Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

CLIO

Clio disarmed the wards on the door and slipped into the room, then reengaged them. Still catching her breath, she half-heartedly wiped her wet boots on the mat and crossed to the screen that separated the bed from the rest of the cramped unit.

Lyre lay under the patchy blankets. His skin had regained its usual warm tan, and he was back in glamour. He was staring at the ceiling, and when she stuck her head into view, his amber eyes dropped to hers.

"You're awake," she said with a sigh of relief as she hurried to the bed, fumbling with her shopping bags.

"Hmm," he agreed, his gaze again lifting to the ceiling, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows.

She frowned worriedly at him, then glanced up to see what he was so focused on. The ceiling was blank and boring, marked with water spots and weird brown splatters. A faint shimmer of green magic hinted at the wards she'd embedded throughout the apartment, barely visible without her asper in focus.

Lyre squinted at the ceiling, his gaze shifting from one spot to another. There was nothing there but the wards.

Her stomach sank to the floor.

He finally looked at her, a strange blankness in his eyes. "My wards," he murmured.

Swallowing hard, she nodded. When she'd cast his wards over their unit, she'd figured he would notice them before she could remove them. She just hadn't expected he'd notice within minutes of waking up.

"How?" His question was calm, but something in its simplicity demanded an answer .

She sat on the edge of the bed and piled her shopping bags beside him. "All nymphs can use astral perception, but some of us… a very few nymphs possess an additional ability. It's called mimicking."

His expression went even more blank than before. He said nothing.

"I can mimic any magic I see with my asper. When I was at your house in Asphodel, I had to examine the wards to disable them. Since they're the best wards I've ever seen—the best you've ever created, I'm guessing—I used them to protect us here."

She pressed her hands together and waited for him to respond. The silence stretched between them, crackling with things unsaid.

"A mimic," he echoed flatly.

"Yes," she whispered, staring at her lap. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."

The painful quiet was broken only by the rain drumming on the roof. Then, out of nowhere, his laughter rang out.

Head jerking up, she gaped at him. He laughed for half a minute before gulping back his amusement and pushing up into a sitting position, one hand pressed to his side where his ribs had been broken.

"A mimic ," he gasped, catching his breath. "Oh man. I can't believe it."

Merriment danced in his eyes and she clenched her hands, wanting to check if he was feverish but afraid of insulting him. "What's so funny?"

"It explains everything . Your tour. Your obsession with those prototypes." He barked another laugh. "How much did you see? All our best wards. All our—" He leaned against the wall at the head of the bed, grinning at her. "You were never going to buy something, were you? Damn that scheming prince."

"Um." She blinked at him. "You're not… angry?"

"Angry?" He squinted at the ceiling. "Okay, I'm annoyed that you've been pilfering my weavings, but ripping off Chrysalis—I would love to be a fly on the wall if my father ever finds out what you were up to."

She blinked a few more times, struggling to reconcile his reaction with her fears about how he would respond .

He tensed. "You said you can mimic anything. Does that include the KLOC?"

"No," she answered quickly. "That's the only spell I've ever seen that I can't copy. With the moving parts, I couldn't even figure out how to activate it."

He relaxed again, his amused grin returning. She stared at him. All this time worrying about his reaction, and he thought it was funny ?

His eyebrows rose. "What's that scowl for?"

She hastily cleared her expression. "Nothing."

"That was a mean scowl." He leaned forward and his bright eyes captured her. "Are you angry with me?"

"The only thing I'm upset about is you almost dying on me."

"Oh, right." He glanced around the room. "Didn't I get stabbed in the back? How am I alive?"

"I healed you."

"But how did we get back here? You couldn't have carried me."

"We walked."

"We did?"

She nodded. "It took a shock of magic to wake you up. I also got your bow and as many of your arrows as I could find. You don't remember any of that?"

As he scrunched his face, struggling to remember, she glanced at his bow and quiver leaning in the corner. While collecting his arrows, most damaged with their spells spent, she'd found one on the bridge that hadn't been used. At least, its spell hadn't. Later, she would ask him about the terrifying blood-magic weave embedded in that black-fletched bolt.

The irony was painful. After all her life-risking efforts to search Chrysalis for a weapon powerful enough to terrify Irida's enemies, he'd been carrying one all along.

"I can't remember anything after getting stabbed." Lyre frowned. "What happened to Ash?"

"He was injured, though not as badly as you. I threw a few spells at him and he took off."

"I shot him with a poison-tipped arrow. Not sure why it didn't kill him, but it must have had some sort of effect." His attention fixed on her shopping bags. "Is that food I smell? "

Amused, she opened the food bag and lifted out a tinfoil packet. Warmth seeped into her skin and she passed it to him before pulling out a second one for herself. She stared at it for a moment.

"Actually," she said abruptly, "I am angry with you."

He paused halfway through ripping open the wrapper, his expression wary.

"You made me run away from Ash."

His gaze dropped from hers and he pressed his lips together. "I didn't have time to explain or argue about it."

"You forced me to leave with aphrodesia."

"I didn't have a choice. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I only did it to?—"

"You almost died ." Her hands clenched, crushing her dinner. "Why didn't you let me help? We could have fought him together!"

His eyes darted up, surprise flickering across his face. "Against Ash? He would've killed us both. You had a chance to?—"

"To run away and leave you to die?" She glared at him. "That is not an acceptable outcome. Not for anything . We're in this together, Lyre."

"Together?" he repeated, his voice oddly quiet.

"We escaped Asphodel together, and we're going to the Overworld together to get your clock back. So do not ever send me away like that again. If I want to leave, then I'll decide. You don't get to decide for me."

He nodded, his attention returning to his food, but he didn't resume opening the foil. She pursed her lips, then reached out and smacked him upside the head.

"Hey!"

"That was for using aphrodesia on me. Again ."

He rubbed his ear, casting her a flinty look. "I was saving your life."

"You were being a self-sacrificing idiot. I'm not useless, you know." When he smirked, she gave him her meanest glower. "Whatever you're thinking about saying, I suggest you reconsider."

He snickered and ripped his dinner open to reveal a thick bun loaded with shredded pork and strips of roasted vegetables. In the time it took her to eat her bun, he ate the other three .

He crumpled the foil wrappings into a ball and tossed it in the direction of the kitchen. "What else did you buy?"

"Supplies for the Overworld," she replied, pulling the nearest bag toward her. "A change of clothes, water bottles, a blanket, dried food?—"

As she moved the first bag, the second one tipped over, and the clank and clatter of metallic objects accompanied the expected sound of crinkling paper. Clio went still, staring at it in confusion. Cautiously, she reached for the paper bag, pinched the bottom corner, and upended it. A pair of khaki pants and a gray shirt fell out, along with a black cloth bag with a drawstring—a bag she hadn't purchased.

Before she could warn him, Lyre picked it up. The contents clinked energetically as he untied the drawstring, pulled it open, and poured a mixture of uncut gems, steel marbles, and arrowheads into his palm.

"What the hell?" he growled.

"I didn't buy that," she stammered.

"I know. These are my spells. This is everything… everything I left behind. All the spells I had stashed in my house, my workroom, and a few other locations."

"Reed," she whispered.

His sharp stare snapped up. "What?"

"I didn't have a chance to tell you yet. Reed found me at the market. He came to warn you that Samael put a bounty on us." She looked at the bag in disbelief. "I had no idea he'd slipped that in with my shopping."

Lyre's terse suspicion morphed into surprise. "Reed came to warn me? Did he say anything else?"

"Just that he couldn't stay here any longer."

Lyre nodded slowly. "He must have snuck out, but his absence won't go unnoticed for long. I doubt he'll be able to get away a second time."

"What's your relationship like with Reed?" she asked, hesitating over the question. "He seems different from your other brothers."

Lyre poured the bag's contents into his lap and sorted through it. "Reed and I worked together a lot since our talents are complementary. He isn't competitive like the others, so he never had a problem with me. "

Reed seemed to care a lot more than just "not having a problem" with Lyre. She nibbled on her lower lip. "Is he like you? Is he trapped by Chrysalis too?"

"He…" Lyre's hand paused above a ruby shard. "Reed just likes to weave. He doesn't care what, or why, or for who. Chrysalis is exactly where he wants to be—the one place where he'll never run out of weaving projects."

"He doesn't care if he's making evil spells?"

"How the spell is used doesn't matter to him. He's all about the weaving—the process of it." Lyre selected three steel marbles and lined them up on his palm. "Coming all the way here to warn me… it's more than I would have expected from him."

"Do you think it's a trick?"

"Doubt it. Reed is the least deceptive daemon I know." Lyre arched an eyebrow. "He makes you look like an outright con man."

"Me? A con man?"

"Con woman," Lyre corrected with a smirk as he shoveled the spells back into the bag. "Either way, his warning about the bounty means—" A yawn overtook him. "The bounty means we need to—" Another jaw-popping yawn.

She pulled the bag from his hands and stood. "We're safe here for now. You should sleep for a few more hours."

He nodded, his eyelids already drooping, and slumped back onto the limp pillow. She cleared off the mattress and tucked their new belongings in the corner. By the time she returned to the bed, he was asleep again, his body shutting down to conserve strength as he recovered from the toll his battle and healing had taken on him.

She hesitated, then brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He'd used his aphrodesia to make her flee from Ash, proving once again he could control her mind whenever he wanted to. Yet he hadn't done it to hurt her, to take advantage of her, or to betray her.

He'd done it to save her life. And he'd done it expecting she would never forgive him.

Her fingers slid down his cheek and brushed across his lips—the lips that had kissed her with fierce lust and soft passion. The latter made her heart race, but the former sent a thrill of fear running down her spine.

His soft, sweet charm was one side of him. The brutally aggressive lust was the other side. Gentle and fierce. Charmer and seducer. He was both, and she kept forgetting that.

She brushed her fingers across his lips one more time, memorizing the zing of fear, the terror of his aphrodesia sweeping through her mind and erasing her will. She had to hold on to that fear or she would have no shields left to barricade her heart.

Charmer, seducer… and, if she wasn't careful, heartbreaker.