57. Lucy
Lucy
When you take an apprentice, teach her everything but the last step. The last step is how you stay her teacher and not her quarry.
Fear and panic raced through me at Riot’s reckless words.
The cost? You just told me not to say a single word. What in the Furies’ name are you thinking?
He purred into my mind. Only of you. Always, only of you.
“There will be no bargains,” Syn said, wiping the contemplation off the demon’s eager face. Her tone had gone sweet, soft even. “We’re on the same team here, right Rami?”
“You could have let me mess with him first,” the demon said, turning back to the wall.
“Read the room, asshole!” Calder shouted back.
The demon swept his hand toward the mountains. “We’re outside. You can’t say that when we’re standing outside.”
“Get on with it, Ram,” Silas said, the curl in his accent doing nothing to soften the irritation in his voice.
Ramiel raised his arms.
I stopped him. “There are dragons in the fog.” Everyone stilled. “When the illusion falls they’re going to see us. They’ll attack.”
The grin that spread across his face was slightly terrifying. “Then I suppose I’ll need to make sure they don’t see us.”
“There are more dragons?” Silas drew back, something shifting behind his eyes.
Riot nodded. “I’ve seen them. Patrolling the wall.”
“They’re all males,” I said. “Every single one of them. It’s so strange. I’ve never understood it.”
Dez looked at Silas. Something passed between them, quick and wordless, the beginning of a thought that neither of them finished because Ramiel threw his arms wide again. “Ready?”
Nobody answered fast enough to stop him. He began slowly. The fog thinned at the edges, pulling back in wisps, and then all at once it simply fell away, dissolving like it had never existed. Luneth Hollow opened up before us, lit by its floating lanterns, nestled into the dark.
Just as I’d warned, dragons circled the city. I held my breath as one passed directly in front of us. It didn’t look down. None of them did. They continued their circuits, slow and methodical, entirely oblivious to the change.
“Furies, it’s beautiful,” Pip said with her eyes wide, slowly floating forward to get a better look. But no sooner had she started moving than she stopped, slamming into the wards. “Ouch.”
“The whole thing is warded.” I looked at the mountain face beside us, kicking at the ground. “I think the entire mountain range is the runestone. The runes aren’t placed on anything. It’s woven into the rock itself.”
Syn turned to look at the mountain, eyebrows knit together.
“Can you weave a door into it?” Silas asked, clearly following her train of thought.
The witch didn’t look confident. But she walked to the mountain face anyway, pressed both palms flat against the stone, and began to whisper.
Fire came from her fingers. Not the water. Fire. Gold threaded through with purple moved across the rock face in lines finding gaps, building something new inside something ancient.
I could hardly breathe in equal measures of awe and fear as I realized what that meant. “Are you the Phoenix?”
She didn’t look up from her work. “Again, we have a lot to catch up on.”
I turned to Riot. He shook his head slowly. He hadn’t known either.
Pip giggled. “Aureth didn’t tell you?”
“There were many things the Oracle didn’t tell me,” he grumbled. His voice settled into my mind, quieter than his spoken one. Like the fact that she rescued you as a baby.
Time passed. More than I was comfortable with.
The mountain gave nothing. Syn kept working, the fire runes spreading across the rock face in careful, deliberate lines, and the sky at the edges of the peaks had begun doing something I didn’t like.
As we sat in a circle waiting, I watched and said nothing and watched it some more.
Syn’s hands dropped.
She was panting, her forehead nearly against the stone. “I can’t do it. This thing has to be feeding off an enormous power source. There’s no way it’s functioning without one.”
I stared at the mountain as a wave of understanding crashed into me. It was power. In the cave. The warded room with its altar and its floating light and the markings on the wall. It was feeding the wards.
“There is one! A massive one. In the heart of the mountain. But you’d have to get inside to reach it. And no one can get in or out. Not on their own.” I brought my hand up to the Ossira. “Not without this.”
Syn’s eyes were locked on the Ossira again. “But where did you get that? Because the last I’d heard, they were stolen.”
My soul nearly left my body. I jumped to my feet. “You’ve seen this before?”
“Seen it? I made that.”
I stared at her. “You made it? You made the thing that’s been strangling me every night.” I heard my own voice going somewhere dangerous and couldn’t stop it. “How? When? Furies, why?”
Syn held up both hands. “They’re supposed to control Ash beasts. They’re built in pairs, a receiver and a commander. They were meant to keep them from attacking the trains through the Ash overnight. They activate at sunset, deactivate at dawn. They were supposed to keep people safe.”
My laugh was hardly a laugh at all. “Most of the trains through the Ash haven’t run in years. And this is why?”
“Yes, but…” She shook her head. “These aren’t my runes anymore. Not exactly. Rune Weaving is like speaking in different languages. I use an older dialect, it has a specific signature and someone has—”
“All fascinating,” Riot said, also moving to his feet. “But I think what Lucy’s been trying to ask and hasn’t managed yet is whether you can take the damn thing off. It’s locked onto her.”
Syn stepped forward and studied the Ossira, her eyes moving over the runes like she was reading a language she knew well enough to spot where it had been corrupted. “It’s been tampered with,” she said quietly. “But I can see the gaps in the spellwork. I think I can—”
“Wait.” Silas’s hand came up. His eyes moved briefly to Ramiel, just for a second, before coming back. “If you break it, we lose the only way inside. No one gets back in and no one can get out.”
Riot’s voice dropped dangerously low. “That is not her problem.”
They need to find Lyric, I pushed toward him. And they can’t say it in front of the other demons, I think.
His jaw tightened. Still not your problem.
Riot.
You’ve been strangled by that thing too many times, Lucette. You’ve been taken from me every single night. His voice in my mind was very quiet and very certain. It comes off. Today. Their problems are their own.
I faced him, aware that no one knew of our connection. You said yourself Lyric was like your brother. And if everyone else is gone, the Guardians, the Furies, the fury-born… if the last of anyone you have left is inside that city, I would go back for them. For you.
He practically growled into my mind. And if I won’t let you?
I’ll remind you once and only once that you do not command me. I am your Tilouri, but I am not beholden to you.
I could see the swallow, the unamused look on his striking face, but he didn’t argue again. Which was for his own benefit, because though Baylor had said Emrys was okay, I needed to see for myself.
“You wouldn’t have to go alone,” Syneca said, moving to stand in front of Silas, staring up at him though she was speaking to me.
“Oh shit,” Dez said quietly. “She’s going to do something reckless.”
“Syneca.” Calder’s voice was a warning.
She took Silas’s hand. “I can weave my own access into the necklace. Give myself entry. I can go with her.”
He stepped back, pulling away. “You understand what that requires? You’d have to bind yourself to it. Absolutely not.”
“It’s the only way—”
The snarl from him echoed off the mountainside. “I am bound to keep you safe. I cannot physically stand here and allow that. It’s not a choice I’m capable of making and you know it.”
Syn looked at him for a long moment before she sagged and nodded as she whispered, “Our bargain.” She exhaled and stepped back, the argument leaving her all at once.
The sky was definitely lighter now.
I felt the Ossira warm against my throat and my chest tightened. I went to Riot first. I kissed him fast and certain and pulled back.
“We’ll sort it out while you’re gone,” he said. His hands came up to frame my face and his voice found the space between us. I have the thirteenth Moonborn hidden. I think it’s best we keep him between us for now.
I pulled back and stared at him. You locked a man in our cave?
His mouth curved. I left him food.
He’s not a pet, Riot.
He seemed comfortable enough.
I shook my head.
“I’m so confused,” Pip whispered with a giant yawn.
“They’re having a private conversation,” Silas explained.
Pip sank slowly back into Calder’s pocket with a long contented sigh. “So adorable.”
The Ossira got even hotter so I walked to the wall. And let the bloom of hope rise within me as I realized this could be the last time.
“Wait.” Syn ran over to me. “We’ll still be here when you come back, okay? I promise.”
She looked at me for a moment, her blue eyes steady and certain, and then she pulled me into a hug that was brief and fierce.
Her lips moved against my ear, the weaving spell barely a breath, and I felt it move over the Ossira like a current.
Then she locked her hand in mine and shoved us both through the wall.