Chapter 52

"Holy shit, that was utterly insane," I gasped, glancing back over my shoulder and racing down the stairs that spiralled into the belly of the castle, sprinting for the passage we had used to get here.

I hated the thought of running instead of staying to face Lionel, but I knew that bastard all too well. He wouldn't face us like Fae even if we called him out to fight us one on one. And as much as I wanted to believe that we could carve our way through both the Bonded Men and Lavinia before ripping through him, I wasn't so sure. They would doubtlessly band together in their attack on us and as powerful as we were, we weren't a match for that many at once. We needed our army at our backs when that battle came.

The anti-stardusting wards that Lionel had placed heavily all over his castle since Darius and Max's escape were too difficult to breach in the time we had. It made more sense to flee, but the knowledge that our only way out of here was on foot was more than a little terrifying.

We raced out of the endless stairwell, and I cursed our luck as we found four guards in the long hallway there, each of them turning in surprise as they noticed our arrival.

I wasted no time, fire exploding from my left hand to knock back the guard on the right while I leapt at the closest guard and swung my sword for his neck. He raised an arm, either in some attempt at defence or meaning to cast magic, but I was too fast for him and his severed arm hit the polished floor, swiftly followed by his head.

Blood splattered the walls, spraying over my armour and brightening the green décor with darkest red.

Darcy had the third guard pinned to the wall in a coffin of ice and my pulse thundered as I whipped towards the fourth who had tried to make a run for it down the corridor. I threw my fist at him, stealing the air from the hallway ahead and watching as he struggled to run on, first stumbling then tripping and falling to the floor where he crawled pitifully for a few more moments before succumbing to my power and passing out.

"We need to hurry," Darcy said, glancing around at the defeated guards like she was trying to decide if it was worth us hiding them before we ran on.

"Was that the way we came in?" I questioned, jerking my chin at the darkened passage on the far side of the hallway which I was fairly sure we'd used to get here. But this place was so big and the lack of decorations meant one green wall looked precisely like another, so it was hard to be certain.

"That way, I think," Darcy said, nodding to a different passage and we exchanged a concerned look.

"Maybe we should just jump out a window?" I suggested.

"Too open and too many Dragons. We need to get back down to that tunnel."

I nodded, pressing my hand to the wall and using my earth magic to try and feel for the answer to our escape.

"That one," I said, nodding to the one Darcy had indicated. "There are more stairs."

She didn't need telling twice, sprinting for it in the lead and I hurried after her, pausing for a few moments to cast ice across the entrance, pouring as much power as I had time for into the magic and hoping it would slow any pursuing Dragons.

I leapt down the stairs, chasing after Darcy whose footsteps pounded away beyond the turn in the flight. I ran so fast that I collided with her as I turned the final corner, barely managing to grab her arm and steady us in the gaping entrance to what had to be the throne room.

I blinked at the towering throne cut from jade stone, the slightly smaller throne beside it which must have been intended for Lavinia, and the grinning heathen who stood looking back at us from the centre of the space.

"Tharix," I breathed, staring at the man who was so clearly a brother to my husband despite the fucked up way he'd entered this world.

"Roxy," he purred, his voice so like Darius's that it sent a shiver down my spine.

"Darius said…he said you helped him escape when he came here," I said slowly, power building in my fists and the crackle of Darcy's magic butting up against mine as she prepared her own attack.

Tharix shrugged. "I only unleashed the shadows. If it was helpful then that was a mere coincidence."

"I don't think so," I said firmly. "And I don't think Lionel would have bought that either. How did he punish you?"

Tharix tried not to react to that question but the flicker of darkness which ran through his eyes was answer enough.

"That's fucked-up, you know?" Darcy said. "No one should treat their kids the way he does."

Tharix seemed to consider that. "I heard your father was far worse."

"Our father was another victim of Lionel's brutality," Darcy spat. "Just like us, just like the whole of Solaria."

"Just like you," I added.

Footsteps came from the far side of the throne room, and we all looked towards them, the moments slipping away from us.

"If I let you go, what will you owe me, I wonder?" Tharix mused, his chin bobbing towards another doorway to our right which was almost entirely concealed behind a stone pillar.

"A debt," I said firmly. "One we will repay in full."

Tharix smiled at that, looking to Darcy for confirmation and she nodded.

"A debt it is then," he said. "Time to run, rabbits."

I exchanged a loaded look with my sister, but the footsteps were almost at the throne room now and we were out of time to argue. Whatever we owed Tharix would be a problem for another day. In that moment, we needed to go.

We broke into a run once more, charging for the hidden doorway and slipping behind the cover of the pillar just as the main doors to the throne room were thrown open and I caught sight of Vard as he prowled into the room.

"I seek the king," he said, sneering openly at Tharix, though I noted the way he stopped where he was, seeming close to bolting.

"And I seek sustenance," Tharix replied. "Perhaps you can help me obtain something fresh."

I couldn't risk lingering in the shadows of the pillar to hear any more of their exchange and I took off after Darcy again, sprinting down the stairs and feeling the sting of the fresh winter air on my cheeks as we finally closed in on an exit.

A door stood open at the foot of the stairs, six guards broken and bleeding over the dirt where they had presumably been standing guard. Their necks were twisted at unnatural angles, their eyes wide with a terror that I didn't want to understand.

"Who did this?" Darcy breathed but my gaze had risen to the dark and foreboding passage which delved into the mountainside. It was fifty feet or so away, just beyond the castle walls.

"Or what," I said.

"Oh hell," she cursed, looking to the dark cavern too. "Guess we're going back into the creepy cavern."

"Yep."

I drew the shadows close around us once more, making sure we were well concealed before we darted out of the palace and across the stony space beyond. The mountain fell away to our left, the oppressive darkness of the night making it hard to fully appreciate the size of Lionel's army, but we could hear them. Horns blared and commanders yelled while countless Nymphs and Fae both in and out of their shifted forms moved towards the blazing torches of the illusion of our army in the distance.

A blast of Dragon fire pierced the night and I looked up, spying Lionel as he swept across the sky, soaring back and forth above his army. If he chose to fly ahead with his Bonded Men, it wouldn't take long for them to figure out that they'd been tricked. But of course he didn't do that. Lionel wouldn't risk his own ass. No. He was going to advance right at the back of his warriors, but someone was going to blow the whistle on this farce soon enough. Our clock was ticking, I just didn't know how much time we had left.

We dove into the almost complete darkness of the underground cavern and started running between the oddly named passages, that feeling of unnatural stillness and malicious eyes on my flesh appearing almost at once.

I felt like a mouse creeping into a lion's den. Every instinct in my body was nagging at me to turn back.

A dim light caught my attention in the dark and I slowed, turning to look at it and frowning as I noticed the cavern it was coming from didn't have a plaque denoting a name above it.

"Darcy," I hissed, pointing it out and she frowned. "Should we try and figure out what fucked up bullshit is going on here before we escape?"

"That sounds like a really dangerous idea," Darcy replied, leading the way into the cavern, and I grinned as I hurried to walk at her side.

The stone passageway was narrower than the others which had the metal plaques above them, and as we turned a corner we found burning sconces hanging from the walls, illuminating what looked like some kind of medical lab.

I bit down on my lip as I noticed a man strapped to a table, his chest rising and falling heavily, though his eyes were closed.

The sound of a metal tray being dropped to the ground scared the ever-loving shit out of me and I whipped around, finding a man there raising his hands which had presumably been in the process of carrying the tray when he'd spotted us.

Darcy threw a net of vines over him, yanking him off the ground to hang from the stone roof above our heads, and securing his arms at his back.

I barked out an order for anyone else to reveal themselves, but the only answer to my demand came from the man strapped to the table who jerked awake and began howling unnaturally while bucking and thrashing against his restraints.

"What is this place?" Darcy demanded of the man she'd trapped while I hurried to cut the bonds from the man on the table.

"Don't!" shrieked the man in her net, the shrill panic in his voice stalling me before I could do more than cut a single tether which had been strapping the man's chest down.

In the moment it took to look over at the net, the man on the table lunged, slamming into me and sinking rows of what looked like shark teeth into my fucking arm.

I cried out, Phoenix fire blazing from my fist which was halfway down his goddamn throat.

The man screamed but didn't release me, even when my flames burned a hole right through the back of his neck.

The teeth sank deeper, and Darcy ran to help me, casting vines around his jaw which seemed to have multiplied in size to accommodate my arm. She forced it apart by a few inches, though not enough to entirely release me.

I planted my boot against the edge of the metal table he was still half strapped to and threw my weight back, screaming in agony as his angled teeth ripped through my flesh and my blood spilled all over the floor.

With a savage wrench I fell backwards, hitting the floor with blood pissing out of my arm and a choked curse leaving my lips.

Darcy was there instantly, her fingers slipping in my blood as she tightened them around my arm and poured healing magic into me. The wounds were deep and jagged, but she worked fast, first blocking off my pain then stitching my skin back together.

The man on the table howled and thrashed so violently that the whole thing capsized, and I yanked Darcy aside as he fell towards us.

We scrambled across the floor, regaining our feet and I drew my sword to point it at the fucked up thing which had tried to eat me while backing away to stand beneath the netted man.

"Explain or I will take great pleasure in letting that thing devour you," I snarled, my blood pounding wildly, the need for death thrumming within me, urging me to do it.

"Please," he begged. "I'm no one. I'm nothing. Just a lab hand. Professor Vard is the mastermind behind-"

"Since when is that douchebag a professor?" Darcy scoffed, holding her sword at the ready too.

"He is a genius," the man insisted, his voice taking on an awed quality which made my skin prickle with unease.

"Why? What is that thing? What else is in this place?" I demanded.

"He is…the future," the man breathed reverently, looking at the thrashing, howling creature on the ground with utter admiration in his gaze.

I scoffed, backing up further and casting an eye over the documents which were laid out across the long desk lining the back of the room. There were medical reports on various Fae, their Order forms highlighted alongside their Elements. Beyond that was a stack of information on magical creatures…no, scrap that, magical monsters, the likes of which no unlucky bastard would ever wish to stumble across.

There was a bunch of scientific reports about DNA splicing and magical interference along with genetic manipulation.

"They're Fae," I said slowly, taking a few of the pages and returning to Darcy to show her. "Fae they've been fucking with in their labs and turning into monsters."

"Why?" she said in horror, looking at the papers I was holding out to her. "Why would anyone want… Wait a minute, this looks like one of the actual beasts that attacked the academy."

I took the offered piece of paper, noting the name at the top of it. Brownmary. The thing did look hellishly like one of the monsters from the attack.

"That's what they're keeping in the other tunnels?" I asked, jabbing the asshole in the net with the tip of my sword when he seemed less than inclined to answer me.

"They're not monsters. They're the future of genetics. They're weapons beyond the wildest dreams of most mundane minds and-"

"How are they controlled?" I demanded because what would be the point of feral beasts if there was no way to aim them in the right direction, or call them off once they had done what you wanted?

The man spat at me in reply, his fervent devotion to this insanity clearly more important to him than his life.

I cursed, shuffling the papers in my hands as though hunting for some answer, but there was nothing there which made any sense to me beyond scientific notations and mentions of an Etlonian Spearing Moth.

"There has to be something here," Darcy insisted, striding over to the desk and shoving papers aside as she hunted.

I looked up at the man in the net, a grim thought occurring to me which only made the adrenaline that was tearing through my limbs spike and the ache for bloodshed deepen inside me.

"Tell us how to control them and how to defeat them," I demanded, ignoring the blathering nonsense about the supremacy of science and the dawning of an age where magic and chemistry would collide to create a future unlike anything I was capable of predicting.

At a twist of my wrist the vines which formed his net began to tighten. I watched as the man shifted uncomfortably, not seeming to notice precisely what was happening at first, his vitriol about the incredible work he did here still spilling from his lips. Then silence fell mid-sentence as he felt the vines digging into his flesh, noticing the way they were contorting his limbs, slowly but surely.

"Wait," he gasped, jerking around so he could peer down at me directly. "You can't do this! There has been no trial, no accusation of my crimes, I-"

"You are a soldier employed in the service of my enemy during wartime," I told him, my voice a cold, savage thing which I hardly even recognised as the thrill of his impending death slid through my blood and rooted me in place, watching the seconds left to him ticking by. "Your only hope at survival beyond this meeting is by answering our questions."

"Tor," Darcy said in a low warning voice, still rifling through the paperwork on the desk.

"It's fine," I assured her, and though she looked inclined to say more, she didn't, knowing as well as I did that we couldn't leave the nature of these weapons unknown. They might be vital to Lionel's plans for us, and we had to be prepared to face them in another fight if it came to that, but I was hoping for an alternative.

"You can't do this!" the man insisted but the vines tightened so hard that some bone made a horrific cracking noise, and his yells of protest turned to those of panic.

"The manacles," he panted wildly, seeming to finally understand how little concern I held for his continued ability to breathe. "A location is set on their individual navigation device and the manacles burn them if they head in any direction but the correct one."

"And how do you call them off? Or make them attack?" I growled, pausing in my tightening of the vines as Darcy crossed back over to stand with me and listen too.

The man gave a bark of hysterical laughter which mixed with a howl of pain, then he fell panting against the hold of the vines. "They don't need any encouragement to attack and the manacles simply return them to their holding pens once they are no longer required in action."

"So they just keep killing unless something defeats them or they're forced away by the manacles," Darcy said, dread lacing her tone as we considered the reality of facing the countless creatures that dwelled in this hellhole during battle.

"Yes," the guard panted. "Some have some small weakness built into them for the purposes of experimentation but the work on such flaws has barely begun and the results are patchy at best. The bulk of the work has been focused on their magnificence, on making sure they survive beyond the first weeks of conception and are able to maintain their hold on life through the transformative process."

"What do we need to control those manacles?" Darcy asked.

The man jerked pathetically against his restraints but his gaze had moved to a small, much neater desk in the far corner of the room close to a large rack of surgical tools.

I headed over to it, skirting the thrashing, shark-toothed man who still lay mostly tethered to the upturned metal table, his eyes wild with violence, his soul seemingly absent from his flesh. I hoped for his sake that it was.

I tipped over a small tray on the desk, neat paperwork and a notebook crammed full of notes in a tiny, frantic scrawl spilling out onto it. Nothing that could be used to remotely control monsters. I yanked the drawers out next, one by one, dumping them and their ever-so-carefully arranged contents onto the floor before reaching the bottom one, but it wouldn't open.

A flare of air magic smashed the lock and I grabbed an Atlas in a heavy, shatter-proof case from the drawer, powering it up and finding a request for a passcode awaiting me.

I stalked back towards the man, the vines tightening around him at my approach, his cries of agony colouring the air as they got closer and closer to squeezing the life clean out of him, and my heart raced with the thrill of the prospect.

"Give me the code and I'll release you from the vines," I offered as his cries were choked from his lungs, reduced to panicked wheezing.

"Five, four, three, two-" the last number was cut off alongside the last of his breath, but it was easy enough to guess.

"Seriously?" Darcy asked scornfully.

"I guess even evil scientists have trouble remembering passcodes sometimes," I snorted, hitting the number one and unlocking the Atlas.

I passed it over to Darcy who was undoubtably better with technology than me and she quickly started hunting for what she would need to control the things out in those tunnels.

The man's eyes gleamed with betrayal as he stared down at me, the last of his breath slowly crushing from his lungs. I sighed in exasperation before severing the vines which caged him – though I left those containing his hands in place - and let him crash to the ground.

He gasped for breath like a fish on land and Darcy and I stepped back without comment, moving just far enough away to keep him from touching us.

"I think this is it," Darcy said, tilting the Atlas screen to show it to me. There was a map to the right of it and a list of those odd names to the left.

I watched as Darcy clicked on Globeryan then zoomed in on the map and selected a spot not all that far from where we stood, approximately in the centre of the enemy army camped outside this cavern.

Her eyes sparked and I nodded, pointing out another button which gave the option to send all candidates to the desired location.

Darcy chewed the inside of her cheek then hit the button.

I flinched in alarm at the wild shrieks, howls and screams which echoed from the tunnels beyond the chamber, the walls themselves vibrating as gigantic bodies slammed into the walls and terror slid beneath my skin.

"What the-" Darcy began, but I cut over her as I realised what the problem was.

"The doors," I hissed. "They're locked in but the manacles are driving them to leave."

"Oh shit," she cursed, swiping at the menus on the Atlas, hunting for a way to set them free.

"How do we unlock them?" I demanded from the man who hadn't even tried to rise from the floor and lay crumpled at my feet.

"Manually," he hissed, his eyes alive with the arrogance of the belief in his own brilliance, but I was sick of petty men with superiority complexes believing they could get the better of me. So he was smart? We'd see how helpful that was to him in the end.

"That's a terrible design," Darcy accused.

"Well…yes, I suppose it is actually," the man agreed.

"Come on," I urged Darcy, guiding her to the door while she continued to hunt for a way to open the cages from the Atlas without success.

"There's nothing on here about doors, Tor," she hissed. "And all that noise is bound to be attracting the attention of the guards and maybe even the army outside."

"Well you heard the man – we'll just have to do it manually."

A wild look flashed through her eyes as she considered that and we stepped out into the rocky cavern beyond the door to the lab.

I turned back to look at the asshole who thought himself oh so smart and smiled darkly as I used a flash of fire magic to sever the straps securing the mutated Fae with the shark teeth to his table.

The man's screams pitched higher than even the tremendous roars of the monsters locked up all around us and I slammed the door between us as the shark-jawed man pounced.

Me and Darcy broke into a run, hurrying back towards the farthest reaches of the tunnel where we'd gained entry to this fucked up slice of Solaria. I steeled myself against the terror pounding through me as I darted down the tunnel marked with the name Globeryan.

I threw a Faelight up ahead of me, illuminating a door built of solid iron which had been bolted into the stone of the mountain itself, yet it still looked in danger of buckling beneath the force of the thing which was fighting to break it.

The door was barred but the mechanism to release it looked simple enough; it just had to be rotated then drawn back against the wall.

"We can manage that," Darcy said, her thoughts in line with my own no matter how insane they seemed.

"Yeah," I agreed, my voice only trembling the smallest amount as the beast beyond the door slammed into it again and dislodged a scattering of gravel from the roof of the cavern.

"Just to be clear, this is madness," Darcy said, meeting my gaze.

"Utter insanity," I agreed, lashing a vine around the handle before turning and sprinting back out of the tunnel, the vine snaking across the ground as it grew to follow us.

Cries came from the far end of the cavern in the direction of Lionel's castle and the army beyond, the sound of pounding boots announcing the arrival of a squadron who had no doubt come to investigate the wild disturbance of the beasts.

We sprinted in the opposite direction, vines racing away from us like serpents, seeking out the handles on door after door of the cages while we prayed that this wasn't a terrible fucking idea.

"Let's hope we aren't remembered as the queens who unleashed a plague of monsters onto their own kingdom," I panted, running as fast as I could for that sliver of darkness which stretched away into the canyon far beyond and our one chance of escape.

"Better that than the queens who were killed by said plague of monsters," Darcy reasoned, drawing a bark of laughter from my lips.

"Hey! Stop there!" a voice boomed, amplified through magic over the manic baying of the monsters. We spun around to see at least fifty soldiers crammed into the space at the furthest end of the cavern, their hands raised in preparation to cast magic. "By order of the great King Lionel, I-"

"King Lionel can get fucked!" I shouted, cutting him off.

"Right up the ass with a pinecone," Darcy agreed and without needing to say a single word more, we both yanked on the magic tethering us to those vines.

If the monsters had been yelling before their cages were opened, they were screaming now. The whole world seemed to crack open at the bloodthirsty echoes of their release and I stared, rooted to the spot as countless beasts spilled into the cavern and rushed headlong into the squadron who had come to face us.

My lips parted as I took in the hulking bodies, slick scales, pearly eyes, ripped wings and razor talons of the monsters. They were beasts in totality without anything to say they might have been Fae once. I hoped they weren't anymore. Or at the very least I hoped that if any lingering remnant of the Fae they had once been remained within their transfigured flesh that it would soon be gifted a place beyond The Veil. But before that, I was going to bet revenge tasted fucking good.

Darcy's fingers wound through mine as I stood transfixed by the screams and bloodlust, almost certain I could feel the deaths of those Fae who fought so desperately to try and save their sorry lives. It was as though their souls were brushing past me on their way to the beyond, no doubt cursing me with their passage while their wishes for my own death fell on deaf ears.

"We need to go, Tor," Darcy demanded, yanking on my arm and making me realise it wasn't the first time she'd done it.

I blinked, the trance of death and bloodlust bursting as I shook my head of it and I let her draw me away.

As soon as Darcy was certain I was with her, her wings burst from her back and I followed suit, leaping into the air and flying on, the screams and brutal chorus of death echoing around us in the confined space as we sped away into the dark.