Chapter 7

I openmyself up to Fox and let my mind relax. My thoughts take me from a focus on my future husband to wandering through the processing of all I've learned today because of Akile and the interview with Ace. I catch a few stray thoughts that might be from Fox:

…feels soft.

…ward is woven deep.

That's a problem.

It's like—

A thought that sounds a lot like Amos, Fox's demon father, interrupts:

Never seen anything like it.

Then Dakota's voice breaks through, but it's staticky for me:

Where did—f—act—katie—oid

Fox's thought floats through my head:

We're under Arktis.

Dakota's static overwhelms my concentration, and I lose the connection to Fox, though I'm not jerked out of the meditative state completely.

My processing brain reminds me that Akile never answered the question about the human minions. Then it reminds me that the warden, Kristie, who helped us get Bellamy back, knows about the hole in the prison cell and it still hasn't been fixed. What's that all about?

I open my eyes, looking at Bellamy, who's turned his back on both me and Fox and is guarding us with a gun in one hand and his sword in the other. It's a bit overkill, but there are some bad guys who can't be killed with guns. Bullet holes apparently heal faster than they kill for some people, but only an immortal can survive a beheading.

I check my phone. It's been about forty minutes since Akile went into the prison cell to see if he can wake the magic up, so I type out a message to Bellamy and shove it under his nose so he can read it without having to put one of his weapons away.

Akile didn't answer the question about why humans. And you didn't ask about the person that hid themselves from you. The cult deity. We should ask about that.

Bellamy's eyes narrow as he reads and then he frowns. "That is rather strange. He's been more transparent than not."

Bellamy and Fox killed the human cult leaders that were responsible for digging the tunnel to the prison, although now that I'm looking at it, I realize this is a cave. Yes, it was dug out, the tools marks are clear, but this isn't a tunnel.

The cherubs have expanded this from a tunnel to a cave.

Bellamy uses his sword to point to a small opening hidden across from the tunnel we walked through to get from one room to the next. "I believe that was the first tunnel dug, and the humans dug from here up to the prison cell above."

I move closer to the smaller tunnel and use my phone's flashlight to peer into it. It's smaller; I would have to crawl to move comfortably through it. I could knee walk, but I'd have to duck under any jutting ice. It's the perfect tunnel size for a small cherub, but the humans that we killed would have had a hard time with it.

Honestly, I'm good with that. They nailed my son to a ceiling, any suffering they went through was not enough.

Turning away, because it's cool but not that interesting in the long term if you're not a kid playing in it, I frown, heading back to the cave with the hole into the prison cell. Time to go wakey wakey Akile-bakey.

I step into the prison cell where Akile is asleep on the cot. Turning the volume up on my phone, I blast a rock cover of Bad Habits. I've been really into rock covers of pop songs recently, don't ask.

It's about halfway through the chorus before Akile opens his gorgeous hazel eyes. He blinks at me as the fog of his hibernation lifts. His hair has grown out like Bellamy's did, reaching the longest length it can. He's surprisingly fresh considering he's been asleep for a century. There's got to be some kind of preservation magic on this cell, because Bellamy wasn't rank when we got him either. He should probably smell worse than he does for being a century older than he was an hour ago.

He sits up and stretches out, popping all his joints and neck before standing. He runs his hands over his knee length curls and quickly braids them into a loose rope as thick as his neck. He pulls a black hair tie from his pocket and secures the braid by pulling the hair through the tie once. Just once. That's how big the braid is: it's secured in an elastic without having to twist it at all. Honestly, it's impressive.

"Ok, so I'm definitely not the next avatar if the theory that having the next one in proximity would be enough to wake the magic up," he informs me cheerily. "Let's get out of here before I get hangry."

We leave the cell and I point to the other cave where Bellamy and Fox are, so we join them. Bellamy's still standing guard with a gun and a sword, and Akile whistles as soon as he sees him.

"Look at that ginger hottie ready to rumble. Gah! To have a man look after me like that."

Bellamy's eyes flick to Akile, but he otherwise ignores the comment even though his face flushes.

I push Akile's back and move him behind Bellamy.

Done. A man looking after you like that.

I show Akile the message instead of sending it. I know from experience that when Fox's phone vibrates when he's busy, he becomes unbusy very quickly. He refuses to ignore text messages in case I'm trying to contact him. I love that man more than anything even if he somehow misplaced my ring.

Akile laughs. "I think that just makes me collateral."

Bellamy's dry voice interjects. "You're supposed to read his messages aloud. Papa doesn't like to disinclude anyone in the same room from his conversations."

I point to Bellamy's back because that's true and he's not facing us.

Akile nods. "He said, ‘Done. A man looking after you like that.'"

Bellamy makes a pained sound. "Papa, stop. Seriously. I'm not… I'm not there yet."

I grimace. Bellamy is emotionally and mentally ok after his torture and confinement in the prison, but he's not exactly the same as he was when he went in. He's more protective than he was before, more focused on creating the life he wants to have. When we pulled him out of that cell, his hair was so long he looked like a Disney princess. He didn't cut it. He braided his rich ginger hair into two ropes and he wears it hanging down to his calves. He fixed his beard, though. He doesn't look like merlin, just like a badass ginger Viking with beard braids. Beard. Braids.

Who then turns red every time someone flirts with him.

It ruins the aesthetic, honestly.

I hold up my phone to Akile to read.

"I'll stop when you get a shave and a haircut."

"No!" Akile protests as soon as he finishes reading my text aloud. "He looks like an angry old god, and I love the aesthetic!"

Bellamy turns enough to shoot me a look that says he'll cut his hair when he's good and ready and no sooner, and then he returns his attention to the doorways where no one is going to come. It makes him feel better to guard us, and I'm not going to discourage him, especially when he has a ward to protect him as long as he's Fox's Acolyte.

"Romily," Fox's voice pulls me away from those concerns about Bellamy, and I turn to the love of my life with an expectant expression.

Done talking to your fathers?I think toward him.

It must work because his gaze turns approving. "The prison is made of the remnants of an asteroid. Dakota thinks it may date back to the K-T boundary. It's been molded into this prison by a master alchemist and metallurgist and the wards were set by a cooperative group of magic users from each discipline. In order to break in we need" —he glances toward Akile, calculates whether he's going to actually accept Akile like he has everyone else I've brought into our family, and decides he's still all in with whatever makes me happy— "a group of magic users at least as powerful as Darcy, but from all the possible disciplines. Darcy covers blood magic, hearth magic, fire and dance magic, but there are more disciplines of magic than I can easily name off the top of my head. I'll be able to stand in for the magic of my parents, but we'll have to first find an exhaustive list of magic types, and then we need to find people with enough power who're willing to sacrifice some of themselves to break the wards on this prison."

"An exhaustive list? Where are we going to find something like that?" Bellamy asks, holstering his gun now that Fox is back with us. He keeps his sword out.

Fox eyes Akile.

Akile shrugs with a bright-eyed smile. "We can ask the friends to find one for us, but last year the cherubs found a new class of magic users, so what we really need is an exhaustive list from the time our parents put the ward up."

Fox shakes his head. "No. We need a current list. The ward is living and adaptive. Dakota said he felt a strand of technomancy in it, and that's only a few hundred years old."

Akile's smile transforms into a grimace. "Let's go back so we can start the friends building the list of magic. We might have to track down the rare users, but I'm sure the friends will be able to do most of the work."

"Perfect," Bellamy drawls, leveling Akile with a look that makes me worry for my bestie. "Now, it's time to explain the human cult, and the person who broke through the wards of this prison to put me here."

Akile narrows his eyes at Bellamy and his lips press together like he's thinking of keeping his silence.

Fox draws his sword with the ominous sound of the metal leaving the scabbard, punctuating Bellamy's expectancy.

Honestly, RIP, Bestie, if you don't answer my son's question.