The Night Realm

by Annette Marie

  Dulcet’s terrifying smile flashed in her memory. It had twisted one of the brothers, that was for sure.

  This place was evil. Chrysalis and Asphodel both. She couldn’t wait to go back to Earth—or, even better, back to Irida—and never set foot here again.

  But what about Lyre?

  Shaking her head, she pushed to her feet. Lyre wasn’t her responsibility. She couldn’t fix his problems. He knew his situation far better than she did, and she couldn’t change his fate.

  Her gaze wandered past the beautiful tangles of magic he’d woven. Beautiful creations for a terrible purpose. Though most were shields or other passive spells, a handful fell in the “offensive” category.

  A glimmer of light underneath the desk caught her attention. Frowning, she crossed the room and crouched, expecting to find a lodestone that had fallen off the table. Instead, a spiraling weave covered a floor tile near the back wall.

  To anyone else, the ward would have been invisible short of practically stepping on it. The spell was multilayered, and she spent a full minute picking out all the sneaky traps that would seriously hurt anyone who tampered with it—a ward meant to stop other master weavers like Lyre.

  Her fingers hovered above it. Deep in its center, hidden from anyone without her ability, she could see the trigger. One touch of magic and she could unkey it—and see what he had hidden underneath.

  But it was obviously private. Knowing her abilities, he had shown her real trust by bringing her into his workroom. She started to scoot backward when a thought popped into her head: Could this where he’d hidden one of the deadly prototypes he’d mentioned?

  All she needed was one look to find out for sure.

  Hopping to her feet, she rushed to the door and opened it, thankful he hadn’t rekeyed his locks. She stuck her head out, glanced up and down the empty hall, then trotted to one end and set a quick tripwire ward into the floor—a simple spell that would alert her if someone passed over it. She set a second tripwire at the other end, then raced back into the workroom and crawled under the table again.

  A tap of magic into the tile and the weave went dark, harmless and sleeping. She pried the tile off and set it aside to find a hole in the floor. A loaded quiver of arrows filled most of the space. A few chains of spelled gems hung on the quiver, and a cloth bag held an assortment of charged lodestones—a source of power to supplement his natural reserves.

  She lifted a chain laden with defensive weavings along the same lines as the ones around his neck. The second chain held offensive spells—some very nasty ones. She dropped it back in the hole and picked up the third chain, frowning. These weren’t offensive or defensive. They looked like … illusions? Illusions of what?

  She grimaced. She’d invaded his hidden spell stash for nothing. These were just his backup self-defense spells. There was nothing here remotely suited for war. She sat back on her heels, disappointed but also somehow relieved. She didn’t understand her relief. She was happy she hadn’t found anything? What was the matter with her?

  As her gaze passed over the room one more time, her breath caught. Another shimmer of magic where there should be none.

  She scooched out from under the table, still holding the chain of mysterious illusions, and knelt at the base of the bookshelf. Light leaked from between heavy encyclopedias. She pulled them out of the way and leaned down, squinting at the base of the shelf. Another ward. An even scarier ward.

  Nerves twisted in her belly. She studied the weave, hands pressed hard to the floor. There was no trigger on this ward—no way to turn it on or off. It was designed to be cast once and left in place, never to be removed. After another minute of analysis, she was certain she could unravel it without activating any of its lethal defenses. But if she broke the ward, she couldn’t replace it. He would know.

  But would he notice? How often did he check the hidden spells in his workroom?

  Spells to save Irida. That’s what she’d come here for. That was her priority. Not an incubus. Not a Chrysalis weaver.

  She sent a flare of magic into the heart of the weave. The threads dissolved to nothing and the latent power released, whooshing over her like a hot breeze. Seams appeared in the solid wood shelf. She pried the cover up and found a second, much smaller compartment holding a single cloth bag with tied drawstrings.

  She cautiously lifted it out, weighing it in her hand, then slid the object from the bag.

  It was a clock—sort of. The flat timepiece was slightly larger than her palm, its casing removed and the gears exposed. Only its second hand remained, the minute and hour hands absent. Tiny gemstones were embedded in the gears, with a miniature ruby attached to the tip of the second hand and a matching one glittering where the twelve should have been.

  Her skin crawled.

  The weave in the clock was the most bizarre thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t recognize half the constructs. But what made her want to drop the thing and wipe her hands on her pants were the strange black shadows clinging to the golden threads of the weave. She’d seen the red stain of blood magic, but she had no idea what a black tinge meant.

  What did the spell do? Why was it embedded in a clock of all things? Simple metal shapes were so much easier to work with. Why bother with something so complex?

  She held it in both hands, searching it, but she couldn’t make sense of the shapes. Attempting to relax, she focused not on the specific constructs but on the feel of the magic. Her gift for seeing and mimicking worked whether she understood how the spell was made.

  Seconds ticked by as she turned the weaving over and over in her mind. The spell was dark … hungry … thirsting for … magic. It wanted more magic. It wanted to devour it.

  A spell that ate magic? A spell that could devour other spells?

  Impossible. Magic could be used up, unraveled, shredded, deflected, or diffused. But it couldn’t be … undone. It couldn’t be unmade. There was no power in the three worlds that could uncreate a spell without the magical energy in it going somewhere. Magic couldn’t disappear.

  But unless her instincts were wildly off-base, that’s exactly what this weaving did. She lifted the misshapen clock up to her nose, peering more closely to see exactly how it worked, how it “ate” other magic.

  A ping went off in her head. Her trip ward.

  Someone was coming.

  She shoved the clock back in its bag, dropped it in the compartment, and jammed the books back on the shelves. She sprang to her feet—and realized she hadn’t put the compartment under the desk back together.

  Grabbing the chain beside her, she bolted across the room, skidded on her knees, and dropped the chain back inside. A gem caught on the edge and popped off, skittering across the floor. Shoving the tile into place, she rekeyed the wards, grabbed the loose gem, and scrambled out from under the table.

  Lyre stood in the center of the room.

  She cringed, still crouched in front of the table. His face was blank, his eyes black—but not with lust. With fury.

  He took a slow, precise step away from her. “Get out.”

  “Lyre, I—”

  “Get out.”

  With trembling hands, she pushed to her feet and walked to the door. In the threshold, she turned back, wanting to say something, but her mind was blank.

  He flicked his fingers. Light flashed on either side of her, and she threw herself backward. Magic burst across the doorway, filling it with three different spells—two lethal defensive wards and an illusion that blacked out the room beyond.

  She picked herself up off the floor and blinked away the tears gathering in her eyes. Squeezing the loose gem in her hand, she stumbled down the corridor, at a complete loss for how to find the lobby. She didn’t dare go back to ask Lyre to show her the way.

  She couldn’t ask him for anything ever again.

  Clenching her hands until her fingernails dug into her palms, she broke into a run, fleeing the corridor, desperate to escape the building. To escape this place. To
escape this world.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lying on her bed, Clio stared blankly at the ceiling. She rolled the small pink gemstone between her finger and thumb, feeling each imperfection in its surface.

  In terms of skill, the smaller the receptacle of a weaving, the more difficult the spell was to create. After perfecting a spell’s design in a disk, Lyre would eventually compact the weaving into a smaller form to fit in a gemstone or steel marble. The weaver didn’t weave it that small, of course. They wove a layer at a reasonable size, condensed it into the lodestone, wove the next layer, condensed it, and so on.

  The gem held layer upon layer of fine weaving. When she examined it with her asper, she didn’t see the literal tiny threads, but a version in her head she could parse piece by piece. Illusions were difficult, though. She couldn’t tell what the illusion would look like, only that it was an illusion.

  This one was constructed so it could be activated and deactivated, and the threads recharged with magic by the creator as the stores inside the stone grew low. She could have activated it when she first brought it back to the inn, but she hadn’t—despite having more than enough time. Countless hours of darkness had passed, then most of the bright Underworld day. Outside the window, the flare of sunlight was drawing closer to the edge of the planet in the sky, and in another hour, it would slip out of sight—the beginning of the eclipse.

  Her first cycle in the night realm was almost complete. Seventy-two hours. It felt like weeks had passed, not three days.

  She turned the stone over again. The last half-cycle had crawled by in utter monotony. She, Kassia, and Eryx had been stuck at the inn while Madrigal worked on her commission. He wouldn’t have a functional weaving to show her for at least another cycle. After so long in their room, she was almost looking forward to the event at the Hades palace.

  Rocking her head to one side, she scowled at her flowing nymph costume, carefully cleaned and spread across the bed covers, waiting for her to put it on. Seeing as she hadn’t thought to bring a formal evening gown on her spell-stealing hell trip, it would be her outfit for the event.

  She held the gemstone up to the light and watched it sparkle. Curiosity burned, but she didn’t activate the spell to see what the illusion was. Beneath her curiosity, a leaden weight sat deep in her gut.

  Closing her fingers over the stone, she rolled onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow. She shouldn’t have invaded Lyre’s privacy. Aside from Kassia and Eryx, he was the closest thing she’d had to an ally here. The tentative trust between them, the growing camaraderie … why had she ruined it?

  Pushing herself up, she rubbed her face. It didn’t matter. She would never see him again anyway. She would go home to Irida, and he would have to figure out his own problems. Their worlds did not overlap—figuratively or literally. She needed to focus on what was important.

  Tossing the gemstone onto the pillow, she stripped out of her clothes and donned her costume. She was fixing her braid into a bun at the back of her head when the main door to the suite opened and closed.

  “Finally,” Kassia said, her impatient voice carrying through the closed bedroom door. “Where did you go?”

  “Just wandering around,” Eryx answered nonchalantly.

  “You do a lot of wandering whenever Clio is sleeping. Where have you been going?”

  “Scoping the nearby area. In case of an emergency. It’s good to know your way around.”

  “What kind of emergency are you expecting? If things go so wrong that we’re fleeing through the streets, we’re screwed anyway. We’d never make it out of Asphodel alive, and even if we did, we don’t know where to find a single ley line in this realm.”

  Clio swallowed nervously at the bleak assessment.

  “Your optimism is heartening, Kass,” Eryx said with cheerful sarcasm. “Don’t worry so much. I just like to know what sort of ground I’m standing on.”

  Kassia grunted. “Are you ready for this event? I hope you can hold your tongue better than your first time in Chrysalis.”

  “Of course I’m ready. We’ll have to keep our ears open for any interesting tidbits. A gathering of Underworld leaders—who knows if an Overworlder has ever been privy to such a thing. It’s exciting!”

  “Not the word I would use. I’m already worried about Clio. A single Overworlder in that viper’s nest? No way she’ll go unnoticed.”

  “We’ll be beside her the whole time. We can look threatening enough when we want to, you know.”

  “What if we have to defend her? What happens then?”

  “I doubt Samael would allow something like that. He invited her, after all.”

  “Unless that’s exactly why he invited her—so something would happen.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense. You’re being paranoid, Kass.”

  Clio tied the last long, billowy sleeve into place and pushed the door open. Kassia and Eryx stood facing each other, their terse postures at odds with their seemingly casual conversation. Clio glanced between them in confusion.

  Eryx stepped back and smiled. “Are you ready? There’s a carriage waiting for you at the front doors.”

  “There is?” Clio yelped. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “It’s better to be fashionably late than early, isn’t it?”

  Grumbling, she took a step toward them, then hesitated. “Just a second.”

  Returning to the bedroom, she scooped the gemstone off her pillow and tucked it into the hidden pocket in the wide belt of fabric around her waist.

  “Okay,” she said, rushing back into the main room. “I’m ready.”

  Kassia and Eryx wore their red leather ensembles, and with their expressions equally grim, Clio had to agree with Eryx: they did look threatening. As they headed down to the waiting carriage, she was more grateful than ever that she had the two of them with her.

  Sneaking around Chrysalis had been dangerous, but she suspected her visit to the Hades residence, even with an invitation, would be a whole new level of hazardous.

  Clio had expected a room full of politicians. She hadn’t expected a room full of literal monsters.

  Standing beside a long table, she tried not to fidget. Kassia and Eryx hovered on either side of her, glaring warningly at anyone who glanced her way. With her white, blue, and green outfit, she was impossible to miss in the dimly lit room full of muted colors. And she was more than ready for the Underworlders to stop trying to talk to her.

  The rail-thin man with eerie champagne-pink eyes who’d introduced himself as the Warlord of Torngasuk—a territory she’d never heard of before—hadn’t been that bad. He was now speaking with a pair of women with leathery faces, tangled manes of gray hair, and huge feathered wings folded against their backs. Their feet ended in bird-like talons that clicked whenever they walked. Clio had already talked to them—matrons of the harpies, a notoriously mercenary caste.

  They weren’t even scary compared to other castes. Like the towering black-furred beasts that resembled the human idea of werewolves. Or the trio of creatures with female torsos that changed to snake bodies below the waist—or Clio thought they were female. It was hard to tell.

  Then there was the man with skin that looked like stone. And the man with bug eyes and a scorpion tail, complete with the stabby, venomous part on the end. Oh, and how could she forget the twelve-foot-tall minotaur with curving horns and hooves the size of dinner plates?

  At this point, she was just trying not to stare too much.

  To be fair, over half the guests were in glamour and appeared no more threatening than an odd bunch of humans. Many had introduced themselves with perfect manners and questioned her—politely—about her intentions. They wanted to get on the “political allies” bandwagon with Hades, a theory supported by several not-so-polite comments about the Ra family. The enemy of their enemy was their friend.

  Wearing glamour wasn’t about good manners though. Like everything daemons did, it was a power play. The monstrou
s guests might look more frightening, but the truly powerful daemons were in glamour. Not only did they appear more reserved and sophisticated, but deliberately weakening themselves with glamour was a clear statement that they weren’t afraid of anyone at the event.

  It was mostly those daemons who’d approached her, and she couldn’t fault their etiquette. But the guests were growing restless, and she knew why. Samael had yet to appear at his own party. According to other attendees, something had delayed him, but he would join them soon. She couldn’t decide whether she was anticipating his appearance—she wanted to see the face that went with the fearsome reputation—or dreading it.

  “Well,” Eryx muttered, “this is boring.”

  “Shush,” Kassia hissed under her breath. “Be glad it’s boring.”

  “I haven’t heard a single interesting bit of gossip.” He glanced across Clio and Kassia. “I’m going to wander around. Find the bathroom, maybe.”

  “Eryx—”

  He grinned and slipped away, leaving Clio and Kassia standing alone.

  “That chimera,” Kassia growled.

  Turning to the table, Clio surveyed the spread of unfamiliar delicacies arranged on simple silver platters. She picked up a bite-size morsel that looked like chocolate and popped it in her mouth. A flavor like extra spicy cinnamon exploded across her tongue and she cringed, tears stinging her eyes. Swallowing hastily—it burned all the way down to her stomach—she considered the other foods with increased wariness.

  “What do you think?” Kassia whispered.

  “It’s not what I expected,” Clio admitted, peering around the hall.

  The tall windows that lined one side of the spacious room offered an expansive view of Asphodel’s lights in the darkness. Intricate designs were carved into the round pillars, rich fabrics draped the walls, and beautiful food in artistic arrangements covered the long tables. A musician in the corner played a somber ballade on an unfamiliar string instrument.

  Around the room’s shadowy perimeter, daemons of a different sort from the well-dressed guests lurked. Like Clio, some attendees had arrived with bodyguards, but unlike her, they’d mostly left their protectors to wait out of the way. Though none were visibly armed, they all carried an aura of careful watchfulness and suppressed threat.