Chapter Twenty-Eight
My genius won’t move, exhausted. My shift started a few moments ago, but I still hover outside my Illusion room.
Panic climbs my throat. With the uniqueness of my situation, no one in the Mouth has approached me about getting a new room, and truthfully I haven’t wanted to ask, nervous at the potential rejection.
Now I wish I had. The Reign ring warms with magic, then—nothing.
Lila insisted on helping me lace when I rejoined Reign service halfway through last week.
She was worried about my shoulder. I didn’t protest because—well, as I worked that third week in Reign, scrubbing, cleaning, clearing, serving, I became worried about my genius.
Stunned from the clash in the training halls with the king, it only twitched when called upon.
“Shit.” Ten minutes late, I pace the hall, trying to coax my genius to no avail. It has never taken this long for my magic to return to me after an illness or injury. Then again, I’ve never battled a king in magic before, either. Is this the start of Moldhood? The thought churns my stomach.
Footsteps freeze behind me, and I whirl to see Benji, his face pale.
Before I can open my mouth, he blurts: “Why are you here?”
“I still sleep in Illusion.”
His eyes dart to my door. “I know this is your room. I meant, why aren’t you gone yet for the night?”
“Well, I…” I pause. “Is everything okay? I’ve never seen you up here before.”
The boy shrugs, looking at my door again. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Do you want me to help you find Glenn?”
“Why are you so nosy?” he shouts.
“I’m sorry,” I say, softer now. I step forward, and Benji doesn’t react. He lets me draw closer, blinking, I see now, angry tears away. “It’s okay, Bee.”
He groans, covering his face, turning away. He whines something into his hands.
“What was that?” I ask, crouching so we’re the same height but not daring to touch him. I’m already so late for this shift, so very much in the king’s disgraces. It can’t get much worse than this. Who knows, maybe he’s fed up with my service and will release me back to Kassandra.
Benji mumbles into his hands again. “I come up here every day and sit outside your room and pretend I’m telling you about the horses.”
My chest shatters, throat tightening. “I’d love to hear about the horses. If you want to tell the real me.”
He peers through his fingers. “Yeah?”
“Of course.”
Dropping his hands, he frowns, looking over my shoulder. “You were at the game we played on the lawn.”
I spin around to see Lila emerging from the dark.
“Hi!” Lila smiles, nervous. “Sorry to interrupt, but—you weren’t coming so I wanted to check on you.” Dust splotches across her white shift, and her hair springs out of her protective style, which twists from the sides of her head to the nape of her neck. Dirt smears across one cheek.
“Bye, Avery,” Benji says, then flees down the stairs. At least he said something this time.
“Bye!” I call, then groan, turning to my friend. “What happened to you? You need to wipe down before we go to the king—oh planes, we’re so fucking late.”
“I came to tell you that he dismissed us for dinner.” Lila offers a palm, her ring already illuminating. “But I want to spend time with you.”
She laces us to her room.
“So,” Lila starts, barely giving time for me to catch my breath. “Ever since you said you believed me about something at the center of the Pith, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a flood of memories, entering the chambers with my father. I remembered the word he used for access.”
“A word?” I ask.
“Like a spell woven into the very essence of an object. A verbal way to unlock it. And I know which door we’ll use. The king’s apartments connect to the queen’s, so that’s the riskiest route, especially since we don’t know what time he’ll be done trying to forge the dagger.”
“What are you saying?”
“Who was Maxian before he became king?”
“A prince?”
“And where do the royal children reside?”
“The Salon of Stars. But—”
“It’s empty, since Maxian has no wife or offspring.”
“And how are we going to get there?”
Lila grins. “You forget I am a chimney cleaner’s daughter.”
My friend steps up to her collage wall of fabric dyed with spices: a swaying meadow, a swath of flowers that surrounds a rendering of Lucan’s Tree. Lila hooks a fingernail into a knot in the trunk and tugs. The fabric rips—and so does my heart as my friend tears a gash in her own art.
“No!” I reach for her elbow. “What are you doing?”
“Look.” She nods to the wall.
The fabric curls from the dark stone beneath it, like a shadowy pit. It’s a niche in the thick wall that has been scraped away, dusty layer by dusty layer. Lila reaches into the space, and when her fingers draw back into the light again, they clutch a thick iron ring of keys.
“I think he wanted to leave me more than just his debt. This was all he had,” she whispers.
“A great gift,” I say. “The ability to enter spaces that exclude our kind.”
“And yet I’ve always lacked the courage to do it. I was never afraid to enter the apartments before. I always had my father.”
“And he had you.”
“Perhaps the real key is not courage but company.” She meets my eye. “Let’s go now, while we’re not needed.”
Lila wants to search the labyrinth, to stand where we’re told we cannot. A growing urgency sweeps over her face, a desire to traverse like Lucan. I have secrets to collect like a creditor with his coin. And like a creditor, I do not feel like asking for permission.
So I smile at her and say, “I will wander—”
The building shakes. A violent quaking that shudders even the thick stones, dust billowing through cracks, the ceiling groaning. Then it all stops, as if the entire force were a passing earthquake.
I slowly unpeel my fingers from their vise grip on Lila’s forearm. My heart hammers in my ears.
“What was that?” I whisper.
Lila grips the wall. “The king.”
The plane quakes harder this time, and it doesn’t feel like a rockslide. It is more sentient than that. It feels like an ancient creature roaring from the depths of the earth.
The hairs on my arm stand up. “Is this why he dismissed us?”
“He’s trying to forge the diamond dagger again,” she says. “Carter told me he’s been at it all day.”
“He told me—”
“No.” She clasps my arm as pebbles tumble around us. “Maxian’s trying to forge a diamond dagger. And he cannot.”
I jerk back. “Is this a jest?”
“He tries every day, and every day he fails.”
I think of the cuts on the king’s hands, his questions to Kassandra of the dagger as an Illusion, and Hector confirming that it is not.
“He has the technique wrong,” I guess.
“His failed approaches are making him…volatile.”
I bristle, remembering the way he clutched me with Reign magic during our clash despite agreeing not to. The way he shoved my limbs around like a doll’s, his grip hard and bruising.
“Then he’s not siphoning enough from the plane,” I say, but Lila just shakes her head.
But why would the most powerful fae in Amyria need to borrow energy when he possesses the strongest genius? He must be doing something wrong. He is Maxian the Mountain, son of the Sun King, his testament bending an entire ballroom to his will. The last pure Reign fae.
The walls shudder again.
“We need to get out of here!” I shout to Lila over the thundering.
“Now is the time!” she yells back, holding up the key ring.
I shake my head. “He’s already furious.”
“He’s distracted, and so are his other attendants. Come on, let’s be quick.”
—
Lila leads us beyond the Mouth, down an unlit corridor I thought was storage.
My fingers trail along the wall on my right, the other hand clasping my friend’s.
Even after five minutes of walking, my eyes do not adjust to the darkness.
In fact, the opposite is happening as the torches fall behind us.
The temperature plummets, the stone cold.
The palace rumbles again, this time fainter.
Lila halts in front of a large bronze door and fumbles with the keys.
“It’s too dark.” She curses.
“Hold on.”
I rub my hands together, reaching for my genius. It lies twitching at the bottom of my mind, and despite prodding, the magical organ remains asleep.
In the far distance, behind our backs, there is a thud, thud, thudding. Or maybe it is my heart in my ears. I swallow.
“Can you summon flame?” I ask.
“The smallest one.”
“Why don’t I try the keys while you hold a light close?”
The weight surprises me when she passes the thick, cool ring into my hands. I grope for a proper grasp. Then Lila snaps.
The sound claps through the silence, bounces off the stones. My spine goes rigid, my breath held. We listen for the sound of footsteps. None come—and neither does a flame from her skin.
“Shit,” she mutters. “Okay, we’re only going to try that once more.”
She snaps again and this time, there’s a spark from her fingertips, the smallest bud of a flame. Crouching, Lila levels it with the lock. I examine the brass keyhole, select a large ring that’s turned green.
It doesn’t fit. I try the next bronze ring, then another. Glancing at the keys, I determine that there must be at least ten of them.
“What was that?” Lila whispers next to me, a hand on the wall. Her light begins to fade, the lock and keys slipping into the dimness once more.
“What was what?”
“The screaming.”
I drop the keys. They clatter to the ground, and Lila’s light goes out. Blood pounds in my ears, and I force myself to breathe until my heart calms. The only noise that greets us is a faint drip-drip-drip deeper in the Pith.
After a moment, she mumbles: “I thought I heard screaming. I’m sorry.”
“Could’ve been the quaking. Maybe we should leave and try again.”
“When will we have another chance such as this? With Maxian distracted and you here to help me?”
She’s not wrong. It’s been almost a moon since I started working in Reign, and while we have another together before I temporarily return to Illusion, when will Maxian be once again occupied?