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52

PRESENT DAY

Bree

HOURS PASS. ENOUGH that we start to ask questions about options for using the bathroom. Enough that the dungeon lives up to its name in every way. It is only dimly lit by sconces down the hall outside our cell. It is damp. Bone-chillingly cold. Silent, save for a dripping sound that echoes against the stone walls. If I had to guess, I’d say that it was early morning now. Before dawn.

The King said he needed to confront Gabriel “as Erebus” and that it would require bureaucracy. That could take at least a day, maybe two, before he even bothers to come back. Maybe more. I doubt that he’d send warlocks to check in on us; Zoe and I could likely overpower them, even through the demon-proof bars. No, he’s going to leave us here until he’s ready to return and the more pressing matter of the Regents’ subterfuge is resolved.

At some point in the night, Nick wrapped me in the cocoon of his body. His broad chest warms my back and his arms enclose my shoulders enough that he can lace his fingers over my bent knees. Every once in a while he tugs me closer and dips his chin into my shoulder, shuddering in the cold. When I ask if he’s okay, he mutters, “?’M fine.”

Zoe does something similar to Mariah, holding the shorter girl tight around her shoulder while they sit side by side so that Mariah can take advantage of Zoe’s cambion body heat.

I’m just working up the courage to tell everyone that I might need to use a corner and embarrass myself for life when we hear a rumbling noise from the rear wall of the cell.

Nick tugs me up, forcing my stiff joints to move, yanking me toward the cell bars as Zoe does the same with Mariah.

The rumbling grows louder.

Zoe, Nick, and I thrust our palms out simultaneously, calling power to our hands in a rush of green, blue, and purple flames.

Nick’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “Don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll let me greet our guests first?”

“Why would I let you greet the… giant moles that seem to be burrowing straight for us first?” I whisper. “I don’t think the code of chivalry says anything about giant burrowing moles.”

“That’s the old code,” he says slowly, eyes narrowing at the wall. “The new edition has a whole chapter on oversized rodents; didn’t you see? Completely different species.”

“You two are really annoying me right now,” Zoe snaps.

“I’d rather be annoyed than eaten,” Mariah mutters.

“I second that,” I say.

“Third,” Nick murmurs. The rumbling becomes a high-pitched grind. Nick slides forward. Humor leaves him. “It’s getting closer.”

It is. The floor beneath our feet vibrates to an urgent rhythm. “Strong moles,” I murmur.

Nick’s armor rises to life along his skin. He rubs at his chest, shuddering as if chilled. “Bree—”

“If you tell me to stand back, Davis, I swear to God —”

His mouth quirks. “Just gonna ask you to start sending your root to the floor, my king. Let’s extend a friendly hello.”

“Flaming welcome mat,” I say. “I like it.”

I do as he suggests, releasing low, rolling streams of mage flame from both fists. It floods the floor in a heavy whoosh, covering the dirt with a roiling layer of bright purple. My root licks up the corners of the walls, climbing the edges of our enclosure.

A second later, the concrete wall starts to shake. Mortar crumbles and spills in quarter-size chunks that spark as they hit the flames below. Larger chunks fall, cracking apart when they strike the ground. We press into the bars in a single line. Beside me, Mariah’s breath picks up, turns to shallow pants.

When the first crack forms, it races from the center of the wall upward. When the concrete blocks begin to bend, Nick’s chin dips to his chest, his eyes focused and intent.

“Get ready—”

The wall breaks inward, concrete falling in fist-size chunks that create plumes of dust when they land. I shut my eyes and turn away, holding my breath as a wave of stone dust surges into our faces.

If the giant moles attack us, we’ll be sitting ducks. Beside me, I hear Zoe coughing. Nick is the only person who has moved—I see his blue-white aether armor shimmering among the cloud of gray particles. His blade blooms in the billowing dark—and is met with another. This one a shining golden-white.

I know that color. That root. I’ve seen it before. I piece the memory together based on what Nick has told me—an attack in the woods. Two cambions fighting with me, fighting for me, one with blue-white aether and another with golden weapons in his hands. One was Sel, the other must have been…

“Valec!” Mariah cries.

A beat as the two blades hold against each other, then withdraw.

“I told you this was it,” a low voice drawls.

Someone grumbles beside him. “This was the third tunnel, man. Third! ”

As the dust begins to settle, Nick appears in front of me, blocking me from the newcomers’ view with his body. In the slight tilt of his head is a silent question just for me: Do we trust them? I extinguish my flames and wrap a hand around his gauntlet and blade arm, lowering it to get a better look.

A figure materializes, waving his hand over his face as the smoke clears around him. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a tall Black boy wearing a gray-and-red pinstripe vest, shirt, and pants with a golden pocket watch chain gleaming at his chest. At first glance, he looks like he’d be more at ease in one of Penumbra’s smoking salons than emerging out of the wall of an underground prison cell. Then, his eyes flash red, and his mouth pulls back in a wide grin, fangs low and visible on his bottom lip—and I realize that this cambion could make himself look at home pretty much anywhere.

“Anyone order a rescue?” he asks. Mariah runs forward, and he swings her into a hug. “Word got around everything went to hell up at Penumbra last night, and I knew it was time to get you out.”

The taller figure behind him must be the owner of the second voice. He’s an older Black man with wide shoulders, wearing a jacket, jeans, and far more appropriate footwear for burrowing through a wall. Mariah turns to him and laughs. “Emil?”

Emil steps in, clapping a hand on her back and pressing his cheek to her forehead. “Hey, cousin. Heard you needed some earth moved.”

It’s only now that the rest of the dust has cleared that I see that the tunnel behind them is perfectly round and supported by what looks like wide, glowing golden bands of light. A trail of smoky gold magic connects the root in the tunnel to Emil’s fingertips, and by the tight knit of his brows, he’s using not a small amount of focus to keep the tunnel intact.

“Holy shit.” Zoe steps forward beside me, inspecting the use of root with the same wonder as me. “Is that… root?”

Emil regards her. “You didn’t think it was all healing herbs and tea, did you?”

Zoe smirks. “You’re cool.”

“Powerhouse?” Valec peers around Nick’s shoulder. He steps over the rubble, nearly tripping on a few broken pieces in his rush to reach me, his arms extended. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you!”

I step around Nick with a small smile pulling at my lips, but my body language must give my hesitation away. Valec’s arms drop and he stops short a few feet away. “Hi, Valec,” I murmur.

“?‘Hi, Valec’?” His dark eyebrows rise in confusion. “We strangers now?”

“I…”

Nick collapses his blade and steps forward. “We haven’t met.”

Valec’s eyes flicker as he takes in Nick’s armor. “No, Scion, we have not.”

“Can we have this conversation back at the Lounge?” Emil asks, gritting his teeth. “I can’t hold this all day.”

“Yeah, Emil, we’re coming,” Valec calls. He studies me for a moment longer. “Y’all ready to go?”

I am already nodding when my bloodmark flares to life in my chest—a bright pulse of red light that floods the room. Valec is the only one who doesn’t shield his eyes. He stares at the mark as it glows above the neckline of my dress, following the branching crimson streaks as they reveal themselves across my collarbones and down my arms. “You doing that, Bree?”

“No. He is.”

Valec’s jaw tenses. “He know where you are?”

“He’s the one who put us here,” Zoe says, voice acrid. “But he can’t trace her. Won’t be able to find her when we leave. Which I’d like to do as soon as possible. I need to call my brother when we get somewhere safe.”

“Only place safe is the Lounge, and we ain’t there yet.” Valec’s jaw works to one side. Then, his eyes slide to Nick. “What’s wrong with you?”

Nick’s hand is at his chest, rubbing over his sternum and the hidden shard beneath Ava’s spellcraft. “Nick?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Nick says. “It’s so cold, Bree.” When he shudders again, I realize that the cold he’d been feeling wasn’t just coming from the dungeon.

“It was the shard, wasn’t it?” I whisper. “All night?”

Nick blinks, nodding. “Must have been, but it’s never done that before.”

I step closer. “Does it hurt?”

He winces. “No.” A lie. “Maybe if I focus on it, I can…” His gaze turns inward, and I can tell that he’s searching Ava’s magic with his own, trying to understand what’s changed.

Valec looks between us, gaze scrutinizing, studying. But I know that if the King isn’t able to sense Ava’s spellcraft and Nick’s shard, then Valec won’t be able to either. Frustration flickers across his face. “Y’all gonna explain whatever’s going on?”

“Not here,” I say.

“Mmnh.” Valec’s face turns stony. “We’re gonna need to have a long talk when we get back to the Lounge, you and I.”

“Understood,” I reply. “Let’s go.”

“Yes,” Emil calls. “Let’s go !”

“We’re coming , Emil!” Valec says.

“Wait,” Nick says, turning as if he’s heard something, his fingers pressing on his chest. “I can feel… an echo. Another”—he taps his own chest—“like this.”

Valec and I exchange glances, and Zoe walks over. “Another like what?”

“You all don’t—” Nick stumbles back to the bars, pressing his face to them, eyes shut tight. “You don’t feel that? See that?”

“Feel what, Nick?” I ask. Whatever he’s “seeing” is beyond my Sight. Existing on a spectrum that only he can perceive with the inheritance of Lancelot.

Nick turns back to me, eyes opening wide. “I think… I think the crown is still here.”

In the end, it takes my, Zoe’s, and Valec’s strength combined to budge the bars. Together, we bend three back to create enough space for Nick to crawl through and for me and Valec to follow.

Nick moves as if pulled by the fragment in his chest, down a long, winding path of empty cells that look like ours, all the way to a smaller, warded alcove embedded at the end of the stone-lined hall at shoulder height.

Inside the ward sits a cloth-covered, circular lump, marked at regular intervals by protruding jagged points.

The crown.

“Why would the King leave it here unattended?” Valec taps at the glowing ward around the small alcove. “This is a simple barrier. A human couldn’t get past it, but a powerful enough demon could.”

“But a demon can’t touch the crown,” I say, “so this is as safe a place as any.”

“He didn’t know that I’d be able to sense the crown when I’m close,” Nick murmurs, peering into the alcove. “Didn’t know about the shard. Not as all-knowing as he thinks he is, is he?” Nick reaches in for the crown, but I grasp his hand. He turns back to me. “It won’t hurt me, Bree.”

“I know,” I say, “but we don’t know what will happen if you touch it either. You’re human, but you’ve got a piece of it inside your chest. If the crown can call to its broken shards, who knows what it will do when your body is all that’s separating it from its lost pieces?”

Nick withdraws his hand. “Good thinking.”

Valec doesn’t say a word as we talk, taking all of it in silently. When I glance at him, his calculating gaze tells me that our “talk” might not be the most pleasant conversation. “Later,” I say.

“Soon,” he corrects.

In the end, I take the crown myself but wrap it so that it doesn’t make contact with my skin. I’m not sure I want to touch it either. “Let’s get out of here.”

We run back toward the cell and Emil, but just as we pause at the bent cell bars for Nick to crawl through, I stop and look at Valec again. “Wait. You’re Valec .”

Valec stares at me like I’ve grown two heads. “I know who I am. What the hell is wrong with you—”

“You know William ,” I interrupt.

He looks at Mariah inside the cell, then back to me. “Yes and? You know I know William—”

“No, she doesn’t,” Mariah says.

“Can you call him?” I ask, heart pounding in my chest. “And tell him to get to the Institute?”

Valec’s pulling his phone out, but it’s Nick who asks me a question. “Why the Institute?”

I shake my free hand, brain turning. “Because I think that’s where the missing Rootcrafter girls are being held.”

“How do you know that?” Valec demands.

“What time is it?” I ask, ignoring him.

Valec clicks his phone awake. “Quarter after four a.m.”

“Call William now !” I shout, urgency stripping away my patience.

Valec doesn’t argue. “Got it.” He’s already dialing, racing away to find a signal.

“Why the Institute?” Nick repeats.

“Gabriel and the other Regents kept the girls a secret from Erebus, right?” I ask, the idea forming in my mind quickly—but also much too slowly. I should have figured this out sooner. “If Gabriel retrieved them from the seller’s location and needed to hide them somewhere overnight, somewhere secure where he could study them or experiment on them or whatever they want them for… the Institute’s where he’d take them. There are labs there. Doctors. The staff are loyal to the Regents and would keep his secret, even from Erebus.”

“Got William on the phone,” Valec says, blurring back. “Told him to head to the Institute, but he says he and Douglas tried to get in a couple of days ago and couldn’t get past security.”

I don’t know who Douglas is, but I assume I’ll meet him again soon.

“Tell them to go back,” I order. “Tell them to say Regent Gabriel sent them. There are hotel-looking residential rooms on the other side of the building, across a bridge. A suite on the sixth floor. They have to go there, and they have to go now, while it’s still early, before daylight, before Erebus figures it out—”

“What’s Erebus got to do with it?” Valec asks.

“No time!” Mariah shouts.

“Okay, okay,” Valec says, pacing away to speak into the phone. “Did ya get that?”

Nick shakes his head, eyes bright with awe. “Brilliant girl.”

“Only if I’m right,” I caution.

“You’re right. I can feel it.”