Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Kyrith
“Dude, is this…?”
Lambert’s being quiet for once, but Leo’s answering sigh is softer still.
“Yeah. Our mam.”
“She’s pretty. I mean, she had to be, because I am, and I didn’t get it from my dad, but still…” He starts getting louder towards the end, but he pauses. “You take after yours a lot.”
There’s a beat of fraught silence. Leo’s answer, when it comes, is sorrowful. “Put it away, Lambert. I don’t…” He blows out a breath. “Being here is bad enough.”
“Yeah? But didn’t you like…live here?”
“For a while. They divorced when I was two.” Leo’s voice is deadened.
“My da tried so hard in the beginning—I think he hoped that my curse would activate and take him first—but as I got older, he just started hiring nannies. It went downhill from there, and…yeah. Everyone knows what happened on my eleventh birthday…” He trails off, no doubt thinking of how his father’s ensorcellment killed their mother.
“It was always more of a museum than a home. Da never changed anything. He got mad if I moved stuff. Then he got the phone call. I was asleep. Didn’t know anything had happened until I found him in the bathtub the next morning. ”
“Shit, bro.”
“It was a long time ago,” Leo dismisses. “Someone came for me by suppertime. No. I’m fine—Lambert. I can’t breathe.”
It’s not hard to imagine the size of the hug his brother just crushed him with.
“You were eleven. Old enough to remember.”
“All of it,” Leo confirms. “But my grandfather took me in without a fuss. He was…efficient. That helped, in a strange way.”
I force open my eyes, my heart twinging at the pain barely concealed in his voice. I barely have time to take in the dust-cloth covered furnishings and the thick cobwebs across the ceiling before Lambert is right in my face.
“Boss!”
That one word rings in my skull, drawing my attention to the renewed throbbing behind my temples.
“Ooompf.” I didn’t anticipate being crushed against his chest with this level of enthusiasm. The hug is so desperate that I have to wait for him to loosen his hold to ask, “Where are the others?”
Because wherever we are, it’s not Orkney.
“We…haven’t heard from them.” Lambert draws back, tossing a concerned glance over his shoulder to where Leo is perched on a window seat, his silhouette cast in deep shadows by the light streaming in through the net curtain.
If I had to guess, I’d say we were in the living room of an old cottage. The dust cloths covering a lot of the furniture are old, and a fusty odour clings to the sofa I’m lying on. A fireball floats in the fireplace, providing warmth, but outside, the rain and wind are lashing the windows.
“Enforcement was attacking Fort McKinley,” Leo explains. “Someone was sabotaging the wards, so we figured it was best to get you out of there.”
I jolt upright, hand blindly reaching for my grimoire. “Why didn’t you start with that!? We have to go back, they—”
“It’s been over an hour,” he says. “We should hear something concrete soon, but we can’t return.
If you’re awake, that means Mathias’s whereabouts are unknown.
He could be headed there, and with the wards down, you’d be defenceless.
” He doesn’t say it vindictively, and his logic is sound, but my ire rises anyway, only to dissipate when he pinches his nose and asks quietly, “Is my grandfather alive?”
“Your cousins arrived midway through the ritual,” I say. “I never saw what happened to him after Mathias stopped chanting.”
The lich hadn’t been expecting company. The element of surprise might have given them the advantage they needed to rescue the older parriarch.
Or they may all have been slaughtered.
Leo lifts his phone, sighs, then puts it back down again. “Someone will send news soon.”
“Surely they should’ve contacted us by now.”
I struggle to my feet, and Lambert catches me when my knees buckle. I snarl under my breath. Thankfully, my second attempt at standing works.
“Dakari knows where we are,” he reassures me, arms still out, ready to help if I fall again. “And they have their phones. We’ll hear from them soon, boss.”
That doesn’t make me feel better. An hour with no contact is too long. If not for the stupid dagger—
“I could use your expertise in warding the cottage,” Leo suggests, when I’ve been quiet for too long. “These ones haven’t been renewed in decades, and your magical signature is…”
A dead giveaway if anyone is searching for us. I swallow and nod, reaching for my grimoire. “I’ll obscure it.”
It’s busywork, important busywork, but busywork just the same. Leo conjures a stick of charcoal and holds it out. An olive branch.
I reach out slowly and take it, hoping they mistake my hesitance for lingering weakness.
Internally, my mind is whirring.
Leo…chose protecting me over his family. He’s been hiding in a cottage, keeping guard over my unconscious body when he could’ve transported straight to his grandfather’s side the moment I warned him about the danger he was in.
That means something, as much as I know it shouldn’t.
And when our fingers brush at the exchange, my heart skitters despite my determined efforts to quash it.
Then the moment is gone, replaced with quiet, studious resolve. The two of us work our way around the room, leaving Lambert to fiddle with his phone on the sofa between us like a living barricade.
A brittle kind of familiarity settles over my shoulders as I etch deep black lines over the floral wallpaper.
Many long minutes pass before I recognise the feeling as an echo of the peace I used to experience working beside him in the Astrology Room.
It’s so faint that even a single word might shatter it.
Vexing. Unwanted. Painful.
My insides are in turmoil. I wish I could bring myself to open my mouth and say something just to banish the unwelcome reminder of what we once had, but I can’t.
I…missed it. Missed him.
I’m so busy berating myself for that that I don’t notice the commotion outside until the door bursts open.
“You had no right!” Pierce is yelling, red in the face, as Dakari strides into the sitting room, jaw clenched.
“He only did what Benny asked him to,” North protests, shoving through the door sideways with an unconscious Eddy in his arms.
Pierce sneers at him. “Stay out of this.”
“Your grandfather kept you out of the plan because he knew you’d react like this,” Dakari says over his shoulder. “We’ll get him back.”
I drink up the sight of them, scanning the empty doorway, waiting for Jasper even as I rush to Eddy’s side. My grimoire falls open. If he hasn’t already healed her burns, he may be in a similar state.
Then the door falls shut.
Someone takes my heart into their hand and squeezes.
Dakari’s dark eyes meet mine, and I finally process the sorrow there.
“No.” My lips form the word, but I have no air to give voice to it.
“Baby girl, we’ll get him back,” he promises, then glances over his shoulder at Pierce. “We’ll get both of them back.”
“Both?” I flick my eyes over at the Carlton heir’s fuming silhouette and swallow.
Benny and Jasper. Mathias has taken the two most powerful restorationists I’ve ever met.
Deep breaths. One thing at a time. Eddy is here and injured. She’s covered in burns.
I can do something about that.
After that’s done, I can use the tracker installed on Jasper’s cage to find him.
Mathias doesn’t know about it. I created it knowing that if Jasper was taken, he’d likely be hidden behind multiple wards, so I specifically designed the spell to be as discreet as possible.
Combined with our bond, I should be able to locate him.
My mind doesn’t stop whirring as I lift Eddy’s unburnt wrist in gentle fingers. “Hiel dirmos.”
“We could’ve come up with a better strategy,” Pierce argues from behind me.
“We were fucking cornered,” Dakari retorts. “Benny’s plan made sense. It was his choice, and it’s not like we had time for a debate. That dagger rendered us all useless.”
I finish the spell, watching with satisfaction as the burns across Eddy’s skin retreat.
I’m so focused on what I’m doing that it takes me a second to realise what he just said.
“The dagger?” I blink, then press my hand to my forehead as it dawns on me. “He can use it against you? Oh. What am I saying? Of course, he can. It’s only logical.”
They’re bonded to me. The Library treated them like books, and the Arcanaeum has total control over every volume in the collection. Of course, Mathias would be able to influence them with the dagger. Why didn’t I consider that?
How in magic’s name are we supposed to rescue Jasper and Benny when none of us can even get close to the blade?
I look down at Eddy, still resting in North’s arms, and grimace. She’d have a better chance of going up against Mathias than any of us.
Instead of voicing my gloomy thoughts, I pick up the charcoal once again. “We need to finish warding this house. Then I’ll track Jasper, and we’ll make a plan to get both him and Benjamin back.”
I meet Pierce’s eyes as I say it, trying to reassure him.
His tiny chin-dip is as much of an acknowledgement as he seems able to give, and my heart pangs with worry.
“Boss, you’ve got to see this,” Lambert calls, holding up his phone. “Enforcement is making a statement.”
The charcoal snaps in my hand. Before I know it, I’m leaning over the back of the sofa, focused on the too-small screen he’s holding up. Leo’s shoulder knocks into mine in his haste, but I hush his apology.
“Why is the volume so low?”
Lambert mashes a button on the side of the device as Isidora steps calmly into view.
She’s still in Orkney, her people surrounding her as she stares down the camera with the same dispassionate demeanour usually reserved for generals briefing their troops.
Behind her, thick grey smoke rises from the castle.