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28

The Door in the Floor

The airship arrived at the Silver Shore early the next morning. No monsters tried to pull us down as we crossed the Black Forest this time. In fact, besides my nighttime visit from Grace and Faris, the journey had been a pretty uneventful one.

Of course, that didn’t stop my designated protectors from protesting when I insisted on going down to the shore to look for Thea’s grimoire.

“You’re supposed to stay on the ship,” Alec reminded me, as though I’d forgotten.

“Those were Nyx’s orders, and she is going down to the shore,” I pointed out. “So I’m going down there too.”

Stash was next. “Sweetness, it’s just not safe.”

“You can go down there with me,” I told him. “But, seriously, who’s going to attack me? We’re way out in the middle of nowhere, and monsters can’t even get inside the Silver Shore. You guys have already searched the area and found no enemies, no boobytraps, no dangers of any kind.”

“Lord Faris will not approve,” Devlin said stiffly.

“If he finds out, I’ll tell him I escaped your guard and went down myself, so you had to follow me. Faris knows how I operate. He’ll totally believe that story.”

“That is exactly how she operates,” Patch told the others.

Devlin sighed in defeat. “Very well. But we’re staying by your side the whole time.”

“I would expect nothing less of such competent, professional, godly soldiers.”

“I’m going to quote you on that, Pandora,” Octavian said. “Maybe I’ll even score a promotion from Faris from it.”

“If Faris doesn’t punish us for letting her run wild,” Devlin said.

“Faris wants to keep the Guardians away from my daughter,” I told them. “Well, this is how we’re going to do it.”

“I think she has us there,” Punch said.

He looked very excited to be leaving the ship. He must have been convinced that there would be something dangerous down there to fight. In fact, he was probably counting on it. Punch had found the whole airship gig to be terribly dull. During our flight across the Atlantic, I’d once seen him preparing to shoot at an enormous flying monster, just to spice things up. Devlin had stopped him just in time.

As we prepared to fly down to the Silver Shore, Punch whispered to me, “I’m counting on you, girl, to bring us some of that legendary Leda chaos.”

Our landing party was full. I wasn’t the only one eager for a chance to leave the ship. In fact, once we left, there was hardly anyone left on board.

Leila looked around the Silver Shore. “This place is beautiful.”

“The most beautiful place on Earth.” Cadence kicked off her boots and dug her toes into the sand.

The sand sparkled like silver glitter. That must have been where the place had gotten its name.

“My father used to bring me here when I was a child,” Cadence said.

I bent over.

“What are you doing?” Nyx demanded.

My fingers paused in front of my bootlaces. “I thought I’d—”

“I know what you were thinking, Pandora. And it’s bad enough that some of my angels have completely lost their wits at the prospect of sandy toes.”

Nyx watched with disapproval—or was that envy?—as Cadence and Leila ran barefoot across the sandy beach. Basanti, Andromeda, and Alice had joined them. They were all acting very jolly, very un-Legion-like.

“They’re just restless,” I told Nyx. “They don’t have their knitting to calm their nerves like I do.”