Chapter 42 Asher
ASHER
Over five hundred dangerous bounty hunter jobs under my belt, and I've never been this scared in my entire fucking life.
He took her.
Veld took Heidi.
Just dropped straight out of fucking Limbo, wrapped his arms around her, put her to sleep, and vanished—but not before using his powerful incubus abilities to knock out the others. They collapsed to the tiled floor, dead asleep.
Now I'm in a blind panic, racing toward the nearest exit of Everbound Castle.
Devil is outside. I'll bring him in so he can track Veld—
Shit. No. My boots screech to a stop against the floor before I swivel to run the other direction, toward the big ballroom where the Seeking is happening.
Because Devil can't track Veld without a scent to follow, and he hasn't gotten a taste of that fucker's blood. So I'll go to the Amato quintet first. I'll stop the entire damned Seeking and tell them what's going on and wring Crypt's fucking neck until that bastard is—
Someone steps out of Limbo in front of me. I'm already summoning an attack spell that will rip Veld to pieces before I realize this is Crypt.
He takes one look at my utter state of panic, says, "Shit. Go to the dungeon. Nivarrah went there," and disappears again.
Just drops back into Limbo as my world keeps falling apart.
I swore I'd do it once when the Nightmare Prince robbed me of the chance to avenge my mother, but now?
I'm going. To fucking. Kill him.
His words don't sink in as I keep running toward the ballroom, my heart pounding so hard it hurts as I try not to picture how terrified Heidi looked last night. How vulnerable she is right now, unconscious and unable to fight someone as powerful and demented as Veld.
Every instinct inside me is screaming because the most important person in my existence is in danger. She's in the hands of that nasty fucking monster going gods know where, and for the first time in my life, I don't know how to fight back.
Just as I'm about to run into the ballroom, I freeze beside Ian, Kaenon, and Zak's unconscious bodies. Cursing myself for panicking earlier and not thinking of this sooner, I once again make sure I'm touching each of them before calling forth Arati's blessing to form armor around me.
Ian and Kaenon both jolt awake with ease.
Zak shouts in agony, scrambling away from me and clutching his chest like it's the center of his pain. "Motherfucking infernal hells, I told you not to—"
"Veld took Heidi."
Ian is on his feet at once, helping Zak stand as he snarls, "Where?"
"Limbo. Crypt said something about Nivarrah in the dungeon, but—"
Kaenon is on his feet at once, understanding on his face. "Veld wishes to torment Nivarrah through Heidi. If he knows she is in the dungeon, he will take my mate there."
Damn it, that actually makes some sense.
But I'm still going to kill Crypt for setting up a trap like this using my empath.
I turn and run toward the stairs down to the dungeon, but Kaenon calls, "Wait. I am swifter."
"What does that have to do with—"
The words die in my mouth when he leaps forward, shifting in the middle of this vaulted stone Everbound hallway. Instead of a sabre-toothed tiger or a wolf, this time he's a mythically huge, majestic stag with deadly antlers branching off his head.
Kaenon the stag bends one leg and blows air through his lips, clearly inviting us to get on. Zak and I climb on at once.
Ian takes off ahead of us, faster on his own.
When Kaenon straightens and leaps forward, I swear and wrap my arms around his neck, squeezing my eyes shut.
Zak also shouts and wraps his arms around me, trying to hold on as Kaen picks up impressive speed, hooves clattering on the tiles of the castle as he follows Ian, who I pray to the gods knows where he's fucking going.
He does, because a second later, the massive stag stops at the top of a stairway that goes down.
Zak and I fling ourselves off Kaenon's back just before he shifts back into his human form.
Zak is still struggling with the after-effects of my holy magic, so I help him lean on me as we rush down the stairs, descending deeper and deeper to the bottom of this gothic behemoth of a fortress.
Except even before we get to the bottom of the stairs, my eyes begin to glow as a new, powerful magical signature sears itself into my brain.
When we step off the stairs, we're not in Everbound's dungeon.
We're in a maze of mirrors. Shifting, warping, bubbling mirrors scrolling with flickering images. Cautiously, I step into the labyrinth, glancing down at one of the mirrored bubbles.
It's an image of a fae woman sitting in a beautiful field, crying with a flower crown on her head.
An incubus sits beside her—not a modern legacy incubus, but one with bat-like, leathery wings, claws, and a tail that curls behind him.
As the fae woman sobs her heart out, the incubus laughs and takes the crown off her head, ripping it up before he kisses her cheek.
"These are Nivarrah's memories," Kaenon realizes as he watches something on another mirror slowly twisting beside us. Whatever he sees in it, he winces and looks away.
My eyes haven't stopped glowing as this magical signature continues to pulse in the air. Thanks to my sixth-sense gift for magic, I realize that, despite how chaotic and overwhelming our surroundings are, bending every sense, Nivarrah isn't far.
Zak braces himself against one wall of mirrors, still weak from me waking him up with holy magic. He looks around, frowning. "Where's Heidi and Ian?"
Echoing laughter fills this distorted, reflection-filled maze.
"Quoh isil ameu thuduil iseath, stulithi ani gèam?" a male voice croons from gods know where.
Hearing Veld's voice for the first time puts my teeth on edge. Fear for Heidi's welfare continues to pound through me, making my head and heart both ache in the worst fucking way.
I look at Kaenon. "Translate."
"Veld is asking Nivarrah what game this is and wants to know where she has moved his…toy," he translates the last word with a snarl. "I will not repeat his true word choice."
"The important thing is, Veld no longer has Heidi. Nivarrah does," I mutter, starting to hone in on where I'm sensing her magic coming from.
One of the mirrors beside us seems to flip and change—and for a fraction of a second, I glimpse Heidi, unconscious on the ground.
At least, I think I see Heidi.
Illusory magic isn't commonplace anymore, but I've heard the stories.
Tricking every single sense, it's a deceptive mindfuck that people used to pay good money for as an intense form of entertainment, long ago.
It was eventually outlawed worldwide because of how easily illusory magic could be used to confuse people into doing horrible things, confessing dark secrets, and, in general, completely losing their sense of what is reality and what isn't.
Before Kaenon or Zak can make a move toward the blurred image of Heidi, there's a sharp cry of pain from somewhere in this room. A moment later, Ian swears somewhere.
Veld laughs again. "Faich uthoir leat confunde, iast cuir imi. Barradh da mihi recipere, unum fatis.”
Kaenon translates immediately. "He says, see how you confuse them, this pleases me. Yet you will please me far more by returning her to me, fated one."
"Does this shithead really think Nivarrah will give our girl back just so he can use her to taunt him?" Zak scoffs. "He's fucking insane."
It does sound insane.
But from Kaenon's description of Nivarrah and Veld, I've seen something like this before.
I watched my mom's toxic, complicated, abusive relationship with my father for years.
When I was young, I was so furious at her for not leaving him—for not saving herself.
Because he did things like this. Broke her in so many ways, she couldn't even see how shattered she was.
It took time for me to understand how complex my mom's dark world was.
Her worldview was centered on winning my father back in a way I'll never understand.
To her, every exit was a battle in a war she'd already lost. To her, the only person who could piece her jagged edges back together again was the same person who shattered her, over and over.
All this to say, Nivarrah is in a fucked-up situation. She can't be thinking clearly.
Not waiting to find out whether this ancient fae caster will decide to kill Veld or try to win him back by sacrificing the love of my life, I focus again on where I'm sensing her from. Signaling to the others to follow, I creep cautiously through the maze of mirrors.
Now and then, everything morphs around us, trying to block our path. Various smells fill the air, matching whatever images flicker around us—flowers, smoke, vomit, ash, sage, the salty spray of the ocean. Sometimes, it's a mind trip because it looks like I'm going the wrong direction.
I grip one of Zak's arms and one of Kaenon's. They don't put up a fight as I follow my sixth sense, drawing us closer to where Nivarrah truly is.
When we walk through another wall of fake mirrors, I halt in my tracks when I see Crypt on the ground, soaked in blood. Ian is crouched over him.
Shit. Is this real?
Ian spots our reflection in another set of mirrors and squints over his shoulder at us. Blood stains his chin and the neck of his shirt. It's clear he fed on the incubus.
Unless this is just all in my head. I can't fucking trust anything.
I wonder if this is how that damn blood fae necromancer felt when he lost his mind.
"If you're real, prove it," Ian says.
I pinch his arm hard because Nivarrah can mess with a lot of senses, but she must not have physical touch down, or she would be fucking with our minds even more than she already is.
"We're real." I glance down at Crypt, both relieved and disappointed when I see his chest rising and falling. "It would crush the Amato quintet if he died, and they would probably try to avenge him, but I'll be honest. I wish you had just killed him. Fucking bastard."