Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Connal stood over the plans for Hale’s building, memorizing the route to Luke for what had to be the hundredth time.
His brothers waited around him in the armory, armed and ready. Asterius had abandoned any pretense of ease. Keir stood near the door, silent and watchful, while Zer paced beside the table. Avaneel remained tucked within his hair, peering through the dark strands with unusual solemnity.
Tyson checked the time again.
The armory door opened.
A castle messenger entered, breathing hard from his rush through the corridors. “Word from Koios.”
Every head turned toward him.
“The building’s fire alarms have activated, and the humans are evacuating. The observers saw the upper windows breached from outside.” He swallowed. “Multiple masked figures entered through the opening.”
The threshold had been crossed.
Luke could no longer leave freely.
Connal reached for his sword. “We move.”
His brothers were already in motion. Tyson gathered the plans and the small human devices he had prepared.
Gomez stepped forward with them.
“You remain here,” Connal said.
“Like hell I do. Luke is my friend.”
“And you have no training for a fight involving magic.” Connal held his gaze. “Going through that portal would not help Luke. It would give us another person to protect.”
Gomez opened his mouth, anger flashing across his face, but whatever he saw in Connal’s expression stopped the argument.
“Bring him back,” he said.
“I will.”
“You’d better, bonehead.”
Connal inclined his head, accepting both the order and the name.
He opened the portal and went through first, his blade already drawn. Asterius followed, then Keir and Zer, with Tyson carrying the plans behind them. The portal closed before Gomez could reconsider his agreement.
The world on the other side was smoke, shattered glass, and screaming alarms.
Red emergency lights flashed across white walls.
Shards glittered over the carpet beneath a bank of windows that had been punched inward.
A large wooden desk lay overturned near the center of the office with one heavy leg cracked through.
Papers had blown into every corner, some trampled into streaks of spilled coffee and blood.
A damaged wall panel hung crooked nearby, exposing wires that sparked blue-white against the smoke. The air carried the bitter scent of magic.
Connal tightened his grip on his sword. They had known the building was under attack. Knowing had not prepared him for the wreckage—or the possibility that Luke had been caught inside it.
“Luke!”
The alarm answered him.
Asterius emerged behind him with a curse. Keir immediately moved toward the nearest doorway, checking the corridor beyond, while Zer turned slowly in place with his knives drawn. Avaneel peered through his hair, watching the room from the protection of his shoulder.
Tyson came through last. He stopped beside the ruined desk, shock briefly breaking through his composure before he forced his attention back to the building plans.
Connal closed his eyes and reached for the connection that had vanished when he crossed into the Unseelie realm. This time, something answered.
Not Luke’s thoughts. Not his fear or pain. Nothing Connal could use to know what had happened to him.
Only an unmistakable living presence pulling him downward.
Luke was alive.
Connal turned toward the floor beneath his feet.
“Down.”
Asterius moved closer, his usual ease gone. “You can sense him?”
“He is alive,” Connal said. “Below us.”
Relief flashed across Asterius’s face before discipline buried it.
Zer crouched near one of the scorched marks left on the floor. “More than one kind of magic was used here.”
“They fought each other,” Keir said.
Once Keir named it, Connal could see the conflicting patterns in the damage. A force had driven inward through the windows, then redirected from somewhere near the office door.
Two magical enemies had met here.
He did not care which one had won.
“Find the way down.”
His brothers spread through the office. Keir checked the corridor while Zer followed the path of destruction around the overturned desk.
Tyson stepped carefully through the glass, comparing the room to the plans he carried. He stopped beside a pair of smooth metal doors set into the far wall.
“Hale’s private elevator.” He examined the dead panel beside it. “It connects this office to the building’s secured service levels and sub-basement.”
The bond pulled harder.
Luke was somewhere beneath the ruined office because the system was there. He had gone deeper into danger rather than escape and leave it intact.
Of course he had.
Pride and fear collided inside Connal. His clever, reckless human had faced magic alone because taking Connal with him would have exposed them both.
Connal would have time to be furious later. For now, he had to find him.
“Can we use the elevator?” he asked.
Tyson examined the dead panel beside the doors. “Not without power or Hale’s authorization.”
Asterius smiled without warmth. “Then we don’t use it.”
Connal sheathed his sword long enough to press one palm against the elevator doors.
Luke remained below them, separated from him by concrete, steel, and the wounded structure of the building.
He reached for the shape of the building beneath his feet.
Human structures resisted differently than fae stone.
They held no old vows in their foundations and no magic woven deliberately through their thresholds.
But this building had been wounded. Its barriers had cracked, leaving gaps through which Connal could feel heat, motion, and the faint shape of the spaces below.
Beneath all of it, Luke’s presence pulled at him like a hook.
“I can take us lower,” Connal said.
“How close?” Keir asked.
“As close as the building allows.”
Zer rolled his shoulders, adjusting the knives in his hands. “Then let’s move.”
Asterius caught Tyson by the shoulder. “Stay behind us.”
“I was planning to.”
Connal opened the portal beneath his feet and dropped through.
Cold air struck him as he landed on concrete.
Asterius followed, then Keir and Zer, each arriving with weapons ready and bodies lowered for attack.
Avaneel clung tightly to Zer’s hair through the drop, disappearing into the dark strands when he landed.
Tyson came through last, and the portal snapped shut overhead.
They stood in a narrow corridor beneath long strips of harsh white light. Pipes, vents, and bundled wires crowded the ceiling. Black camera domes slowly turned in their direction. Behind them, a pair of closed elevator doors matched the private lift shown on Tyson’s plans.
Tyson oriented himself and pointed ahead. “This is the beginning of the service corridor.”
The alarm from the upper floors reached them through the vents in distant, muffled pulses.
The sound of boots, voices, and metal striking metal grew louder.
Connal moved toward it.
Asterius took position at his right, while Keir watched the corridor crossings behind them. Zer moved close to the wall, his knives angled down to keep them from catching the light. Tyson remained protected in the center.
The first security door stood open ahead of them. The metal had warped around the locking mechanism, leaving it hanging crooked in its frame.
Tyson glanced at the plans. “First access point. There should be two more before the server room.”
The intruders had already forced their way through this one.
Connal crossed the threshold. “Tell me what I’m seeing.”
“Restricted infrastructure,” Tyson said. “Maintenance corridors, secured rooms, backup power. The server room will have heavy cooling—cold air, loud fans, rows of machines.”
Connal did not care about the machines.
The pull of the bond had changed. Luke’s presence no longer moved steadily through the building. It remained fixed in one place, alive but still.
“He has stopped.”
Asterius’s expression sharpened. “Is he wounded?”
“I cannot tell.”
The limitation burned, but Connal refused to let it slow him.
He pushed faster.
The corridor forked. Connal turned left without slowing.
“Wait,” Tyson said. “How did you—”
“Bond,” Asterius answered.
Avaneel emerged from Zer’s hair and flew ahead, keeping close to the pipes along the ceiling. Her tiny form disappeared around the next bend before Zer could call her back.
They found the second access door hanging from one hinge. The intruders had destroyed the locking mechanism and forced the reinforced metal inward, leaving barely enough room to pass through.
Connal turned sideways and crossed the threshold.
The third door waited farther down the corridor. Its keycard reader had been ripped from the wall, exposing a nest of wires, while the numbered keypad hung beneath it by a single cord. A dark smear of blood marked the frame.
Avaneel darted back through the opening and landed on Zer’s shoulder.
“Ten ahead at a door. At least eight more are moving toward them through the adjoining corridors.” A shudder moved through her tiny body, setting her wings trembling. “There’s magic wrapped around all of them. It feels wrong.”
“That must be the server room,” Tyson said.
Connal was already moving.
A voice carried from beyond the next turn.
“Door nearly compromised.”
Everyone stopped.
Another voice answered, muffled by distance. “Keep pressure on it. He’s inside.”
Connal’s vision narrowed.
Luke was behind that door.
The bond gave him no fear, pain, or thoughts—only Luke’s living presence, close and fixed in place. The rest required no magic to understand.
Luke was alive.
And he was trapped.
Connal took the corner at speed. The corridor opened into a wider junction where blue-white light spilled from a side passage. The mechanical hum deepened into the roar of cooling fans behind steel.
Ten men crowded the passage outside a reinforced door.
Two worked directly against the entrance. One controlled a device clamped over the access panel, while the other drove a compact ram into the warped locking seam. Seven more stood behind them with weapons drawn, protecting the breach.
The tenth guarded the corridor. Avaneel slipped from Zer’s shoulder and disappeared into his hair as the sentry turned.
“Contact!”
Too late.
The server-room frame had already begun to buckle. A narrow blade of light appeared around the damaged lock with every strike of the ram. The bond no longer needed to pull him forward. Luke’s living presence filled the place beyond that door.
Close.
Still.
Waiting while the enemy tore through the last barrier between them.
Asterius stepped to Connal’s right, his face stripped of its usual humor. Keir lifted his blade. Zer’s knives turned once in his hands. Tyson remained safely behind them.
Connal raised his sword. “Keep them away from the door.”
Then he charged.
The men at the server room door turned too late. Connal’s grin turned feral. Good.
The passage was too narrow for an open charge. Connal shortened his stride and brought his sword close to his body as the sentry raised his weapon.
Connal reached him first. His blade cut through the man’s wrist. The weapon struck the concrete with the severed hand still wrapped around it, but Connal was already moving past him.
Asterius drove shoulder-first into the next attacker and slammed him against the wall. Keir used the opening to reach the man wielding the ram, cutting low and dropping him before he could strike the server-room door again.
Zer went up.
Connal caught only a flash of movement at the edge of his vision—a boot against the wall, Zer’s body twisting over a fallen attacker, and twin knives catching the harsh corridor light. He landed behind the men guarding the breach, trapping them between himself and his brothers.
“Left!” Tyson shouted.
Connal trusted the warning and twisted aside as a burst of spellfire passed his shoulder and struck the wall where his head had been. Concrete splintered across his cheek.
He drove into the shooter before the man could attack again, slamming him backward against the device clamped over the access panel.
Blue sparks erupted around them. The man convulsed and dropped, but the device continued pulsing against the lock.
Connal kicked it free.
The attached cable tore loose with a violent crack, and the server-room door shuddered in its frame.
Connal drove his blade through the man nearest the door and shoved him aside with his boot.
Blood slicked the concrete. The narrow corridor left no room for the old rhythms of an open battlefield or court dueling ring.
Here, they fought with elbows, shoulders, knees, and blades held close to the body.
Every movement had to be contained or steel would strike the wall instead of an enemy.
Asterius caught an attacker by the front of his jacket and dragged him into the path of a burst of spellfire.
Tyson swore behind them. “Keep them away from the access panel!”
Keir changed direction instantly, driving his opponent away from the damaged controls rather than into them.
Zer ducked beneath a blade and came up inside the attacker’s reach. One knife drove beneath the man’s ribs while the other turned aside his weapon.
“They don’t care how many of them fall,” Zer said.
Keir’s gaze shifted toward the server-room entrance. “They only care about reaching the system.”
Boots thundered through the adjoining passage as the first reinforcements reached the junction. Even with Connal and his brothers cutting through them from behind, the remaining attackers kept forcing their way toward the door. One fell and another took his place beside the warped frame.
The ram lay abandoned, but two men braced their shoulders against the damaged seam. Magic crawled over their hands as they forced the steel inward.
The gap widened.
The bond flared.
Luke.
Connal cut down the man blocking his path and surged toward the door. A heavy body struck him from the side. He hit the wall shoulder-first. Pain cracked down his arm as he caught the attacker’s wrist an instant before the knife reached his ribs. Connal twisted until bone gave beneath his grip.
The man screamed.
Connal leaned close enough to see the fear in his eyes.
“Move.”
Connal threw the attacker into the floor.
The server-room door screamed.
He turned as the upper hinge tore free and the steel slab sagged inward. The two men braced against the damaged seam forced their way through the opening before Connal could reach them.
The bond pulled hard toward the opening.
“Luke!”
Connal charged after them.