“Go. We’ll take care of Florence,” Phaidros shouted.
Alexis shoved his way through the crowd, crashing through the lobby of the museum and into the public bathrooms. Finding them mercifully empty, Alexis focused on Ein Karem, his heart pounding. He plunged through the portal and had just enough sense to pull up a shield before landing in Elazar’s burning lounge room.
“Elazar!” He moved into the kitchen. Fire licked up the walls and curled along the ceiling. Alexis tried to pull the oxygen from around the flames but felt nothing. This was no ordinary fire. Thevetat’s magic. He didn’t have time to hunt the grounds for priests. He needed to find his nephew before the house came down around them.
“Elazar! Can you hear me?” Alexis shouted, inhaling smoke as the fire ate through his shields. His armor heated enough to burn his skin underneath, and agony screamed through him. He shoved his pain aside and searched the rooms. Blood stained the carpet in Elazar’s bedroom. Panic rushed through him. “Elazar!”
The paintings on the walls bubbled, and the books on the shelves were crinkling to ash. The books. Alexis went to the metal door to the underground library and found it glowing hot. The roof above him cracked and began to cave. Burning debris struck him in the shoulder. Alexis jumped through another portal into the genizah as it all came down, then brushed the burning coals caught in his clothes.
A pain-filled wheeze stopped him dead. “Uncle?” Elazar was propped up against a shelf, one hand clutching at his bleeding side, the other with a handgun trained on him.
“Elazar!” Alexis rushed to his side. “How badly are you hit?”
“It’s just a graze, but it won’t stop bleeding. Those bastards broke through the wards. I couldn’t stop them. They did something… It was like the house was hit with a wave of darkness. It killed my phone, so I couldn’t call for help.”
Alexis hushed him. “Tell me later once we get out of here. I can’t put the fire out. I tried. The house will be gone in minutes. I’m sorry, Elazar, but we need to go. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Don’t be sorry. At least you’re here.” He looked around at his collection. “Upstairs wasn’t where I kept the true treasures, but all of this? It can never be replaced.”
Alexis helped Elazar to his feet, the burns on his shoulders screaming as he lifted the older man up. “It’s high tide, so I’ll see what I can do, nephew.”
With one arm around Elazar, Alexis closed his eyes and let his magic roll out of him. Elazar gasped as the room filled with blue light and a wide portal opened up beneath them. Alexis held tight to Elazar as they fell through nothingness and then crashed into the upstairs library of the palazzo in Venice. Zo and Galenos were there in moments, and through a daze, Alexis said, “He’s hurt. Help him first.”
“Alexis!” Penelope rushed to him, her face pale and terrified. “Oh my God, you’re burnt.”
“Help me move him,” Aelia said, and between them, they got Alexis to one of the couches.
Penelope looked like she would faint. Alexis couldn’t focus on anything but her and the pain hammering through him.
“Get her out of here, Aelia. She doesn’t need to witness this.”
Penelope shook her head in protest. “I can help—”
“You can help by leaving right now, Penelope,” Alexis snapped, and she reared back like he’d struck her. Penelope turned on her heel and bolted, the hurt in her eyes striking him like a blow. “Fuck.”
“She’ll be fine, Alexis. She’s a lot better off than you are right now. She’ll only get in the way.”
He was barely conscious as Aelia sang a pain relief charm onto his burnt skin and then removed the breastplate he wore. “Elazar…”
“Zo has him. Don’t worry, Alexis. You saved him…and all of his books by the looks of things.” Aelia pulled a face of disapproval. “We really need to have a conversation about your priorities, Defender.”
Alexis bit down a cry as she removed scraps of his shirt from the wounds. “Your bedside manner is terrible, Princess.”
HE DIDN’T know he’d fainted, but Alexis came to hours later. Aelia sat hollow-eyed in a chair opposite him. His chest and shoulders were wrapped in bandages that smelled like they’d been soaked in lavender and honey.
“How are you feeling?” Aelia asked.
“Like I’ve had a burning house dropped on me.” He attempted a smile and looked around with bleary eyes. Elazar’s library was crammed in piles around them. “How is Elazar?”
“He had a bullet graze along his right ribs and is covered in bruises, but Zo got the smoke out of his lungs. He’ll be okay with plenty of rest. I think Zo is more upset about it than he’s letting on.” She lifted the edge of the bandages across Alexis’s chest. “You’re almost done. I healed them, but the new skin is going to be sensitive and a little red for a day or so. I don’t have your and Nereus’s healing abilities.”
“You’ve done more than enough. Thank you, Aelia.” He shifted his arms experimentally. “Do you know where Penelope is?”
Aelia pushed her hair from her face. “I tried to find her, but she wasn’t in the usual places. She’s still in the palazzo somewhere; I’m sure of it.”
“She’s in Nereus’s rooms.” The warding would keep the other magicians from finding her. He tried to feel her out through the moíra desmós, but she’d closed him off.
“You should rest before you have wild makeup sex.”
Alexis sat up slowly. “Have you heard from Lyca and Phaidros?”
“The situation in Florence has settled, as much as it can. Everyone is scared and in shock. Phaidros went back to his palazzo in Santa Croce. Everything still seems to be in one piece. His housekeepers are fine and well. Small mercies.” She twisted her phone about in her hands.
“He’s going to be fine, Aelia. Phaidros is more than capable of fending off priests when he needs to.”
“Not if they firebomb his house with him inside of it. Elazar said that your magic couldn’t put the fire out, and you know what that means—”
“It means that Thevetat is sharing power, or Abaddon was in Israel. It would take a powerful priest to get through the warding, for a start. Don’t worry about Phaidros. He’ll be home soon.”
Aelia bit her lip. “Alexis, I love him.”
Alexis softened, surprised that she’d finally said it aloud. “I know. That doesn’t mean he won’t be able to handle himself if they are attacked by priests. You need to have faith in his abilities.”
Alexis pulled at the soaked bandages across his chest. “Help me get rid of these. I need to find Penelope and apologize to her.” He didn’t want to get stuck talking about Aelia’s emotions, which were tricky to navigate at the best of times. Alexis was feeling guiltier every second he was awake and not talking to Penelope. She’d been afraid for him, and he’d made it worse.
“Sending Penelope away was the right thing to do. She’d have gotten in my way, and seeing you that wounded would have traumatized her. She hasn’t seen this kind of life before, Alexis. I worry she won’t be able to take it by the time we’ve seen this through.”
“She’s stronger than you give her credit for. I was a horror of blood and charred skin. If our positions were reversed, I wouldn’t have been half as calm as she was.”
Aelia helped him remove the bandages and carefully inspected the new skin, not letting him leave until she was satisfied that he’d healed enough. “Go and find her.” With a wrinkle of her nose, she added, “Maybe find a bath first.”
Alexis bowed to her, placing a kiss on her hand. “My thanks, Princess.”
“Yes, yes, I’m a wonder and a miracle. Now get out of here, and don’t trip on any of Elazar’s books on the way out.”
ALEXIS RESISTED the urge to portal into Nereus’s rooms. The last time he tried, he’d been stuck in the warding like a fly in a web, and if it weren’t for Penelope pulling him through, he was sure he’d still be there. The palazzo was determined to take him the long way round, eve
n though the rooms were firmly in his mind.
“I can’t make it right with Penelope if you don’t let me near her,” Alexis said after he was led through the main foyer for the third time in twenty minutes. The next door he went through dumped him into a subterranean stone tunnel, the walls slick with wet algae and smelling like an estuary.
“I’m almost too afraid to ask where this is,” Alexis muttered.
The tunnel ended and he found himself standing in front of two very familiar double doors. As a young apprentice, he’d stood outside of them many times while waiting for either a lesson or a chastisement. There was even the overly friendly brass doorknob that tasted his magic before allowing him to pass. Whatever permissions Penelope gave the last time he’d visited must have still held true, because the rooms let him enter without having to fight through the warding.
In the sitting room, he found an unfinished glass of wine and a pile of open books around Penelope’s journal. Some books he knew were from Atlantis without touching them. They’d sat on shelves behind Nereus’s desk at the citadel. He remembered staring at their spines, tuning out as she lectured him about using too much magic too quickly, going too deep into the citadel library, stirring up the chimera, racing horses with Phaidros through the gardens. The astrolabe sat on one of the titles, and for a gut-wrenching second, he wondered if she’d gone back inside of it. He picked it up tentatively.
“Penelope?” he whispered to it. After a moment, he heard a splash of water from the other rooms and put the astrolabe back down again.
The bedroom layout had changed since he was last there, the palazzo making personal touches to accommodate the new Archivist. The bed was still a carved wooden four-poster, but the sheets had changed from yellow and red to sea green and purple, and he noted with some amusement that there was now a phone charger on the bedside table. Penelope would drag even the palazzo into this century, whether it liked it or not.
Alexis tapped on the bathroom door before edging it open. The room was still covered in tiny indigo tiles, but now the ceiling was painted with golden astrological symbols, and there was a shower with a brass head and a sunken bath big enough for five people. Penelope was submerged, sitting on the stone seat, steaming aqua water to her shoulders. Her hazel eyes looked red, and her gaze flicked over his bare chest and shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he said, knowing that he couldn’t ease his way into conversation. “You were scared for me, and I yelled at you. I’m a bastard. You didn’t deserve it, no matter how much pain I was in.”
“You seem to be healing quickly.”
“Aelia’s magic. She’s getting better at it.”
“Still sore?”
“Not really. It feels more like a sunburn now.” Alexis touched the pink skin on his shoulders.
Penelope rested her chin in her hand. “So what you’re saying is, you have no reason not to get in here with me.”
“Only if you’re inviting me.”
“Hurry up, or I’ll change my mind and stay pissed off at you.”
Alexis didn’t need to be told twice. He kicked off his boots and pants and climbed into the hot water. He stayed on the other side of the pool, allowing her space. “Gods, this stings and feels so good at the same time,” he said to break the silence.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
And so Alexis told her everything, from Gisela’s warning that the police would be investigating Penelope again, to the Duomo and the cold fear of not being able to find Elazar.
“I haven’t felt that kind of terror in a while. Zo is going to be beside himself.”
Penelope held out her hand to him, and he moved across the bath, taking her in his arms. She twisted her fingers in the damp ends of his hair. “They killed all those people in Florence as a distraction. Fucking bastards. We need to keep Elazar here until they are stopped.”
“Agreed, though Zo is unlikely to let Elazar out of his sight for a while. He loves him dearly, and he hates being reminded of Elazar’s mortality.” Alexis rested his forehead against Penelope’s. “I’m so sorry about before. I was out of line.”
“Alexis, your skin had melted away. I’ve never seen anything so painful-looking in my life, and it scared the hell out of me. You were right to send me away. I would’ve been panicking the whole time. It’s taken me four hours to calm down enough to realize that, so let’s not talk about it anymore. You’re here, and you’re safe, and that’s all I care about.” She sniffed, and he kissed the tears that tracked down her cheek.
“I’m okay, Penelope. Remember, I’m going to get damaged occasionally, but I’m always going to recover.”
“I think I prefer it when you’re stuck in the Archives as my study partner,” Penelope said miserably.
“I saw the books outside. Were they in the astrolabe?” Alexis hoped to move her mind away from the horror of his burnt body.
“Just a few that I grabbed, and most of them I don’t understand because it’s magical theory. I was reading about weather magic—at least that’s the gist of it. There are at least another hundred books inside the astrolabe that I could use your help with.” She gave him a smile and then a kiss that made the horrors of the day feel a bit farther away.
Alexis pulled her closer. “Anything for my Archivist.”
PENELOPE WOKE WITH her lips pressed to Alexis’s shoulder. He was sleeping deeply and didn’t wake when she moved out of his arms and off the bed. She was tired from the emotional upheaval of the previous day, her shoulders aching from how tightly she’d held herself.
In the bathroom, Penelope washed her face and wrangled her curls into a braid. She’d dreamed of burning cities, magical spells in books, and corridors in a tower she’d never been in before.
The rooms around her had changed a little—the new bed had been a welcome surprise—but it still felt like she was in an ancient city every time she looked out at the sea and the city of Atlas. Her mind boggled at the combination of magic and memory it would’ve taken to create.
These rooms were starting to feel more and more like a haven, tucked away from the horror and noise of the world, which was why Penelope had to get dressed and go see how things stood in the rest of the palazzo.
In the walk-in wardrobe, she found a clean pair of khaki pants and a floaty black singlet that fit her and then shut Alexis in the bedroom. He needed to heal and restore his magic, and this was the only place none of the other magicians could get to. She would have nightmares about his burnt shoulders and chest for as long as she lived.
After Alexis ordered her away, Penelope barely made it to Nereus’s rooms before she vomited up the contents of her stomach from the visceral horror of his injuries, the sight of Elazar bleeding, and the gruesome images from Florence, all of the innocent people mowed down in the streets. She’d climbed into the bath, the water instantly calming her and the strange magic that had awoken inside of her. She never would’ve dreamed that being in water would comfort her, but it did, pulling her to a place where she could think clearly again.
The attack on Elazar made her worry for her parents and Carolyn, not to mention Constantine, and she contemplated how to contact Kreios to make sure he warned her if Thevetat decided to go after them.
Eat something and then figure out the next steps. Her appetite was usually the first thing to go when her anxiety ramped up, so she would have to force herself to eat, even if her stomach protested every second of it, and she also needed to get Aelia to do some yoga with her to calm down. Most pressing of all, she needed to figure out which books in the astrolabe were going to be most useful to them. By the time Penelope had reached the kitchen, her to-do list was so long she wanted to cry.
After turning on the hot water kettle, she opened the fridge doors to hunt for something to eat.
“I was about to make some eggs for Elazar if you want some,” Zo said behind her.
“You know I’m never going to say no to your cooking.” Zo looked haggard and sleep-deprived.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”
“No. I want to rip Thevetat’s priests apart with my bare hands. H-He’s an old man now. What threat could he have been to them? The fucking cowards.” If Zo hoped to hide the tremor in his voice, he was unsuccessful.
“Hey, he’s okay. Alexis got him out, and he’s safe here with us.” With that, she let him get on with cooking—the one thing that always seemed to comfort him.
“I can’t believe Elazar was bleeding to death, and yet he made Alexis bring those damn books with them.” Zo beat a bowl of eggs with ferocity.
Penelope cradled her hot coffee. “I can’t believe Alexis had the magic to bring all of it with them. It must’ve been so draining.”
“That’s nothing. You need to ask him about the time he moved the whole Spartan army during the Peloponnesian War. I don’t think even Alexis knows the limit of his magic on a high tide.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing if we’re going to have to get past all of Thevetat’s priests on Milos.” Penelope fiddled with the orichalcum bracelet on her wrist, thinking of Poseidon’s wry smile. You must be quite a capable eight…
“Zo? Do you think I should warn my parents and Carolyn that Thevetat might send people after them? I don’t know what to tell them just yet, but I’m sure I could make something up. I’m worried about them.”
“Don’t be. Alexis has had private security watching over them since Israel. Elazar, however, objected to anyone watching over him, and we thought the warding on the property would be strong enough to keep everyone out. We didn’t predict Thevetat himself would turn up in a vessel to break through them.” Zo tipped the scrambled eggs onto two plates and passed one to Penelope.
“Maybe Thevetat went after Elazar not only because he’s your son, but because his knowledge could help us.” If Elazar was going to be staying in Venice, she’d be asking for his help to search for Solomon’s ring as soon as he was well.
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