Seeing no magic, not even a lock, she popped the lid open. A puff of white powder erupted from the interior.

Eryx grabbed her by the hair and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose. The box tumbled to the floor, spilling more powder as he dragged her to the center of the room.

He removed his hand, letting her breathe. Dizziness rolled through her, and she felt like her head was stuffed with cotton.

"Are you okay?" Eryx asked.

She nodded woozily. "What was that?"

"Some kind of drug in the box—probably intended to knock you unconscious."

Clio hastily rubbed her palms on her skirt in case they had powder on them. "Lyre is serious about keeping that spell locked up."

Eryx grunted. Holding an arm over his face, he plucked the cloth bag out of the booby-trapped box. He shook the pouch off, wiped it on his pants a few times, then handed it to her. Clio opened it and peeked inside. The bizarre clock lay within, its gemstones gleaming.

"This is it." She rose to her feet, wobbled, then steadied. The powder's effects were already wearing off, though she hated to imagine what would have happened if Eryx hadn't stopped her from inhaling it. "Let's go."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She nodded. "Yes, I?—"

He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face the door. Stepping behind her, he gripped her upper arms and lowered his face close to hers.

"Good. Now that we have the spell for the incubus, we're going to find one for Prince Bastian."

"What? No, we?—"

Eryx's fingers bit into her arms. "We came here for Chrysalis's best warfare spells. Not spells from one weaver or another, but the best magic they've ever come up with."

"We don't have time to?—"

"The faster you find the good stuff, the faster we can get back to the incubus weaver."

Clio clenched her jaw. "Lyre won't survive much longer. There's no time to?—"

"We aren't leaving Asphodel empty-handed," Eryx interrupted implacably.

She jerked her arms and he let her go. Jamming the clock spell into her wide fabric belt, she faced Eryx.

"You are my bodyguard, Eryx, and I will not be bullied by?—"

"My loyalty belongs to Prince Bastian." Eryx's crimson eyes were like bloodstained ice. "Not the king's bastard daughter of a whore."

Clio stumbled back as though he'd physically hit her.

Light erupted in the doorway—a blazing line that shot straight for Eryx. The spell hit him square on and solidified into glowing ropes that sizzled with electric power. They constricted around him, and he crashed to the floor, unconscious and bound in magic.

"I almost wish I'd heard more," a deep voice purred. "That sounded like a fascinating conversation."

Madrigal strolled into the room, his hands tucked in the pockets of his lab coat and a smile playing on his perfect lips. Shadows slid across his amber irises.

"Bastard daughter of a whore," he repeated in a croon, "fathered by an indiscreet king. So that would make you… a little nymph princess."