Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

CLIO

Clio pressed her back to the wall and breathed deeply.

Most of the bastille lay behind her, the endless corridors filled with dark cells that stank of terror and reeked of blood. The haunting sounds were worse than the smells—the broken whispers, the hoarse weeping, the piercing screams. It was a place of nightmares and death.

Ahead of her, the hall changed. Clean walls, inlaid with spelled crystals that emitted a soft white glow, replaced the dank stone and smothering darkness she'd already passed. Murmured conversations interspersed with laughter leaked from a room ahead.

Not prisoners, but guards.

They were lounging in a break room just ahead, and there was no way to get past the open doorway without someone noticing her. Relying on a cloaking spell was too risky in a place like this.

Her hand slid to Lyre's chain of spells hanging around her neck. She'd checked each gemstone, figuring out what its weaving did in case she needed it, but none of the spells could help her sneak past a well-lit, guard-filled room.

Should she go on the offensive instead? Unless she killed them all in one shot, they'd catch up to her in no time.

She gripped Lyre's chain through her top, fingers digging into the fabric as desperation clouded her thoughts.

A clink startled her. She jumped back, then saw the shining pink gemstone at her feet. She'd accidentally dislodged it from the pocket in her belt. She scooped up the mysterious illusion weaving. She still had no idea what it was, only that it was a wide-area spell—something that would involve everyone within its radius.

As she rolled it between her fingers, a guard called a farewell. Footsteps started toward the doorway.

With no better ideas and no time left, Clio stepped up to the threshold, activated the gem, and tossed it into the room. It rolled across the floor with a skittering noise lost beneath the murmur of conversation. She peeked into the room to find a guard standing three steps away, looking back over his shoulder at his comrades seated around a long table.

The gemstone stopped under a table and blinked three times, then golden light burst out of it. The glow raced across the floor and up the walls to the ceiling, coating everything. The guards launched to their feet, all shouting at once—then fell into speechless silence. Clio stared too, her mouth hanging open.

The room was gone. Instead, a long table, a dozen chairs, and a group of stunned guards stood in the middle of a sunny meadow. Gentle hills rolled toward the distant horizon, and the sky stretched even farther, dotted with fluffy clouds. Long grass swayed in waves, and a pair of songbirds flitted above the stalks, chasing each other. Everything was cast in a golden hue, the greens and blues awash in amber and tangerine shades.

Clio inhaled sharply—and tasted the fresh, sweet air of a spring meadow. Lyre had made this? She hadn't known an illusion like this was even possible.

A guard swore quietly, the epithet hushed with either awe or fear. With a spark of urgency, Clio stepped into the meadow. Keeping low, she rushed through the grass, surprised she couldn't feel the blades under her palms. Too absorbed in the illusion, the guards didn't so much as glance her way.

Between one step and the next, it all vanished. The dark corridor reappeared just as her shoulder hit a wall—she'd been running at an angle.

She sped away from the break room. The hall ended at a perpendicular junction, revealing another hall lined with small rooms. The nearest one contained nothing but a table and two chairs. High on the back wall, a square window with two bars across it glowed with faint yellow light.

Gasping in relief, she launched into the room, pushed the chair out of the way, and dragged the table to the wall. Climbing on top of it, she focused her asper and examined the ward on the glass and frame. She traced the arc of a construct, then tapped a thread. A spark of magic, and the ward dissolved.

Urgency spiraled through her head. The bars were welded to the window frame. With no other choice, she jumped off the table, backed up a few steps, and gathered her magic.

Her blast hit the bars and exploded with a sound like a gunshot. The glass and bars shattered. She leaped onto the table and heaved herself up. The window was tiny, and her petite frame almost didn't fit. She jammed her shoulders in, the jagged stubs of the bars tearing at her clothes.

A shout sounded behind her.

She sucked in a panicked breath. The ground outside was almost level with the bottom of the window, and she scrabbled at the damp moss carpet for purchase as she squeezed her hips through the frame.

A hand closed around her ankle.

She cried out in terror, kicking wildly. Another hand grabbed her other leg and pulled her backward.

Her panic suddenly vanished, and ferocious determination swept through her. She sent a rush of crackling power over her skin, and the hands vanished off her legs as men shouted in pain.

She yanked her legs through the window frame and scrambled to her feet. Not wasting time glancing back, she bolted across the stretch of moss toward the wall surrounding the bastille. The guards on the other side of the window shouted furiously.

A flash of glowing light shot toward her.

She twisted to one side, and something grazed her upper arm. She hit the ground on her knees, and the arrow pierced the dirt behind her, the spell on its head sputtering out. Blood ran down her arm where the arrow had cut across her bicep.

She scrabbled for the chain around her neck. Touching a gem, she activated the spell as she sprang to her feet. A thick cloud of shadow surrounded her, blending with the darkness of the eclipse. Another arrow whizzed through the air, missing her by a foot. She ran. Guards fired a few more bolts from the narrow towers interspersed along the wall, but they missed her by wider and wider margins, the illusory darkness hiding her movements.

She ran to the wall and pressed against it. The illusion weave moved with her, bound to the gem around her neck. While sheltered, she tore a strip off her skirt and wrapped it around her arm, tying it as tight as possible to staunch the flow of blood. Then she craned her neck to see the top of the stone barrier.

She backed up a few steps to give herself a running start. Then, briefly closing her eyes, she let her glamour fall. It resisted, as though this world was rejecting her true form, and then magic rushed over her body and strength filled her limbs.

She charged the wall and leaped, using a pulse of magic to launch her even higher. Her feet, bare without the shoes she'd been wearing in glamoured form, dug into the wall. Slipping and scrabbling for purchase, she hauled herself over the top, then dropped twelve feet to the cobblestones on the other side.

The moment her feet hit the ground she was sprinting, nearly flying, the wind whipping over her skin and tugging at her hair. With the strength and agility of her true form, hidden by Lyre's shadow illusion, she raced away from the bastille and into the dark streets of Asphodel.

Clio slowed from her breakneck run to an easy lope. Chrysalis was just ahead, looming at the end of the street. For the second time in one night—or rather, in one eclipse—she would break into the building.

She didn't know for sure Lyre was in there, but if the Rysalis weavers hadn't sent him to the bastille with her, where else would they be keeping him?

Lyre's shadow illusion had sputtered out two blocks ago. Luckily, Asphodel was quiet, its streets empty. The darkness of the eclipse seemed to soothe the denizens of this world into a restful state, and so far, the bastille hadn't raised any alarms over her escape—at least, not that she could tell.

She trotted onto the bridge across the canal. The cobblestones shone with moisture, and the air had the cool bite of a recent rainfall. As she rushed off the bridge, a pale flash in her peripheral vision had her spinning around, her hands raised defensively. But there was no one there—only her reflection in a large puddle.

She stared at herself—at her true face she'd rarely seen in the last two years. In Irida, she had never used glamour, but on Earth, she'd rarely lifted it, binding herself in a human form so she could blend in.

Now, her face looked like a stranger's… or perhaps a long-lost friend's. Her skin, already fair, was now a glistening ivory. Pale greenish-gold markings ran across her cheeks and around the edges of her face, across her arms, and down her legs, hugging her hips and waist. She could see it all because, as was traditional for nymphs, she was clad in a simple white hip wrap and a matching band of fabric to bind her breasts.

Barefoot and weaponless, she carried only one accessory: fine golden chains of gemstones looped around her neck, waist, wrists, and ankles. Unlike Lyre's chain lying atop hers, her collection of lodestones was useless. None of them held magic or weavings.

She glanced once more at her face, framed by waist-length waves of golden blond hair that shimmered silvery white, like sunlight reflecting on ripples of water. She looked like a creature of light that had no place in the darkness of the night realm.

Closing her eyes, she pulled her glamour back over her body. Weakness dragged at her and the pain in her arm increased tenfold. She tore another strip off her skirt and tied it over the first bandage, using her teeth to get a good, tight knot.

She started forward again. When she reached Chrysalis, she angled around the building in the opposite direction as last time, not daring to use the same door. She found a different entrance, destroyed its wards, and slipped inside. A voice in the back of her head kept reminding her Kassia wasn't with her. Kassia should have been there.

The building was as quiet as it had been last time, and that made her extra nervous. Finding the lobby, she paused in the shadows, staring across the abandoned space.

Too quiet.

Where had they taken Lyre?

Her desire to save him wasn't merely altruistic. Without knowing where the ley lines near Asphodel were located, she was trapped in the Underworld. She needed Lyre to help her escape.

She rushed into motion again—toward the back of the building, up the stairs, and into a familiar hallway. She didn't know where to find Lyre, but while she figured that out, she would stock up on supplies. Lyre's magic was severely depleted. He would need everything from his hidden cache of emergency spells.

The door to his workroom was open. All his weavings-in-progress were piled on the floor, and his tools were heaped next to them. His books had been ransacked, his sofa torn open, his cupboards emptied onto the floor.

She hurried to the worktable and crouched, then breathed a sigh of relief. The untouched wards on his hidden nook glowed in her asper. He'd concealed the spot well.

Crawling under the table, she silenced his wards, opened the tile, and emptied it out. The quiver of arrows went over her shoulder, the chains went around her neck, and the pouch of charged lodestones went into the fabric belt around her waist.

She crawled out from under the table, adjusted the unfamiliar weight of the quiver—it was jammed with arrows—and frowned at the corner beside the bookshelves, where two bows leaned. One was taller than her and almost straight, while the other was shorter with elegant curves. Which should she take?

With a mental shrug, she grabbed the taller one. When it came to weapons, bigger was usually better, wasn't it? She hefted it in her hand. It wasn't strung, and she had no idea where to find a bowstring or how to string it. Chewing on her lip with worry, she turned around—and froze.

An incubus stood in the doorway. Silent, unmoving. Watching her.

For a second, she thought he was a stranger, but then recognition hit her: he was the levelheaded brother she'd seen in the spell shop back on Earth. His name was… Reed?

He stared at her, and she stared back, mentally preparing for another fight for her life. Protective weaves glowed over him, as impenetrable as Dulcet's had been.

Reed's gaze moved from Lyre's chains around her neck, to the quiver on her shoulder, then to the bow she held.

"Not that one."

She blinked, unsure if she'd heard him correctly. The words made no sense. "Huh?"

"Not that one," he repeated.

He stepped into the room. She jerked back defensively, but he walked right past her. No aphrodesia hazed his aura, and he wasn't prepping a cast. She backed up another step, confusion battling with suspicion.

He walked to the corner and picked up the shorter bow, then rooted around the nearby shelves until he found a cloth bag. Retrieving a smooth, heavy string from it, he braced the bow with his legs, bent it slowly with one hand, and hooked the string into place.

Turning, he held up the newly strung bow. "This one. That's a longbow. This is a recurve. Better for close quarters."

Her heart pounded in the back of her throat. Watching with her asper for any tricks or deceptions, she cautiously approached. He extended the bow, and she took it. Not knowing what else to do, she handed him the other one. He leaned the longbow back in its spot, then returned to the doorway.

He paused, glancing back. His amber eyes darkened, and emotions she couldn't name ghosted across his features.

"They have him on the lower level," he said.

Then he was gone, striding away from the room as though desperate to flee her presence.

She clutched Lyre's bow.

Was it a trap? An ambush? No, that didn't make sense. Why waste time and effort on an elaborate ambush when any of the master weavers could easily best her in a confrontation?

The lower level. Reed could have been referring to the basement where Lyre had shown her Chrysalis's offensive spell collection during her tour, but she knew that wasn't what he'd meant.

There was only one "lower level" where the Rysalis weavers would have imprisoned Lyre.