Chapter Thirty-Eight
Freya
O nce we removed the wards, escaping the cells was as simple as melting the locks on the doors down to nothing and stepping into the hall. Ryder’s arms—or rather, what was left of them—posed a greater problem.
Where his wrists and forearms had touched the silver bars, they were burned down to the muscle. The display of blood and flesh and tendons nauseated me. Though he trembled in pain, he remained stony faced.
“You must be healed,” I said.
I reached for Ryder. While breaking the wards should have taken its toll on me, I was far from drained. I wondered if I had used too much of Walker’s magic, but the warlock’s power crackled in the air like lightning eager to strike.
Maybe it’s this strange dimension we’ve entered, I thought. It’s granted us more power.
Ryder dodged my grasp.
“We need to get out of here,” he insisted.
Though the wounds were gruesome, he was right. We stood exposed in the stone-paved hall where anyone who entered the dungeons could see us.
“Fine,” I said.
Everyone stared at me, clearly waiting for me to offer which direction to go.
I swallowed. “Let’s move.”
I led them down the hall, toward the direction from where the vampire had gotten his blood bag simply because it was the opposite direction the Handmaiden had gone. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I had no idea about the layout of the High Witch’s court.
No one did.
We passed rows of empty cells, and I marveled that the High Witch possessed so few prisoners.
Maybe her prisoners don’t live very long.
I shoved the unhelpful thought aside.
As Walker opened the heavy, metal door, I prayed I wasn’t leading us into a trap. The door creaked, and I cringed at the noise, but we faced a dimly lit, gloriously empty stairway. It was crafted of simple, but clean gray stones. I loosed a tiny sigh of relief and led the way.
The stairs traveled only one floor up, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was leading us into an ambush.
“I don’t actually know where I’m going,” I admitted in a rush.
“You think we don’t know that?” Ryder asked in a rough voice.
“Your poker face is not as good as you think it is,” Cady said and smiled. “We didn’t follow your lead because we thought you had a map. We trust your judgment, Coven Mother Redfern.”
“And if any of us had a better plan,” Walker piped in, “we would’ve spoken up.”
Fear and pride warred in my heart. Despite his teasing, Walker and Ryder nodded along to Cady’s sentiment.
So many lives in my hands.
I couldn’t bear to lose one of them.
No matter what it cost, I wouldn’t.
I reached for Ryder’s arm again, but Cady beat me to it. She wore a cocky smile.
“You just spent plenty energy breaking us free,” she said. “Plus, I can do decent healing and summon my own herbs. Allow me.”
Goddess, I admired this witch. Seconds after warming my heart, she knocked me down a peg.
Quickly, Cady whispered a spell, reached her hands in front of her, and pulled herbs from seemingly thin air. Her magic hummed and echoed in the stairway, and I hoped no one else heard its song. Cady rubbed the paste into the mangled remains of Ryder’s arms, and he hissed but remained still. Though I watched her closely in case she needed help, in minutes, she rubbed the herbs off Ryder’s arm and revealed knitted flesh.
“You didn’t even leave a scar,” I whispered in amazement.
Cady grinned, and Walker fist-bumped her.
“Thanks, kid,” Ryder said and ruffled her hair. “But it’s time to go.”
I nodded. As Walker pulled the door, we hid in the narrow space behind it. My body singing with magic and adrenaline, I braced myself.
No one was there.
We faced a dining hall from the medieval era. Lanterns hung over well-worn tables, some of which were littered with uneaten food. Across the stone-paved space, there was a bar and a swinging door that I suspected led to a kitchen. Ale and piss and body odor stung my nostrils.
Something skittered, and I tensed. Walker reached for his sword, but Cady laid a hand on his arm.
“Look,” she told him.
A rat scurried across the room.
I released my breath and stepped forward. I studied the still steaming porridge abandoned on the nearest table and frowned.
“Something’s not right,” I said.
I cast out a magical net of awareness. Magic of all kinds oozed from the court’s very walls, but a flicker of familiar, chaotic power caught my attention. My heart squeezed.
“Arion,” I whispered.
He was so far away, but he was scared. I had never sensed his fear before.
I have to get to him.
I raced for the nearest hallway, but Walker caught me around the waist. Without thinking, I elbowed his ribs. He coughed but didn’t let go.
“Think,” he rasped into my ear. “If you race after him, you’ll be surrounded in seconds. Clearly, he’s drawn everyone in this godforsaken place to him. Let’s use that to our advantage and move with stealth. Think it through.”
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to get to my familiar. I wanted to save him. I wanted to ride out of this place with him and cuddle his fur until the end of time.
Think.
I swallowed. “Okay. Okay, you can let go. I won’t do anything stupid.”
I couldn’t jeopardize his safety or ours by letting my emotions guide me. I slipped back into that calm place where certainty and instinct collided.
Walker released me.
“Elle is upstairs,” Ryder said. “Many, many levels up. I can sense it.”
“There must be another staircase then,” Cady said. She studied the outdated dining hall with a frown. “It’s too much to hope for an elevator, right?”
If Arion’s panic didn’t haunt the back of my mind, I would’ve laughed.
Across the room, two hallways branched off from the dining area. I couldn’t sense which direction would be faster to get to Arion or Elle. I only knew they were up.
“This one,” Ryder said and went to the left.
I wondered if he based his choice on wolfish instincts or a gut feeling, but I followed him regardless of the answer.
We walked down a narrow, dimly lit hall that wasn’t so different from the one in the dungeon. Rooms lined it instead of cells, but a few of the doors had been left ajar. I peeked inside and spotted a couple dingy cots, a single chest of drawers, and a lone lantern in each. The sheets were ratty at best and in pieces at worst. Judging by the fact we had yet to see a window, we were still underground.
Walker discovered a blue jacket—identical to the one the vampire had worn—on one of the dilapidated beds.
“How does she find people to work for her?” Walker mused and continued down the hall. “This is hardly better than our cells.”
“How’d she rope you two into working for her?” Ryder replied.
The High Witch had always been feared, but I had imagined her court to be the picture of regality and justice. I hadn’t imagined a portal to the darkest parts of the past.
“No one knows how old Cordelia is,” Cady said, “but I’m thinking she’s pretty freaking old after seeing her place.”
Some witches stuck to the old ways and lived in the recesses of the world untouched by modern technology, but most covens prided themselves on being able to succeed in the human and the witch world.
How had we allowed ourselves to be led by someone stuck in a time long passed?
The hallway winded, and we checked door after door in hopes of a stairway, but there were only more dingy rooms. There were no tapestries, decorations or anything else that could be used to hide a door. I realized the court was not only hard to find, but it was also a labyrinth to escape.
“Can you sense anything?” I asked Cady.
Though I spoke in hushed tones, my voice was far too loud in the quiet hall.
“There’s something ahead of us,” she said. “It feels like a cache of magic.”
I had been too consumed by Arion’s far-off presence to notice it, but I sensed the magic too after she brought it to my attention.
“Sounds fun,” Walker muttered.
“It might be a good sign,” I suggested. “If there’s a way up, it would probably be guarded.”
The hallway narrowed and sloped downward, toward a metal door that glinted silver in the dim light. Ryder cringed. I yanked on the door’s handle and revealed a weapons room that put the Reids’ to shame.
Machetes, swords, throwing stars, daggers, chains, and arsenal I didn’t have a name for lined the walls and shelves. Though they were made of various materials—silver, obsidian, titanium—magic buzzed around each one.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warned and shot Cady a look. “I mean it. I know how you get around pointy things.”
“There’s another door over there,” Walker said and gestured to the far corner of the room.
I nodded, though I was too short to see over the shelves. Ryder and Walker led the way toward the door, and I took up the rear. We walked through the rows of weaponry, and I wondered if Arion’s distraction might actually allow us to reach him unscathed.
Someone’s gloved hand wrapped around my throat and pressed me against a broad, firm chest. Instinctively, flames sprouted from my hands, but my fire had no effect on my attacker. Cady whirled and gasped. Beyond her, guards in all-black armor and gloves sprang from the shadowy corners of the room and attacked Walker and Ryder.
As I elbowed my assailant in the ribs, Cady summoned a slab of stone from the floor. With a vicious smile, she dropped it on my assailant’s foot. He released me with a grunt, and I launched him across the room with a gust of wind. The blade of a hatchet cut through his thigh and trapped him. He screamed, but I couldn’t summon any guilt.
I paused to study the man. Unlike our vampire guard, he wore black from head to toe, and only his brown eyes were visible through his mask. Magic emanated from him, but not with the wild ferocity of a wolf or the cold chill of a vampire. His power didn’t feel resonate like Walker’s either. This man’s magic was subtler. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put my finger on who.
A snarl snapped me back into the present. I turned and watched Ryder slash his claws through his attacker’s throat. Blood spouted from the wound, but not the amount I would’ve expected. The man was still able to breathe.
Their clothes must provide some kind of magical protection.
Sparks flew from Walker’s fingertips, but his lightning wasn’t enough to permeate his attacker’s clothes.
“His eyes!” I yelled.
Walker gouged his fingers into the man’s eyes. As lightning struck them, the man screamed and fell to the ground. Smoking holes were all that remained in his sockets.
Walker stared in horror at what he had done, but, with Cadence in front of us, I grabbed his hand and raced for the far door. Turning back wasn’t an option.
Out of the armory, the hall splintered into three directions. Ryder turned to the right, so we followed him. Footsteps pounded behind us. The stone-paved path sloped down, then up, then down again. It curved left, then right. We raced past sparsely spread closed doors, and the footsteps grew louder.
Whatever hunted us, they were quickly catching up. A plan took shape in my mind. I sent a gust of wind behind us, and bodies skidded down the hall. The wind knocked out the nearest lantern’s lights and plunged us into darkness. I reached for the nearest door handle, whispered a quick unlocking spell, and pushed it open. Luckily, my friends followed me wordlessly inside, and I clicked the door shut.
In total darkness, I cloaked us with a spell of silence. Unlike my mother’s spell on Gloria, it allowed us to speak, but it smothered any sound we made from outside ears. I wasn’t sure what the creatures that hunted us were, but I hoped they couldn’t detect magic. I stayed close to the door anyway and prepared myself to attack.
Footsteps scuffled past the door, and I held my breath. When they continued down the hall, I gently released it.
“They know we’ve escaped the dungeons,” Ryder said. “It won’t be long before they send the Handmaidens after us.”
“Yes,” I agreed. My stomach turned. “Arion can’t distract them forever.”
“This place is a maze,” Walker said. “It’s like it was designed to be difficult to navigate.”
“What better way to keep prisoners inside?” Cady asked.
“It is a maze,” I mused, “which means there could be multiple ways to get out.”
“There are more dead ends, too,” Walker added. “If we had a map, though, we might be able to get to Arion and Elle while avoiding the Handmaidens.”
Cady gasped. “I could try!” Hope brightened her voice. “I mean, we’re underground, right? Maybe I can get a sense of the place like I did the Warlock Cave.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Keep your senses open for access to the ripple on this side of the dimension as well.”
Cady hesitated. “Oops. I nodded then realized no one could see me.”
I summoned a ball of flame and searched for a lantern. As I waved the flame around, gray eyes stared into mine.
I barely choked down my scream.
My friends gasped. I willed my flame to burn brighter and studied the huddled figure who looked vacantly back at me. The ancient witch sat in a simple, but more cleanly cot than those of the guards, beside a rickety, wooden bedside table. She made no move to attack, though I sensed the barest whiff of magic from her. I swept my eyes over the rest of the quaint room but found only a dusty bookshelf.
“Is it time already?” the witch croaked.
Cady opened her mouth, but Walker clamped a hand over it. The witch’s eyes failed to track the motion. I waved a hand in front of my face and the witch only blinked. In the better light, her eyes were not only gray but also milky.
She was blind.
“No,” I said in a blessedly steady voice. “Just checking in.”
“Oh.” The witch smiled and revealed blackened teeth. “How nice. Did my mother send a message?”
Mother? This witch is old enough to be my great grandmother.
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “She wishes you well.”
Tears pooled in the old witch’s eyes. “Do I get to go home soon? Have I given enough yet?”
Dread and fear and confusion pricked my eyes.
“I’m not sure,” I answered and swallowed. “How long have you been here?”
“Only a few weeks,” the witch said and frowned. “I think. Time moves so slowly.” The witch’s frown smoothed into a wistful smile. “My mother said it always does for the young.”
Walker scoffed and tried to smother it as a cough.
“How—” I cleared my throat. “How old are you?”
“I’m only thirty-six,” the witch answered. My hands shook. “It’s why I was chosen to come to High Witch Cordelia’s court as penance for my coven’s misdemeanors. I have so many years to give thanks to my youth.”
So many years to give.
We needed to move on from this place. The Handmaidens would soon be on their way, and the other creatures too, but I couldn’t focus on a path out for my friends.
Penance for my coven’s misdemeanors.
“Dear Goddess,” I whispered, “Cordelia’s Embracing her slowly to preserve her own long life.”
We had always been told the High Witch’s power was eternal and Goddess-given, but maybe that, like so many things, had been a pretty lie. The High Witch was known for harsh punishments, but those punishments were supposed to be made on the grounds of justice. They were not supposed to be twisted mechanisms for preserving Cordelia’s reign.
“Is that what she’ll do to our coven?” Cady asked. “To punish us?”
“What was that?” the ancient witch asked.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Nothing. We’ll let you get back to your rest.”
“Okay,” the witch said and laid down. “I’m so glad my mother sent a message. I can’t wait to see her again soon.”
“Of course,” I said, though this witch would never go home. In only a few weeks, she’d gone from a witch in her prime to a crone.
Soon, she would die.
That won’t happen to us, I reminded myself.
Believing the thought was the only path to survival.