The Night Realm

by Annette Marie

  She ambled to the corridor Lyre had taken her down earlier. Out of the reception area, she peeked longingly back toward Kassia before continuing. It took a few tries to find the right door, but then she was descending the metal stairs, her heart rate increasing with each step. Anticipation and apprehension competed for dominance.

  At the bottom, she faced the reinforced metal door and planted her hands on her hips. She scrutinized the spell with her asper, dissecting the various sections and layers. The complexity amazed her—and the violence woven into its threads frightened her. One mistake and the spell would extract a lethal price.

  It would be all too easy to make a mistake. Touch the door in the wrong spot—dead. Tamper with the weaving—dead. Cast any kind of magic on it—dead. And even touching the right spot wasn’t enough. It had to be unkeyed in a specific way too.

  Her nerves tightened painfully as she finished her examination. What frightened her most was that she could see no way to remove or undo the spell. It was as permanent as the door. She’d never seen a ward that didn’t have an off switch built into it.

  She touched two fingers to a single glowing sigil. A flicker of magic. A flash of light. The bolt clacked, then the magic dimmed, sleeping until it was reengaged.

  She pushed the door open and cautiously peeked inside. Another hallway. How anticlimactic. Shaking off her jitters, she hurried to the door at the other end. No deadly wards on this one, just a simple lock spell. Beyond it, she found a small lobby-like space, dimly lit by a single lamp on a desk near one wall. The room was empty and silent, with a strong air of neglect. At the opposite end, three halls joined the room, each labeled with a sign.

  “Examination Rooms,” she read in a whisper. “Equipment and Supplies. Subject Occupancy.”

  She stared at the third sign. Subject occupancy. Subjects, as in … daemons? As in living people?

  She took two steps before pulling up short, her attention catching on the wall behind the desk. It was glowing—blazing with layer upon layer of shapes and runes, all connected by crisscrossing lines in an eye-straining tangle. What appeared to be a solid wall was a hidden door—a well-protected hidden door. Murky crimson stained the layered golden threads: blood magic.

  She knew little about blood magic. It was difficult to weave, rare to see, and always nasty. Here, the ward was keyed to specific daemons’ blood, meaning no one but those daemons could get through the door.

  Massaging her temples in concentration, she studied it a minute longer, then turned away. If she worked at it, she could probably figure out how to unravel the spell without getting herself killed, but once the weaving was undone, it would be gone. She couldn’t replace it, and she wasn’t ready to take such a drastic step when she didn’t know what was behind the door.

  She again considered the Subject Occupancy hall, then shook her head. The only reason Chrysalis might keep “subjects” would be to test spells on them. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what that looked like.

  Instead, she started down the equipment wing. Doors lined the dim, dank hall, locked with simple wards she could easily undo. In the first room she found a bunch of tools—surgical knives, spellcrafting paraphernalia, gadgets she had no name for—all stacked haphazardly on shelves. No magic at all.

  She slipped out and checked the next three rooms with similar results—nothing useful. Then she opened the fourth door.

  Shelves of steel disks, metal spheres, collars, wristbands, handcuffs, belts, chains—all spelled. The sheer volume of magic overwhelmed her sight and she had to close her eyes.

  Opening them again, she examined the nearest weavings. It didn’t take long to discover a trend: all the spells were designed for restraint. Some seemed like complete overkill, loaded with strengthening weaves and magic-dampening spells. A few even held paralysis spells.

  She crouched beside a square basket half full with metal collars. Rejects, she realized. All the weavings were faulty or broken. She cautiously lifted the top collar off the pile for a closer look. This weaving … it was designed to—to inflict pain? A collar that would torture its wearer?

  “I’m still working on that design.”

  The collar fell from her hands and landed on the pile with a clatter. She shot to her feet and whirled around, fright interrupting her asper’s focus.

  A daemon leaned in the open doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame. Pale hair, the face of a god, brilliant amber eyes. Another incubus. That made six now.

  This one resembled Lyre the least. His hair was lighter, almost white, and his cheekbones were sharper. Or perhaps it was the sickly hollowness of his cheeks that gave his features that extra sharpness. His shoulders were narrow, with the thin limbs of someone who had shunned physical activity.

  “It’s a beautiful weave though, don’t you think?” he continued, his voice high-pitched compared to the other incubi. “I’ll get it to work sooner or later.”

  Her blood roared in her ears like a thundering surf and she fought to stay calm. He was talking to her like she was a weaver. Maybe he didn’t realize she had snuck in. Maybe he thought she was supposed to be down here.

  “It’s … lovely,” she choked out.

  “I’ve been trying to perfect it for a couple seasons now,” he went on, his eyes gleaming strangely. “Finding the right melody has proven a challenge.”

  “M-melody?” Her gaze darted from the collar she’d been holding to the hall behind him. He was blocking her only escape.

  He smiled. “The melody of pain. Suffering is its own kind of music—a song that rises and falls, increases in pitch and tempo … and builds into an exquisite crescendo.”

  She shuddered.

  He stepped into the room, moving closer to her.

  “Finding the right melody for the weave …” He hummed a few eerie notes. “Finding the right volume, the right tempo, that’s what I haven’t mastered yet. Get it wrong and the subject won’t sing.” He shrugged. “Or they die too quickly, and that’s no fun at all.”

  “That sounds … very challenging,” she whispered.

  “Oh, it is. I never have enough subjects.” His face pulled into a pout. “My brothers will only give me so many each season.”

  “Your brothers?” she repeated, edging sideways. If she could get past him, she could run for the door.

  He casually stepped between her and the exit. The disconcerting gleam in his eyes brightened as his smile widened to show his teeth.

  “Can you sing, pretty one?”

  Panic flared. “Pardon?”

  In a flash of movement, his hand was around her throat. He slammed her back into the shelves in a crash of metal hitting concrete. She choked, clutching his wrist.

  He leaned in until his nose touched her cheek and inhaled deeply. “Mmm. Lovely. How delightful that you’ve volunteered yourself as my next subject. I’m looking forward to hearing you sing.”

  “I …” she gasped, prying at his fingers. “I don’t sing.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can find the right melody for you.” He slid his nose across her cheek to her ear. “I know how to make you scream for me all night long.”

  Terror eclipsed all thought and reason. She slapped her palm onto his face and unleashed an uncontrolled blast of magic. The force shoved him back, but most of it sloughed off him, diverted by a shield. She wrenched free of his grip and dove for the door.

  He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back, tearing her braid out of its twist. She whipped around and flung another wild blast at him. With a swirl of magic coating his hand, he batted it aside and threw her into the shelves a second time.

  She bounced off and landed on her hands and knees as metal contraptions rained down on her back. Lurching up, she sucked in a breath and focused. Why was she flinging shapeless magic around? She knew more spells than most daemons.

  Engaging her asper again, she glanced over him and the complex shields that clung to his body like a second skin. She wasn’t getting any attacks through tho
se barriers, but maybe she didn’t need to.

  She formed a banded sphere of green light and hurled it at him. The bands opened and snapped around him like the bars of a cage.

  He wove light through the air so swiftly she couldn’t read it. With a flash of gold, her spell vanished like she hadn’t even cast it.

  “That was quite pretty,” he observed. “I might have you show it to me again later.”

  She faced him across the room, the door so close but too far to reach. She needed a spell with more firepower—something he couldn’t brush aside.

  Or maybe literal fire would do the trick. Lifting her hand, she summoned glowing lines that arched above her palm—the spell Eryx had shown her on their way to the Hades embassy. The lines hit the floor and exploded into a wall of flame.

  The incubus stepped right through the fire, the flames licking harmlessly at his shimmering shields.

  She stumbled back, hitting the shelves behind her.

  “That was another unusual cast.” His glittering eyes drifted over her. “How intriguing. We’ll delve into your interesting knowledge of magic after we discuss how you found your way down here.”

  Light flickered over his fingers in a cast too rapid to follow. The realization that she was outmatched, that her astral perception and expansive spell repertoire meant nothing against a true master of magic, sent another wave of terror spinning through her head.

  As he whipped the new spell at her, she conjured the only thing she could think of—the only cast she knew as complex as his: the fancy shield she’d mimicked from the teenage incubus.

  His spell hit her shield—and bounced off it. The golden light rebounded across the short distance between them and slammed into the incubus, throwing him back into the shelves.

  She didn’t wait to see if he would fall, if he was hurt, if he was already coming for her. She hurled herself through the doorway and bolted down the corridor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lyre lay upside down on his sofa, feet propped on the back, head hanging off the seat cushions. Eyes half closed, he gazed absently at the inverted view of his workroom. A heavy steel table, buried in crafting and weaving materials, filled the other side of the room, almost as big a mess as the overflowing shelves that lined the walls. The long horizontal window let in a narrow sliver of light from outside, where the dark mountains surrounding Asphodel pierced the sky.

  Directly in front of his nose on the small coffee table, the steel collar glinted harmlessly, empty of magic. He still hadn’t started weaving Eisheth’s spell. What was he waiting for? If he delayed too long, he’d end up down in the bastille, getting intimately acquainted with every nuance of the word “torment.”

  On the other hand, if he did the weaving, he’d be condemning Ash to equal torment. Could he do that? Could he save his own pathetic skin at someone else’s expense?

  What a stupid question. He’d been doing exactly that his whole life.

  He never should have talked to Ash. Now Lyre wasn’t weaving an instrument of torture intended for a nameless, voiceless stranger. One conversation didn’t count for much, but he couldn’t forget the way Ash’s gaze had dropped when Lyre had asked him about regret. That wasn’t the reaction of a stone-cold killer, no matter how tough Ash seemed. How young had the draconian been when Hades first started molding him?

  In the Underworld, draconians were known as mercenaries—thugs for hire. Powerful, lethal thugs that no one wanted to talk to, let alone get to know. But in Asphodel, anyone with half a brain could see that the “mercenary” label was an ugly mask that hid an even uglier truth. Pay a little attention and holes appeared in the story. Like the fact the Hades family had wiped out the majority of the draconian caste five centuries ago, eliminating the reapers’ primary rivals in political and magical power. Or the fact that draconians hated all reapers with a vicious passion, yet still “worked” for them.

  Or how about the fact that some of these “mercenaries” were still teenagers, like Ash had been when Lyre first saw him three seasons ago? Or the fact these “mercenaries” were locked up, restrained, and tortured for defiance?

  That sure as hell didn’t sound like any kind of paid mercenary-employer relationship he’d ever heard of. He was almost positive that Ash was about as willing a mercenary as Lyre was a willing “employee” of Chrysalis.

  Except Lyre’s family wasn’t torturing him—yet—so he supposed he had it better.

  Unable to think about the collar anymore, he rolled off the sofa and crossed the room, wobbling as the blood rushed out of his head. He stood at the table, looking from the metal disks and round gems to the steel marbles and arrows with dark fletching. Everything he needed to weave death was scattered across the surface—diagrams and textbooks, weights and dials, compasses and protractors, contraptions that measured magical signatures. He picked up a sheet of paper filled with someone’s neat handwriting. A custom weaving request for a death spell that would simulate a natural heart attack.

  His hands clenched and he took a deep breath. Then he methodically shredded the paper, letting the pieces flutter to the floor like ugly snowflakes. No one was going to torture him for failing to weave that spell.

  He glared at the floor for a minute longer, then crouched and reached under the table. He found the edge of a tile that hummed softly with his magic and drummed his fingers across it. The wards on it were some of his best, as undetectable as they were deadly.

  Popping the tile off the hidden compartment, he dug into the hole, reaching around the quiver of arrows and bag of lodestones for the fine silver chains. Lifting one out, he sat on the floor and leaned back against the leg of the table, turning the chain in his hands. Gems sparkled in the harsh lights, but the spells in those stones were anything but harsh. Unlike the chain around his neck, these weavings were private, secret, and devoid of violence.

  He rubbed his thumb across one of his favorites, triggering the embedded spell. A flurry of golden sparks erupted from the stone. They gathered together, condensing into the form of an eagle. It spread its glowing wings wide and soared a circle around the room, swooping and gliding with abandon while he leaned his head against the table, watching it with half-closed eyes.

  This was the kind of magic he wanted to weave. This was what he wanted to create. Not death spells and torture collars. Not explosions and weapons.

  The eagle illusion swept by him, its pure gold wings passing through the table of foul magic he was so practiced at weaving. With a sigh, he dispelled the illusion, dropped the chain back in its hiding spot, and rearmed the wards. Rising to his feet, he stared down at the shredded request form and wondered what the hell he was doing.

  For three seasons now, since Eisheth had first requested he make a collar to torture a kid, he’d been asking himself one question over and over and over again.

  Could he escape this place?

  He pressed both hands to his face, fingers digging into his temples. He couldn’t survive here forever. Sooner or later, he’d lose either his life or his soul. How long would he keep staggering along, obeying when he had to, defying everything else with a smile and shrug that fooled his brothers into thinking he was an incompetent idiot?

  Another season. Maybe two. His time was running out.

  But … escape? He’d thought about it. He’d even sporadically planned it, weaving spells he thought he might need, stashing lodestones and other supplies, learning his way around a few Earth cities while visiting with his brothers.

  But when he thought about what it would be like to escape this place, to start again, to rewrite his life entirely … he couldn’t imagine it. He couldn’t see it. Where would he go? What would he do? Would spending the rest of his miserable existence in hiding from Chrysalis and Hades be any better than what he was enduring now?

  Maybe this was the only life he could have. Maybe this was all he was good for, all he deserved after so many years of weaving depraved magic. Assuming he could escape—a big if—he wouldn’t
be running off into the sunset, cheering his newfound freedom. He’d be fleeing for his life, hiding in whatever dirty holes he could find, scraping by as he evaded capture for years on end. It was impossible. He’d be dead just as quickly as if he stayed.

  He held out his hand, vaguely surprised he couldn’t see the figurative blood that should have coated his skin. Maybe he hadn’t tried to escape because he was afraid. Afraid to try. As much as he hated it, this was the only life he’d ever known, and even if it was slowly killing him, he knew there were far worse fates.

  A ping in his head warned him that someone had crossed the ward on his workroom door.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  Madrigal stepped inside. “Someone’s in a bad mood. Weaving not going well today?” He glanced at the mess on the floor. “Never mind. Question answered.”

  “What do you want?” he repeated.

  His brother’s gaze swept around the room. “Oh, nothing.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing,” Madrigal repeated. “I’ll just leave you be, hmm?”

  He turned back toward the door. Lyre flicked his fingers, activating one of his wards. A golden sheen spanned the open frame and Madrigal halted in mid-step. His brother could break the barrier, but it would be annoying—and take at least a minute or two.

  “Really, Lyre?” Madrigal sighed.

  Lyre canted his head. “I have about a dozen of those embedded in the frame. If you want to spend the next hour breaking them down, feel free.”

  Madrigal turned and leaned back against the wall beside the door, rolling his eyes. “So dramatic.”

  “Why did you come here?”