Chapter Twenty-One
The moment I heard my name, I almost crumbled. My gaze scanned the opening and all around, but I didn’t see her.
“Mom.” Her voice was a little louder.
Keegan moved forward as he searched for the source.
“Mom.”
The sound of her voice slid beneath my skin and wrapped around every terrified part of me that had been trying to stay hopeful.
It wasn’t only the word or the pitch or the way she stretched the vowel when fear hid beneath her stubbornness.
It was the thread between us, the one no spell had ever created because motherhood had woven it long before magic came crashing into my life with color-changing tea and a bulldog father who winked.
“Celeste,” I called, my voice scraping out of me as the broom hovered near the broken balcony.
The darkness beyond the doors shifted as Keegan lifted one hand toward me without looking away from the opening. A quiet warning.
Twobble’s fingers dug into the back of my coat.
“Maeve,” he whispered. Every scrap of goblin sarcasm was stripped from his voice. “The air in there is wrong.”
“I know.” I nodded. “But we have no choice.”
The pendant at my throat pulsed again.
Keegan stepped closer to the balcony doors. His shoulders blocked part of the opening, and the blue firelight from the tower windows carved him in hard lines. His hands flexed once at his sides, ready to shift if the darkness moved in the wrong direction.
“Celeste,” he called gently. “It’s Keegan. Can you hear me?”
For a second, the only answer came from the battle raging around us. A burst of magic shook the far wall. A howl sliced somewhere across the courtyard. An orc horn sounded again in the distance.
“I’m here.”
I looked around…it came from the center of the room.
No, her voice was from behind the room, farther than it should have been.
I shook my head, realizing I truly couldn’t place where Celeste was calling from.
The tower stretched sound the way the Academy sometimes stretched hallways, but the Academy did it with mischief and purpose. It often felt like a delight and revelation. But this compound performed these tricks with hunger and something more sinister.
I swung one leg off the broom before Twobble grabbed my hand and nearly yanked me sideways.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed.
“That’s my daughter.”
“Yes, and I’m very fond of her continued existence, which is why we do not fling ourselves into murdering architecture without a plan.”
Keegan glanced up, and the look he gave me had no anger in it, only understanding, which was somehow worse.
A shadow shot across the balcony before either of us could take another breath. Keegan shifted so fast I barely saw the change. One moment, he stood in human form, and the next, his wolf slammed into the dark shape with a snarl that rattled the broken railing beneath him.
The creature hit the far wall and exploded into a spray of sparks, but they lingered, scattering across the stone as they wriggled toward the door like tiny, furious insects.
“Absolutely disgusting,” Twobble muttered.
I lifted my hand, and hedge magic shot from my fingertips before I even shaped the command. Vines burst from the cracks in the balcony stone, pale and quick and edged with tiny thorns. The leaves wrapped around the crawling sparks and squeezed until the embers hissed out of existence.
Keegan looked back at me, wolf eyes bright in the low light, but his ears flicked toward the compound below.
The Priestess had opened another gate.
I felt it before I saw it.
The courtyard beneath us rolled with figures as they climbed out of the openings.
Their movements were jerky and unnatural.
These weren’t the shapeless creatures we’d been fighting since we arrived.
These were soldiers, or what had once been soldiers, wrapped in old armor stained black by magic and time.
Their helmets covered their faces, and each carried a hooked blade, gleaming with shadow magic. The first line turned where the orcs held position.
The second line faced the wolves.
The third set looked up at the witches.
A chill ran through me. We didn’t have much time.
“They organized,” I said. “Quickly.”
The masked fighters raised their blades.
“Shields!” Nova’s voice rang into the air as witches throughout the sky threw up barriers just as blue light erupted from the soldiers’ weapons.
The blasts struck the shields hard enough to send several broomsticks spinning backward. One witch cried out as she nearly lost her seat, but Lady Limora dove beneath her and shoved her upright with one hand while sending a spell toward the soldiers with the other.
The sky flashed silver, and I knew we had even less time.
Below, the orcs surged forward to meet the first line of fighters.
Metal clanged against metal, and the sound carried up the walls in harsh, ringing bursts.
The wolves kept moving, faster than the soldiers could track, darting between shadows and stone pillars as they drove the second line away from the lower windows where the prisoners still cried for help.
Keegan shifted back into human form on the balcony, breathing hard as his gaze swept over the courtyard. “She’s trying to force the witches down.”
“They won’t go down,” I said.
The broom nudged closer to the balcony again.
Keegan glanced at it, then at me. “That broom has questionable judgment.”
“You’re not the first man to say that.” I glanced at Twobble, and he exhaled shakily.
A jolt of shadow magic shot toward us from below, and I lifted my hand instinctively. Without realizing it, the pendant flared against my chest. A pale barrier spread from the moonstone and curved around my broom, protecting all of us on the balcony with thousands of tiny gemstones.
The blast struck the shield and shattered into harmless sparks.
None of us moved for an entire heartbeat as we took in the beauty and surprise we all felt.
Keegan’s eyes met mine. “Your pendant.”
I nodded, looking at Twobble. After all, he’d given me the moonstone so long ago.
“Did you know it could do that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You know, I’d heard stories and all, but it has to be in the right hands.”
“I see.”
Another blast struck the shield as the pendant held the gems in place. This one was stronger, but it held.
My teeth clenched as the force vibrated through my bones.
“Mom!” Celeste’s voice cut through the chaos again, but the sound was closer this time.
“Where are you?” I shouted.
The room beyond the doorway flickered faintly with light, and a shadowy silhouette appeared.
But then it vanished.
And reappeared.
“She’s moving or distorting the rooms,” Keegan said, glancing at me.
The figure disappeared again as the broom lowered until my boots nearly touched the balcony stones.
Twobble clung to me but didn’t try to touch the ground, and he stayed silent this time.
That scared me more than most things.
A roar burst from the lower courtyard as one of the masked fighters broke through the line of wolves and leaped toward the northern stairwell. Before it could reach the entrance, a flash of copper streaked across the stone.
Bella.
She hit the fighter low, shifting from fox to human in the same movement, driving a dagger beneath its armor. The fighter staggered, but didn’t dissipate, so Caleb slammed into it from the side in wolf form, knocking it backward into two more soldiers.
Caleb shifted as he landed, sweeping one blade from his belt.
His gaze lifted immediately as he saw Keegan and me on the balcony before finishing the job as the shadows ascended into oblivion.
A soldier swung at Caleb’s back, but Bella appeared beneath its arm and slashed upward, and another lunged toward Bella.
Caleb caught it by the throat and drove it into the stone.
They reached the base of the tower within moments and looked up at us.
“Maeve!” Caleb shouted. “Don’t enter until we clear the stairwell.”
“Celeste is inside,” I shouted back.
“I know,” he yelled. “And so is the Priestess.”
And he was right. We watched Bella and Caleb move into the compound deeper with the pack behind him as Keegan stepped closer, his voice low enough that only I heard it over the chaos. “We go in together.”
Something in my chest loosened just slightly.
Together.
We could do it together.
The shield around us shuddered again as more blasts struck from below. Witches swooped down in formation, sending spells toward the masked fighters and forcing several of them to retreat beneath the broken archways in the shadows they already were.
Stella and Lady Limora circled the upper tower, their magic streaking through the air as they kept the winged creatures from diving at everyone again.
Nova’s voice rose through the dark in a language I didn’t know, but the power behind it wasn’t missed. Silver lines began appearing in the air above the compound, connecting broomsticks, lanterns, and the shimmering barriers the witches held.
Energy.
A web.
A net.
Protection was spreading between them all, between us.
The Academy had taught them well.
No… they had learned well.
I wished I had time to be proud of that, but the corridor beyond flickered again.
And for a brief second, I saw her.
Celeste.
She stood halfway down the hall in her favorite jacket, hair tangled around her face, and one hand pressed against the wall. Her eyes found mine, and my knees nearly buckled. They were wide and terrified, and her mouth moved around one word I didn’t need to hear to understand.
Mom.
But the hall shifted, and she vanished as I lunged forward before I could think.
Keegan caught my arm, not to stop me, but to keep me from stepping through the doorway blind.
“Maeve,” he said urgently. “Look.”
The floor just inside the doorway had already changed.
Dark lines crawled and crackled across the stone before my very eyes, where a second ago there had been nothing.
Twobble sucked in a breath behind me. “That would have been bad.”
My pulse thundered in my ears.
“She showed her to me on purpose,” I whispered.
Keegan’s grip tightened gently on my arm.
“Yes.”
Caleb and Bella burst onto the lower landing beneath the balcony, both breathing hard and covered in dust and streaks of shadow. Bella’s eyes flashed gold as she scanned the tower entrance above.
“Don’t step through,” she called. “The stairwell is full of mirrored runes of some sort.”
“And the tower’s steps are folding inward. She is trying to make every entrance lead to the center,” Caleb confirmed.
My stomach twisted.
The center, where the deepest dungeons lay, and where the compound’s magic was undoubtedly stronger.
She wanted me trapped, probably where my mother and daughter might already be.
Keegan looked toward the open doorway again. “Then we don’t use the entrance she’s offering.”
Caleb’s gaze snapped upward. “There’s a breach on the north face. Small, but it leads into the old servant passage.”
“How do you know that?” I called.
He gave me a grim look. “Because something just tried to kill me coming out of it. I thought I’d take a gander.”
Bella snickered. “Useful information.”
She climbed along the broken stonework with impossible speed, reaching the balcony edge and pulling herself up beside Keegan. “We can get in there if the witches keep the upper creatures busy.”
“They will,” Stella shouted from above, sounding offended that anyone might doubt it. I loved her vampire hearing.
A masked fighter leapt onto the lower stairwell behind Caleb, and he turned immediately, swiping it as the shadow dissipated beneath the suit.
“We move now,” Keegan shouted. “Before she changes the tower again.”
The pendant beat once against my chest, and a door slammed somewhere deep inside the compound.
Celeste hollered, and every ounce of air left my lungs.
Keegan’s fear hit his face before he could hide it, and that frightened me almost as much as the sound itself.