Ryan descended the stairs, carrying a pair of magic-suppressing handcuffs, and approached the group of liches guarding Adair.
“Hey!” Adair shouted, as Ryan secured his hands behind his back. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere you’re familiar with.” Squashing my misgivings, I walked ahead, leading the way through the gates and out into the swampland.
Adair’s complaints filled the background as I walked to the node, while Ryan and Miles dragged Adair along with them. Then we all entered the node at the same time and transported ourselves to the area outside the now-abandoned warehouse.
“You can’t take me back there,” said Adair, the truth dawning on him as he recognised where we’d brought him. “Look, I can help you beat the Family. You can’t do it without me. Even the elves can’t.”
“You expect me to listen to you now?” I reached into my pocket for the Akrith. “If you’re telling the truth, then I’ll see if the elves can back up your claims.”
I led the way around the warehouse to the elves’ tree, carrying the Akrith in my hand. Light spread outward from my palm as it came into contact with the tree, and at once, the path of the elves’ realm extended in front of us.
The coppery tang of blood hit me first, along with the sound of sobbing. I reeled back, knowing that something was horribly wrong, even more so than last time. Blood streaked the pale ground, while several bodies lay sprawled among the trees. Other elves crouched over their dead kin, wearing expressions of shock and grief.
There could only be one person responsible for this carnage. It seemed the Family hadn’t left the elves’ realm after all. Or one of them hadn’t. The question was… which one?
Miles swore under his breath, while Adair strained against the cuffs on his wrists. The skin on my arms prickled as Roth walked into view, striding down the path as though he belonged here.
Like Lex, he maintained a youthful appearance out of step with his actual age. Tall and slim with curly dark hair and pale skin, he looked more elfin than human, though his clothes were firmly modern rather than the hand-crafted gear the elves wore. To my horror, the nearest elves fell to their knees on either side of him, and I recognised the pained expressions of those who’d fallen under the insidious power of his emotionally manipulative magic.
Roth’s gaze fell on me before I could even think of making an escape.
“Bria,” he said. “I have to admit, what you did to Lex was crueller than I’d expect of you. It seems I underestimated your capacity for violence.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “Haven’t you taken enough from the elves already?”
“Ah, but some of their number broke an agreement we made,” he said. “I had to show them the consequences of turning their backs on us.”
My throat went dry. At a closer look, I recognised several faces among the fallen elves. He’d come here to get back at the elves who’d escaped captivity in the warehouse and had gone as far as to slaughter them in their own realm in order to convince them nowhere was safe. Scumbag.
My hands clenched on the stone in my hand. “Your low-life son forced them to work for you. It wasn’t a fair agreement. Besides, you stole from every single elf in the Parallel when you cut off their access to their home.”
“What lies have they been feeding you?” he said. “We merely took what was ours by rights, not unlike the spirit mages you admire so much.”
“Fuck that.” Miles stepped up beside me. “I don’t support what the spirit mages who started the war did, and no spirit mage with any sense of integrity does either. I sure as hell don’t support you.”
“There are always outliers,” said Roth. “Frankly, I think I’ve done more for the elves’ employment in our warehouses than any other authority, including the Houses of the Elements and the vampires.”
“You’re wrong.” Adair ran behind us, hands still cuffed but having shaken off his blindfold, and shot a furious stare at his father. “Leave them alone.”
Was he putting on an act? If he was, Roth wasn’t in on the plan, because he merely scowled at Adair. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay at home.”
Adair shook his head. “I couldn’t let you get away with harming anyone else. You lied to us—lied to Bria and me—when you stole from the elves and used their magic on us, taking away our choice and making us complicit in your crimes.”
Damn. Either his plan to deceive me went beyond letting even his father in on it… or he was being genuine. Not that I could bet on the latter, but at least he’d taken the attention off the elves and enabled the surviving few to shake off the effects of Roth’s magic and back out of the line of fire. Anger clenched inside me at the sight of Belgi among them, along with Trix’s friend Drina, whose expression was dull, her eyes glittering with grief. They even took her, too?
Roth gave a short laugh. “So the elves poisoned your mind during your capture, too, I see. Or Bria did. I have to admit, I always wondered who would end up corrupting the other. It’s been fascinating to watch the two of you struggle against one another.”
Adair looked his father in the eyes and spoke with all the strength of his persuasive magic. “Get out.”
Roth swayed on the spot, while my heart pounded against my chest. I’d never seen one member of the Family pitted against another before, and I’d always assumed that like me, Adair was weaker than the other two. But he did have a talent they didn’t share, and if Roth underestimated him, that might give him an edge.
Adair’s face twisted in a grimace as Roth unleashed his own controlling magic, and the two fought a wordless battle, locked in a bitter power play. The remaining elves wisely retreated and disappeared into the surrounding woodland.
“They’re going to kill each other,” I whispered to Miles. “We need to find help.”
I looked around the elves watching the carnage from within the bushes, and my gaze caught on one of the guards I recognised from last time.
Keeping an eye on the others, I made my way to his hiding spot and whispered, “Where are the Elders?”
“In the forest, protecting what’s left of our power,” he answered. “That man… he must have had direct contact with the Elders’ Akrith recently. He’s stronger than most of us.”
Oh, hell. I hadn’t realised that being in this realm would boost the Family’s power, too, but they were still part elf, as well as having the Elders’ own Akrith under their watch. I should have gone to find it first, but I’d been so sure at least one of them would be at the house—
A shout made my head snap up, and Adair fell prone to the ground, howling in agony. When Roth turned to me next, I froze for an instant. Then I threw the Akrith into Miles’s waiting hands and stood directly in the path of Roth’s attack.
A moment later, his magic hit me like a thunderstorm.
18
When I next came back to awareness, I found myself in a cage. Not a cage of interlocked branches in the elves’ forest, but a manmade cell inside the Family’s house. They had me right where they wanted me… and this time, there was no Tay to come to my rescue.
The irony? This was exactly where I’d needed to go if I’d wanted to find the Akirth the Family had taken and return it to the Elders, but right now, I could barely even move. Roth had seriously wiped me out. Even when I’d burned him and Lex to a crisp during my first escape, he’d never inflicted that kind of agony on me before. It was barely a glimpse of the pain he and Lex had inflicted on the elves and on his other enemies over the years, I knew, but if I didn’t get the hell out of here, they’d do worse. The Akrith must be hidden inside this very building. I was so damn close, and yet it remained out of reach.
I’d managed to struggle into an upright position when Lex strode into view. She wore a surprisingly plain outfit, compared to her usual getup, jeans and a jacket and no makeup. While no traces remained of the damage the wyrm had inflicted on her at my command, her eyes narrowed with fury. “You�
�re lucky I let you live.”
“If you want me to thank you, you’ll have to live with the disappointment.” I shook my head, regretting the slight movement when more pain shot through my nerve endings. “Besides, by your own admission, I can’t die. Thanks to what you did.”
“I’m sure you know that isn’t the case,” she said. “Not with the tools we have at our disposal, which the elves will have told you about, I don’t doubt.”
Shit. The Elders’ Akrith… could it undo my healing power? I bloody hoped not. “Is that the real reason you kept the Akrith for all these years, aside from wanting to maintain your longevity and youth? So you could dispose of anyone who disappointed you, even Adair and me?”
“Not initially, but it’s vexing that both of you turned out to be such troublemakers,” she said.
Both. So Adair must be imprisoned in here somewhere as well. While he’d undoubtedly fought against Roth, I still wasn’t completely sure where he stood. He might have turned on him for selfish reasons rather than out of a desire to support the elves he’d been indifferent to for his entire life, and I couldn’t count on his support.
Then again, what did I know? His behaviour was perplexing, and it wasn’t like I could read his thoughts. Whatever the case, Lex clearly thought he’d betrayed her, and Roth did, too. Which at least gave me one fewer enemy to deal with.
I gave a faint shrug. “We were raised that way, weren’t we? You shouldn’t be surprised we ended up defying you.”
“I’ll give you the chance to surrender,” she said. “It goes without saying that it’ll be much easier for you if you comply with my commands. And for your allies, too, of course.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “You think I’ll easily forget you’re the reason the elves were cut off from their home? I bet that wasn’t all you did in the last war, either.”
“Of course not,” she said. “When the mage council had their falling-out, we saw the opportunity and we turned our attention to developing cantrips which were designed for warfare. When the elves’ Elders took issue with our actions, we decided that it would result in much less conflict if we simply severed the connection between their realm and ours.”
“I take it you forced the elves to make cantrips for you back then as well?” I said. “They did all the work, as usual, just like the citadels and everything else you or the spirit mages have taken credit for.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s inaccurate to call the citadels our creation,” she said. “After all, it was our cantrip research which enabled some of their more recent developments. Like those ingenious machines, for instance.”
Holy shit. My family had created those machines in the citadel, or at least the cantrips which fuelled them. The spirit mages might have been the ones who’d destroyed the Parallel during the last war, but the Family had the blood of the victims on their hands as much as their original creators did. “So you claim to have done more than the spirit mages did?”
“The spirit mages were gifted, but their skills were with the cerebral, the spiritual. Ours were more practical.” She shrugged. “It was an even trade.”
“You’re sick.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But we’re on the winning team. Soon the Houses of the Elements will fall the same way the Council did, and the former House of Spirit will be no more.”
She means the Court of the Dead. Was the Death King under attack, too, if he’d even returned to the castle yet? I should be helping defend his territory, not stuck in a cage.
“I would advise you to think carefully about your choice, Bria,” said Lex. “I’ll give you the chance to decide whether you’re going to cooperate or condemn your friends to a brutal death. Needless to say, there are no loopholes.”
She turned away from the cage and walked out of sight, while I bit back tears of frustration. A throbbing pain centred in my skull, and no matter how hard I thought, I didn’t see a way out of this situation without someone ending up dead. At least I’d helped Miles escape the elves before he could be captured, too. That was all the consolation I had left, because if she got hold of him… watching him die like Tay had would obliterate all the fight I had left inside me.
Maybe Lex had a point in that delaying my surrender would only condemn the people I cared about, especially Miles. The notion of swallowing my pride and making a deal with her in order to save my friends made me feel queasy and self-loathing, but what choice did I have? I’d exhausted all other options.
The sound of a faint groan hit my ears. I twisted around, ignoring the fresh shock of pain in my limbs, and spotted another cage further down the corridor from mine. So that’s where they’d locked up Adair. From this angle, he looked like he was still unconscious, but he’d wake up in a world of pain soon, I didn’t doubt.
Would Lex make him the same offer? It wasn’t like he had friends or family for her to threaten. Aside from me, of course, and he’d already proved he didn’t care if I came to any harm. I was pretty much on my own.
The idea of surrender dangled itself before my eyes again, but if I knew anything about the Family, it was that they were never satisfied with the bare minimum. They might let me go, but they’d never leave the elves alone, and I couldn’t trust Lex or Roth not to harm them despite any promises they might make me. As for Adair? I couldn’t believe I was considering depending on him to get me out of this mess, but I was out of any better options.
I scooted across the floor until I sat close enough to see his face through the cage bars. “Adair.”
He didn’t move.
“Hey. Adair.”
His hand twitched. Then he let out a scream of agony, curling up in a ball as the remnants of Roth’s magic jerked through him. My own nerve endings flared up in sympathy as he writhed and yelled. I covered my ears until he was done screaming and had sat up for long enough to figure out where he was—and to see me watching him from my own cage.
“Looks like they got both of us,” I said to him.
He grunted. “Why are you so happy? You’re locked up as well.”
“I’m not happy,” I said. “Not at all. Did you see where Roth went?”
“No, I passed out,” he said. “The last thing I remember was you throwing the stone at your friend and closing off the elves’ realm.”
At least Miles had got away. He probably knew they’d brought me here, but he’d be better off not staging a rescue mission, so I hoped the others kept him from risking his neck on my behalf.
“Are you surprised they locked you up as well?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “You did see Roth use his power on me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but nothing you did made any sense, to be honest,” I said. “I figured you were challenging him for power, or something, not trying to stand up for the elves they betrayed.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Guess that’s more likely, huh. I’ve been a dick.”
“That’s the most honest sentence I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.”
“Hey, I wasn’t lying when I surrendered to you,” he protested. “I told you it was a bad idea to take me out of the castle.”
“Roth already went after the elves,” I pointed out. “And how do I know this isn’t part of some elaborate plan on Lex and Roth’s behalf to lure me into a false sense of security?”
“You don’t.”
At least that was honest. “If you really meant what you said, then hear me out.”
He gave me a sharp look. “You have a plan?”
“Not much of one,” I muttered. “Do you happen to know whereabouts Lex put the Akrith she stole from the Elders years ago? Because that’s what we need. Without it…”
“There’s no chance of us taking them down,” he finished. “Yeah. I figured that out when I first heard they took the elves’ artefacts. They told you, too?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t exactly a secret anymore. “What I don’t know is where they hid it. Have you seen anything that resembles an elven artefa
ct in the house?”
“I reckon they put it in the mine,” he said. “That’s got to be the most secure place on the property.”
“The mine?” Now I thought about it, the mine was one of the most well-guarded parts of the estate and was often the natural place to store anything valuable. The magical source inside the mine was valuable enough in itself, after all, and was the reason they’d kept a wyrm on the property in the first place.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can try to use my ability on them for long enough to escape our cells. If you run, you can probably find your way through the mine by yourself.”
“Using your ability on them is hit and miss,” I reminded him. “Would you be able to persuade them to unlock both our cells at once?”
“Not both, but I bet I can convince Lex to hand over an unlocking cantrip,” he said.
Hmm. If he was working against me, I’d need to leave enough leeway to get myself free without ending up in deeper trouble if he turned against me. As long as I had no other allies within reach, I’d remain vulnerable. Even if he was telling the truth, though, I’d seen his ability fail to work on Roth, and the Family would be on the lookout for trickery from both of us.
“I doubt it’ll be that simple,” I said to him. “Suppose one of us pretended to surrender…”
“You think they’d go for that?”
“Lex said she’d be willing to give me a chance to change my mind,” I said. “She’s dead set on me joining her of my own free will. Not sure she’d take my word for it, but she might take yours. Tell her I brainwashed you. Or the elves. Either works.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, it’s worth trying,” I said. “If you can convince her you’re on her side for long enough to grab the keys or a cantrip to get me out of here, then you might not need your persuasive magic at all.”
That way, if he was already on her side and faking the whole thing, he’d have nothing to gain except an extra chance to taunt me. I, meanwhile, would have nothing to lose that hadn’t already been taken away. Provided my allies didn’t show up and end up getting caught too, of course.
Tower of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 3) Page 18