Chapter 8
The headquarters of the Nox Custodia were always quiet during the late-night hours—something Viri was counting on as she made her way there, questioning herself with every step.
She almost wished there were more guards around, someone to ask what she was doing, to tell her how very foolish she was being, to stop her.
But as always, most on-duty Nox were out patrolling the city, with only a skeleton crew remaining for emergencies.
The guards manning the reception desk were used to Viri coming and going at odd times, so all they did was wave tiredly when she breezed past in her hunter attire and vanished into the elevator.
Her heart was racing, her plan—if it could be called that—having so many holes that she wondered if she was mad.
Part of her desperately wanted to return home and act like the conversation she’d had with Sarielle had been nothing more than a vivid nightmare, one she’d laugh about in the morning.
But she couldn’t just ignore what she’d learned and hope the problem would go away on its own.
There were fifty missing children who were counting on her to find them, and an entire city that might be at risk if the Reaper Priest gained the power of the Aurora Comet.
Viri couldn’t let that happen, even if it meant breaking the most fundamental rule of hunting.
She was about to bargain with a reaper.
It went against everything she believed in, everything she was, and yet, Sarielle had said there was no cost too steep if it led to them getting the answers they needed.
Viri just had to hope that was true, since there was no going back now, the elevator descending fast beneath the mountain.
As usual, the ellixen powering it made goosebumps prickle her flesh—or maybe they were from the trepidation she felt, which only deepened when she came to a halt and used a shaky hand to pull a vial of black powder from her cloak.
It was another of Wynter’s experiments: an ellixen disrupter that could briefly interrupt the flow of magic, created for Viri to use against reapers with enchanted artifacts or weapons.
But that wasn’t why she’d brought it with her tonight.
Without Soren’s Nox clearance granting her access through the elevator’s door—something Viri couldn’t ask for again—the powder was her only hope of getting to Reeve.
“Please work,” she whispered, tipping half the vial onto her palm and blowing it at the command panel.
She waited what felt like a lifetime, but finally, the powder took effect and the doors opened, prompting Viri to slump with relief and send a mental thank-you to Wynter.
Time was of the essence now, with every moment counting if Viri wanted to avoid discovery. Even tired, the two Nox guards at the reception desk would notice if she took too long to reappear. She and Reeve needed to be long gone before anyone started asking questions.
Hurrying down the dimly lit tunnel, Viri didn’t allow herself to second-guess what she was about to do.
She wasn’t going in blind this time—she knew Reeve liked to play games, but she could play them, too.
His offer demanded freedom in return for answers, so she would help him escape, ask her questions, get the information she needed—
And then drag him straight back to the Underlock.
Reeve thought he was smart, but Viri was smarter. There was no way she was letting him loose just so he could scurry back to his master. Contingencies upon contingencies—that was what she needed in order to win games against a reaper.
Channeling confidence, Viri turned the final bend in the tunnel and approached the cell at the end, anticipating having to rouse Reeve from sleep.
But when she halted before his glass-fronted prison, she found him wide-awake, lying on his thin mattress and tossing a stone into the air.
Up, down, up, down, he repeated the motion, the muscles in his tanned forearm rippling with the move, the onyx ring on his finger gleaming in the low light.
He didn’t so much as twitch when she cleared her throat to announce her presence, almost as if he’d been expecting her.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“I’m busy. Come back later.”
Five words, and Viri could already feel her blood pressure rising. “I’m here about your offer.”
Reeve’s quicksilver eyes flicked her way, but otherwise he didn’t move, just continued to toss his rock—up, down, up, down. “What offer would that be, Little Shadow?”
“You know what offer,” Viri ground out. “Get your ass up. If you want your freedom, we need to move.”
His lips twitched, but he still didn’t budge. “So polite. Did they teach you those manners at hunter school?”
Every part of Viri wanted to snap back at him, but with so much at stake, she swallowed her pride—and her tongue—and said, “Please, Reeve. We don’t have long.”
Whether it was her plea, the urgency in her tone, or the possibility of escape, something finally got through to him enough that he dropped the rock and rose to his feet.
Impossibly, he looked no worse for wear after a week in prison.
If anything, he seemed rested, which was hardly fair.
His dark clothes were somewhat rumpled, and his black hair more tousled than usual, but otherwise he looked—he looked—
Don’t think about how he looks, Viri scolded herself, hating that someone so evil could be so physically appealing. He was like one of Wynter’s experimental poisons—beautiful, but deadly.
“Hands,” Viri said as he approached the barrier. She gestured to the small square cut into the fortified glass that was just large enough for objects to pass through, things like food—and wrists.
He did as ordered, not even flinching as the ellixen-suppressing wards bore down on him, indicating he’d done this in recent days, likely numerous times. But while his other visitors would have slapped him with nullicuffs—magic-nullifying handcuffs—Viri had something else in mind.
“Do you remember this?” she asked, uncoiling her golden weapon from her forearm.
“Your parents’ fillium,” Reeve said, eyeing it thoughtfully, a slew of emotions playing out across his face before he schooled his features once more. “How could I forget?”
“Do you remember what it does?”
“Which part? The magic suppression, or the truth detection?”
“Both,” Viri said, satisfied with his memory.
If she’d been less unbalanced during her last visit, she would have thought to use it on him then, if only to find out how much of what he’d said was a lie and how much the truth.
It couldn’t force answers out of him, so it wouldn’t help her get the information she required, but it could offer the reassurance she needed to risk going through with her plan tonight.
Binding one end of the golden cord around Reeve’s wrists in a figure eight, she looked straight into his silver eyes and asked, “Is your bargain genuine? If I free you, will you answer my questions? All of them?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes to the first, yes to the second, and yes—within reason—to the third.”
She frowned. “Within reason?”
“I’ll answer your questions about the Priest, as promised,” Reeve said, before a trace of a smirk touched his lips. “But if you want to know about anything else, including my personal life, you’ll have to earn it.”
“Good thing I don’t care about your personal life,” Viri said.
His smirk grew. “Still lying, I see.”
She indicated her own hand touching the fillium. “This proves I’m not.”
A dark laugh left Reeve. “It proves nothing.”
Viri stilled, before forcing herself to relax.
He couldn’t possibly know the golden weapon had never worked on her—she wouldn’t have been able to wear it long-term otherwise.
While she might have yielded almost all of her ellixen during her Impartation as a child, the fraction she’d kept would object to being constantly suppressed, leaving her in a perpetual state of exhaustion—something Reeve would soon start to feel himself, though the fillium’s draining power wouldn’t hit him as hard or as fast as it would a reaper who had recently siphoned.
Still, it wouldn’t be long before he began to feel its effects.
Viri, however…her immunity was a mystery.
Despite the fillium being a family heirloom, neither of her parents had been impervious to its magic, so they’d always limited their contact and taken turns using it during their hunts.
Viri didn’t have that problem, something she was eternally grateful for.
“We don’t have time for this,” she said, moving them on. “One more question before I decide if this is worth it.”
“For you or for me?”
“Me, obviously.” Viri arched a brow. “Did you sell your brain along with your soul when you became a reaper?”
“Is that your question? Because would you believe I never actually—”
“No—just—ugh, shut up,” Viri cut him off, angry at herself more than him for wasting precious seconds. “My question is: Do you actually know where the Reaper Priest is and what his plans are, or are you just using me to escape?”
“I know more than you do,” Reeve answered. Before Viri could demand a better response, he added, “And what I know, you’re going to want to hear. That’s all I’m saying until you get me out of here.” A slash of a grin. “Time to choose, Little Shadow. Will you bargain with a reaper?”
Half certain she was making the biggest mistake of her life, but also aware that she didn’t have time for doubt, Viri pressed her free hand against the panel embedded in the tunnel wall beside the barrier.
Normally, that was all that was needed to open the Underlock cells, her hunter’s mark being recognized by the wards and allowing her to release any inmates, but Reeve’s prison apparently required more than that.
Thankfully, she still had half of Wynter’s powder left, and she used the last of it to disrupt the magic, just like in the elevator.