Chapter 25 #2
I snapped the locket shut and she let out a screech.
“Fine! Okay, okay, I won’t say anything.”
I opened it back up and stared at her. “I mean it, Calypso. We’re not supposed to go in the basement, there are wards everywhere, Runecoats, and then fucking Mallachtan on top of it all.
If you start yapping at the wrong moment and someone hears you, it will ruin our chances of getting the coin. Understood?”
She locked her lips and tossed the proverbial key, nodding.
“Great.”
I tucked her away and left the cabin, grateful for the overcast night making it darker yet as I slipped from shadow to shadow, until I reached the main doors of the castle.
Liam had promised to distract Thalienne when it came time for us to execute the break in, so my main worry was that another member of staff might’ve stayed late for some reason.
Or that a Runecoat might wander by.
Or Mallachtan was skulking about or . . .
Typhon. Just . . . as much as I wanted to trust what he’d said, I didn’t know if I wanted him along for this.
Drawing a sobering breath, I jogged lightly up the steps of Heathermoor proper like it was a regular Thursday . . . in the middle of the night.
Nothing to see here.
Taking care to only open it as little as I had to, I slipped through the front door.
The darkness inside was nearly as penetrating as outside; with the desk clerks having left after the dinner hour and all the students back in their dorms, every light had been turned off.
Instinct took over as I crept down the hall, my footsteps hardly audible on the smooth tile – no magic needed.
The stairs came into view as I reached the end, and I took extra care as I dashed around them, then began counting each door I passed. 1, 2, and . . .
I whirled, throwing my hand up in a half-formed rune as a loud stomp sounded from behind me, breathing a sigh of relief as I saw its source.
Fable waved as she strode down the hallway, a backpack slung over one shoulder, a wool beanie pulled low on her head, and what looked like black face paint under her eyes.
I stared at her as she got close.
“Uh, hi?” she said, cocking her head.
“What the hell are you supposed to be?” I whispered as I pulled her onward. I scanned the hallway for anyone else.
“A burglar. Prepping for the big break-in, isn’t . . . isn’t this what you do? Why don’t you have paint on your face?”
I would have laughed if she hadn’t been so earnest and adorable. “Well, because if someone sees you, they’ll know exactly what you’re up to, won’t they?” I hissed, tugging her toward the next door. I touched it, gently at first to feel for magic, then pushed it open.
“My bad, I’m sorry!” She pulled off her beanie and used it to wipe at the paint on her now-reddened cheeks. “I was just so excited . . . the Grym could be so close!”
“Don’t worry about it.” Street smarts vs. book smarts. It made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t think ahead sometimes. I continued as Gary and Marina came into view, slipping into the room with us. “We’re already past the part where you might’ve been spotted anyway.”
Caterina, Ellie, and Ross arrived and then Zeed. Head nods all around and we were good to go.
“Fable, you lead us to the doorway,” I said.
She flicked out a piece of paper. “I copied the schematics just for this area.” She unfolded a single sheet of paper – the same one she’d shown me that morning – and ran her finger over it to a section of wall that looked like nothing. The dead end I’d come up against when Mallachtan had found me.
“Harlow was on the right track, we just had to be sure with these other potential entries that have collapsed.” She tapped the paper and then motioned for us to follow her.
Not a word was whispered as we made our way through the dark halls, following Fable’s guidance.
I could have used my ‘finders keepers’ rune, but Fable had done the work, so I let her lead.
We stopped in front of the blank wall, though it looked different than when I’d seen it just a few days before. The outer layer seemed to have been peeled off, the white stone gone.
Liam’s work?
Marina stepped up next to Fable, jabbing her finger toward the now black-edged, rune-covered door against the back wall, then yanked her finger back. “They’re strong.”
“Liam said he would do what he could.” I moved to Fable’s other side and stared at the complicated barrier. I looked over my shoulder to Gary who stood at the end of the hall.
He threw me two thumbs up. We were in the clear so far, Liam was keeping everyone – Runecoats, doyens and Sage away from us.
I gave him a return thumbs up, but my hands were clammy with nerves.
Sure, we’d made it this far but . . . Thalienne was one of the strongest Dwimmers I had yet to meet, and, given that wards and curses were two sides of the same coin, the class she taught on curse breaking had me worried that she was an expert.
It didn’t matter what Calypso thought about my abilities, it was one thing to say I would be stronger than Thalienne. It was another to go up against her wards.
I held my hand over the door, an inch or two away from the now black stone. Her power seemed to radiate off the door in waves, sending tingles through my skin without any actual contact.
Was that her strength, or the fact that her Fae magic reached out to me? I had a gut feeling of where to start, like always.
Zeed peered over my shoulder. “Those are complicated. But I think if you start here,” he pointed to the rune on the upper right that was a square with a single dot in the center. The one I’d already been drawn to. “That’s a rune for beginnings in the oldest Latin.”
His direction gave me more confidence, steadying my nerves. “Agreed.”
We’d already decided I would tackle the wards we faced – not just my strength but my time spent breaking them for the last fifteen years.
I faced off with the stone, as if it were going to fight me, lifting my hand to the square, and settled my palm over the dot.
I leaned in close and drew in a steadying breath. The coin was somewhere on the other side of this, I was sure of it – and maybe even a piece of the Grym Dunaras itself. If I could get both off my back . . .
Using my fingers to weave the runes that would disrupt Thalienne’s spells, I channeled that hope into my spell. It took time as I located the magic that made up her runes and I had to stay totally focused.
I wasn’t trying to hit the runes head on and break them – that was what wards were set against. Instead, I painstakingly slipped past them, my teeth cutting into my lip as I strained to hold the magic steady.
It was like being stuck in a game of Operation, only with the highest of stakes.
One false move, the buzzer would sound and we were all dead.
When it came to thievery, though, I didn’t make false moves.
Once I got a thread of my magic through the first rune on the ward, slipping it into the square and past, I worked it back toward me, binding the two ends together as I got the thread of it back to this side of the door, anchoring it.
I did it with all the runes, Zeed pointing out which one would come next, then I would slip my magic through, anchor it and do the next.
Nine runes in all, and by the end, sweat ran freely down my face and arms, and my breath was coming in gasps.
I’d never broken a ward this complicated – never anything beyond five runes.
And now for the moment of truth. The others stayed silent even as I stopped, taking a moment to catch my breath. “Get ready to bail if this goes south.”
Thalienne had woven this so deeply, and with alarms set on each of the runes, that it felt like disarming a bomb.
“3, 2, 1 . . .” I yanked on the magical threads with everything I had.
Without so much as a whimper, Thalienne’s runes fell to pieces under my own, the deep violet of her magic giving a last desperate flash of light before dissipating into nothing. No sounds, no alarms.
Ross gave me a thump on the shoulder. “Never doubted you.”
Despite my outward confidence, I’d had some doubts. Having Zeed help had made it so much easier, confirming each of the runes I was drawn to, and, at the end of the day, we’d done it and that was all that mattered.
Ellie put a hand to me, her fingers brushing against the back of my hand, and my energy pulsed upward
“Thanks, Ell.”
“I got you,” she grinned.
“All together, in case there is resistance.” I put my hand onto the smooth wall, and the others joined me, Gary leaving his post at the end of the hall. Together, we pushed.
“Keep going.” Caterina’s voice was strained as we leaned into the wall. Had I done something wrong? The door wasn’t moving, not an inch.
“Dig deep,” Ross grunted. “We got this!”
The sound of stone grinding on stone had me pushing harder. Slowly, inch by inch, the door opened. Less than two feet of opening, but it would be enough to slip in and out. Fable peeked in first, a flashlight from her backpack now in her hand. “Clear.”
“Everybody through.” I motioned for them to go ahead of me.
“What about the door?” Ellie said. “Someone walks by that Liam misses and we’re caught.”
She had an excellent point.
“Here,” Marina said, stepping back into the hall. “Illusion. If they don’t touch it, they won’t know.”
In no time Marina had an illusion over the door that we could see out, but anyone looking in would see only the white blank wall.
I turned my attention to the path ahead and shivered as an ice-cold breeze wafted over me. “Come on, let’s find what we came to find, and get us out of here.”
I cast my ‘finders keepers’ spell and damn, it felt brighter than any other time I’d used it. The brilliant flare of magic trailed away, leading us into the dark, narrow tunnel.
“What if this tunnel caves in?” Fable whispered.
“It won’t.”
“Didn’t you say, like, that Jinn guy said it had already caved in?” Gary asked.
“They’re talking a lot, why can’t I talk?” Calypso muttered.