The Night Realm

by Annette Marie

  He didn’t realize he’d stumbled out of the room until he bumped into a kitchen chair. He fell into it and slumped forward, head pillowed on one arm on the table as he desperately sucked in air. How could he be breathing so fast but getting no oxygen?

  He was dying. He could feel it in every bone, every muscle, every tendon and nerve and organ. The ice was spreading faster and it burned, pain that seeped through his entire being. Death’s arctic touch was inside him, pulling him down, crushing him.

  And it was … so … damn … slow.

  “Fuck you, Dulcet,” he groaned.

  Trust his death-obsessed brother to invent a weave that forced its victim to suffer the slowest demise possible while keeping him aware enough to experience each moment in excruciating detail.

  As the crushing ice closed over him, he lost all awareness of the room, trapped in Death’s agonizing embrace. His heart hammered wildly in his chest and his muscles twisted and shuddered as his entire body rebelled against the coming end.

  His fingers dug into the tabletop, nails scraping the wood. His head spun. His throat rasped. Shuddering with pain, choking on regrets, he felt his body die. Felt his final breath escape his lungs. Felt his heart stutter and stop.

  And with his last conscious thought, he cursed Dulcet to the depths of whatever hell waited for them after this one.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  An alluring fragrance drew Clio awake. She inhaled deeply and nuzzled her cheek into a soft pillow. The irresistible scent filled her head, an exotic blend of spices underlaid with an unexpected but delicious hint of cherry. It was heaven. She pulled in another breath as her eyelids fluttered open.

  A bedroom? Anxiety pierced the silly cloud of contentment the scent had instilled in her and she pushed up on one elbow, trying to remember where she was. The unfamiliar room was a mess, with books piled by the wall, an unstrung bow standing in the corner, and clothing scattered around—male clothes.

  A navy shirt hung half off the bed on the other side as though its owner had pulled it off and thrown it toward the floor. She picked it up, hesitated, then gingerly brought the fabric to her nose. That spicy cherry scent teased her, and a familiar face materialized in her mind’s eye.

  Lyre. This shirt and the pillow smelled like him. This was … his bedroom? How had she gotten here?

  She frowned at her nymph outfit, so much worse for wear than she remembered. Why was she wearing it? Wait. She’d put it on for Samael’s fancy event at the Hades residence—

  Memories slammed through her. The little dragon under the table. The draconian mercenary. The warlord grabbing at him. Blood spraying everywhere. She’d fled, gotten lost in the halls, and wandered until—until someone had grabbed her from behind.

  Dulcet.

  She leaped from the bed and almost face-planted on the floor. Catching her balance, she looked around wildly. The last thing she remembered was Dulcet leaning over her in a dark cement room with a terrifying metal table in the center. She couldn’t recall anything beyond the cold touch of his magic.

  But this wasn’t that room. And it smelled like Lyre, not Dulcet.

  She dashed out of the bedroom and down a short hall. Barely seeing the cozy sitting room with a sofa and bookshelves, she locked on the table where a familiar figure was slumped, head resting on one arm, fast asleep.

  “Lyre,” she gasped in relief, rushing toward him.

  He didn’t react, and as she reached his side, unexpected fear stabbed her, so intense it cut like physical pain. She grabbed his upper arm and squeezed hard.

  “Lyre? Lyre!”

  She took in the dirt on his clothes, his split knuckles, the tears in his shirt with raw scrapes beneath. Completely losing her head, she gripped his shoulders and yanked him upright.

  He slumped limply in the chair, head hanging over the back, arms dangling. Her heart jammed itself into her throat, and she put her cheek against his nose and mouth, waiting to feel his breath on her skin.

  Nothing.

  “No.” She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. “Lyre, don’t you dare be dead. Don’t you dare!”

  She couldn’t find his pulse. He wasn’t breathing. Panic screamed inside her skull. What did she do? What was she supposed to do?

  “Lyre!” she yelled.

  Unfamiliar magic pulsated through him. With a violent gasp, his chest heaved outward. His eyes flew open, then rolled back in his head as he convulsed. She grabbed his shoulders and eased him to the floor. Laying his head back, she knelt beside him, tears blurring her vision.

  “Lyre! Lyre, are you okay?”

  He kept shuddering and gasping, unresponsive to her voice. Clearly, he was not okay. Remembering that throb of magic, she passed her hand across her eyes to bring her asper into focus.

  Red-tinted magic spun through his body, the threads pulsing grotesquely in time with his rasping breaths. She’d never seen such a tangle of magic with so many fine lines woven deep through him, hooked into his flesh. She touched his throat just above his shirt collar and stretched her senses out, feeling the shape and purpose of the magic.

  A death spell.

  But not just a death spell. It was so much worse than that.

  Lyre’s lungs heaved, then his breathing weakened. His fingers contorted, dragging across the floor, and his whole body arched. The tendons in his neck stood out, straining against skin that had lost its golden warmth. His breath hissed through his clenched teeth.

  Then he slumped to the floor and stopped breathing.

  Quaking from head to toe, she kept her hand on his motionless chest and watched the threads of the spell flicker with reddish-gold power. The seconds crawled by, each one more agonizing than the last. Finally, at exactly thirty, the magic pulsed through his body.

  He came back to life under her hand, heart hammering and lungs straining. Her fingers tightened around his shirt in furious despair.

  A death spell that killed its victim, then brought him back to life to die all over again. And again. And again. It would keep killing and reviving him until his body gave out and his heart could no longer beat.

  It was the most revolting magic she’d ever seen. And she didn’t know how to save him from it.

  Staring intently, she analyzed the weave. Under her touch, he gasped and trembled as the magic wrung the life from him once more. It was woven into him in a way she’d never seen before, as though his body had absorbed it into his very essence. Her fingers slid down his left arm, following the threads to their source.

  She stopped at his wrist. A chalky substance had dried on his skin, something that glistened like silvery powder. A wave of dizziness washed over her. Quicksilver. He’d been doused in a spell woven into quicksilver.

  Dulcet must have done this. Lyre had gotten her away from the psychotic incubus, but now … now …

  She searched through the weave, desperately seeking a trigger or a flaw or a way to stop it. Lyre slowly, so very slowly, slipped toward death again, and when he quit breathing, she couldn’t stop the tears from flooding her cheeks. She clutched his hand for the soul-rending thirty seconds until his heart launched back to life and he gasped for air.

  “Lyre,” she wept softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  She couldn’t remove the spell. There was no trigger. No way to disengage or unkey it. It was buried deep in his body, and though she could have torn the magic from his flesh, it wouldn’t save him.

  The spell was killing him, but it was also keeping him alive. If she ripped the magic out, she would rip his life out with it. He would die.

  Denial spun through her as she again searched the weaving for a different answer. If only she could stop the spell without removing it. If only she could destroy it in an instant, unmake it before it could take his life, erase it—

  She jerked upright. Erase it. Unmake it. She didn’t possess that kind of magic. No one did.

  But somehow, Lyre had created it.

  The spell in the clock, hidden in h
is workroom. The one sealed under the bookshelf. It ate magic. It could devour the magic from his body without lifting the spell from his flesh first.

  “Lyre.” She put her mouth beside his ear. “I know what to do. I can save you. But you have to hold on, okay? You can’t die. You have to hold on until I come back.”

  As she leaned over him, his eyelids flicked open. Clouded eyes, amber hazed with dark shadows, met hers and his fingers squeezed her hand painfully. Then his eyes rolled back, and he went limp, panting and shaking.

  Letting go of him was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She darted into the bedroom, grabbed a pillow, and tucked it under his head. Crouching, she stroked his cheek, then his lips, feeling his hot breath on her fingers.

  “Keep breathing, Lyre,” she whispered. “Keep living. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She ran to the door and found the whole house locked down in heavy wards. Locating the triggers, she unkeyed them one by one, slipped outside, closed the door, and rearmed the wards. She hesitated, terrified he would die while she was gone—die for good.

  But if she stayed, he’d have no chance at all.

  Whirling around, she sprinted away from the house and into the darkness of Asphodel, counting each passing minute in her head, knowing Lyre had far too few left.

  Asphodel was a maze, but there was one landmark she knew—a tall tower she could see from the inn balcony, that she had viewed up close on the carriage ride to the Hades palace. It rose above the other buildings, and using it as her guide, she ran through the empty streets.

  She’d never been alone in the town before, and the eclipse’s deep darkness sucked away the lights of the buildings. Shadows pressed close, shifting and eddying like living things. She ran down a short alley and into a wider street, orienting herself toward the tower again. If she could reach the tower, she could navigate from there. At the gate of the housing complex where Lyre lived, she had cleared her head enough to realize she would never find her way back, so she’d woven a simple tracking beacon into a rock, a spell to guide her return.

  A stitch cut into her side but she didn’t slow. She had no idea how much time Lyre had left. The blood magic weave would keep killing him every ten or twenty minutes until he died for good. Who knew how long that would take?

  Dulcet, that sick freak. She’d recognized him as a psycho right off, but she would never have imagined such a vile spell. Making your enemy suffer death over and over before actually dying …

  “Hey, you!”

  At the sudden shout, she stumbled and almost fell. Whirling around, she discovered two daemons standing a dozen feet away from her, dressed in black fatigues with short-cropped hair and reddish-black eyes. Reaper soldiers, though unlike the ones outside Asphodel, these daemons were in glamour. How had they gotten so close?

  “A girl?” one muttered as he studied her.

  “At least it’s not that damn draconian. The sound of running made me think he’d come back this way.”

  The soldier snorted. “You wouldn’t hear him on the move. Besides, he took off clear across the estate toward the nobles’ district.” He focused on Clio. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I—I’m an envoy. I got lost after the party at the palace—”

  “That ended hours ago. You’re the envoy of what territory, exactly?”

  “Of—of Irida.”

  “That’s not a territory.” He glanced questioningly at his comrade, who shook his head.

  “It’s …” She gulped. “It’s an … an Overworld … territory.”

  They exchanged sharp grins. “I heard we had an Overworlder visiting. So it’s you.”

  “I—I need to return to my inn—”

  “No, I think we’ll take you back to the Hades residence. Can’t have Overworlders running around in the dark.”

  She inched backward. She’d hoped that revealing she was a supposedly important envoy would convince them not to mess with her. Obviously not. She spun on her heel and bolted.

  Darkness flashed across her path and she slammed into something hard that hadn’t been there a moment before. Bouncing off, she landed on her backside in the middle of the road.

  The guard stood directly in front of her, smirking.

  She scrambled to her feet and looked back. The second guard was right behind her. But they’d been a dozen paces away just seconds ago. That guard had appeared in her path out of thin air, materializing as though he’d—

  —teleported. Reapers’ caste ability. Teleportation.

  Outrunning the soldiers was not going to happen. She lifted her chin with determination.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” a soldier said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  “We don’t want to seriously hurt her,” the other corrected.

  A spark of red magic flashed across his fingers, and Clio had a mere heartbeat to make the most difficult choice of her life: her half-brother or the incubus who’d saved her.

  If she let the soldiers capture her and take her back to the Hades palace, Lyre would die. But if she fought back, she would be sacrificing any chance of accomplishing the mission Bastian had given her. Assuming she survived attacking these soldiers, Hades would eject her from Asphodel and the Underworld. Or they’d imprison, punish, or kill her. Either way, she would fail to get a spell of any kind for Bastian.

  As magic spiraled over the soldier’s hand and she blinked her asper into focus, she couldn’t move, torn with indecision. She had to decide now, before that binding spell was ready.

  The red light blazed toward her, and she flung her hands up and cast.

  The fancy shield spell she’d mimicked from Viol snapped around her, and the soldier’s binding hit it in a sizzle of sparks. Magic twirled around her fingers and she thrust her hand out. With a flash of green light, an identical copy of the soldier’s red binding hit him in the torso. The threads spun around him and he toppled over backward with a surprised yelp.

  “The hell—”

  She whirled on the second reaper. He sprang back a step, then darkness flashed over him. He disappeared and reappeared again a dozen yards down the street, already casting.

  Clio imitated his gestures, following half a second behind and mimicking each thread as it formed. Magic burst from his hands in a swirling discharge, and hers erupted immediately after. The two spells collided in the space between them and exploded. The boom rocked the surrounding buildings.

  Shouts echoed from nearby. Daemons were coming to investigate.

  She needed to get away. She needed to move fast—and that reaper had just shown her the fastest possible way to travel.

  She slapped her palms to her chest and focused on the reaper across from her as he began another spell. But she wasn’t watching that. She fixed her attention on the shimmer of red magic over his body, the essence of his energy invisible to everyone but a nymph.

  Digging her fingers into her sternum, she gathered the look and feel of that energy. And she mimicked it.

  Her aura flashed from green to red, and cold shivered across her skin as her energy shifted, becoming that of the reaper’s. Unaware of what she’d done, the soldier lifted his hands to bring them down in an explosive cast that would inflict serious damage.

  She stepped forward. Icy magic plunged over her body, and the world vanished. Airless black oblivion closed around her, then the world returned in a pop of light and sound. The guard’s broad back filled her vision, his arms still raised, ready to cast—except his target had disappeared.

  She slammed both hands into his back and cast the same binding spell she’d learned from the other soldier. Bands of magic whipped over him and he fell on his face with a muffled curse.

  Holding tight to the cold energy of her new aura, she teleported again. It was ridiculously simple, at least when she could see where she wanted to go. She just picked the spot, stepped forward into that nothingness, and appeared where she wanted to be.

  She teleported fifty yards at a tim
e, flashing down the streets until she reached the base of the tower. Stopping there, she gasped for air, trembling as exhaustion dragged at her limbs. Her aura shivered back to green as she lost her hold on the mimicked energy. Mimicking a caste ability wasn’t something she could memorize and use again like a spell, because a caste ability wasn’t a spell at all, but inherent magic. If she couldn’t see and sense the other daemon’s aura, she couldn’t match her energy to his.

  She braced an arm on a wall, breathing heavily. Damn. Teleporting was even more tiring than sprinting the same distance. A fuzzy ache in her head warned she’d depleted much of her magic reserves.

  Pushing away from the wall, she jogged along the canal’s edge. Somewhere behind her, the fallen soldiers had probably been discovered. Would the second guard understand what she had done?

  Reaching an intersection of streets, she looked around. A few blocks away on her left was the inn. On her right was the bridge to the business district of Asphodel—to Chrysalis.

  She didn’t have time to go back to the inn to look for Kassia and Eryx. Her bodyguards could be anywhere. She was on her own—but no sooner did she turn toward the bridge than someone shouted, “Clio! Clio!”

  Kassia came charging down the street, Eryx on her heels. Her friend’s eyes were black and her expression was a mixture of fury and relief.

  “Clio!” Kassia skidded to a stop in front of her. “We saw you from the balcony. Where were you? Where did you go? What happened?”

  “We can talk about that later. Come on!” Gesturing for them to follow, Clio ran across the bridge and into the business district.

  Increasing his pace, Eryx jogged alongside her. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re breaking into Chrysalis.”

  Kassia gasped.

  “To steal magic?” Eryx demanded eagerly. “Yes! It’s about damn time!”

  “No!” Kassia grabbed Clio’s arm and stopped her in the middle of the street. “Are you insane? You can’t break into Chrysalis!”