Chapter 27 Eryx
ERYX
Rhiannon drew a slow breath in, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks in the dim light of the Maere’s swords.
I could see panic flooding her body. It was obvious she’d expected this, but the news was coming hard to her nonetheless.
I longed to hold her hand again, but with Ember and Lara both here, I sensed I wasn’t needed.
Before I could give it another thought, Ember dragged her into a fierce hug, giving the rest of us commands over Rhiannon’s shoulder.
“We have to find them before they make their way to the upper world. Before they get into the city.” She pushed Rhiannon back, capturing her gaze.
“Do you understand, Bronte? We have a mission.”
Rhiannon drew in a deep breath, the panic draining out of her eyes.
I hated the way she could pull composure around her like a cloak—that she could go from being a frightened daughter whose mother had been kidnapped to a seasoned warrior in an instant.
No one deserved to have to live this way, least of all her.
Ember nodded slowly, taking in Rhiannon’s revised stance. “Calypso, you double back towards Otrera. Get as many of the guard here as you can.”
Calypso nodded, her eyes dark in contrast to her bright hair in the lamplight. The murk that had clung to us on this trip seemed to avoid her—an odd discrepancy. She touched Rhiannon’s arm lightly. “We’ll find them, Rhi.”
Rhiannon nodded, and I saw what it took to keep a leash on her emotions.
Ember glanced at Lara. “You’re with me.” Lara nodded as Ember’s eyes turned to us. “The two of you, head towards the streets. We’ll try and catch them in the tunnels, but if they’ve already found a way out...”
Rhiannon cleared her throat. “We understand.”
“One more thing.” Calypso’s voice held a warning. “We’ve seen Roman Necroline in the tunnels. He’s hunting something.”
Perhaps something I’d said in the cemetery had actually affected my father. Maybe he needed to make amends, though they were scarcely enough given what we now faced. “Magnus is here,” I said. “He wants Rhiannon.”
“Maybe Cassandra crossed over,” Rhiannon whispered. “I’m the next best thing.”
Ember clasped Rhiannon’s face in her spider-leg fingers. “He can’t have you, Rhi. No one can have you without my permission. You understand?”
Tears filled Rhiannon’s eyes, but she nodded. A part of me wondered if that was my line. If I was supposed to be the one to say no one could have her without my say-so. But that felt wrong somehow.
Rhiannon wasn’t mine. She wasn’t anyone’s but herself. Ember knew that too. Her words were a reassurance, a commander’s reminder to her soldier that some hierarchies were protective. That this hierarchy protected its own.
Ember and Rhiannon shared a long look. Their ability to silently communicate was born of lifetimes of friendship, and rather than feeling jealousy or resentment, I was glad she had a life so full of love.
“See you soon,” Ember whispered.
Rhiannon nodded, her hand slipping into mine as she turned. “Let’s go.” As we moved in the opposite direction, she murmured, “There’s magic in the air, can you feel it?”
I couldn’t, not the way I’d been able to on the island, but I trusted her. It was just another way she was extraordinary. “Not really.”
Her smile was wan. “It’s not as strong here, but I think I can use it to help us.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but when she squeezed my hand, I squeezed back. There were so many mysteries connected to the island that I wanted to understand now that I’d been there. So many questions I wanted to ask.
Suddenly, my feet were moving faster, and my flagging energy had gone up. “Are you doing that?” I asked.
Rhiannon’s face was drawn. She was concentrating, but she nodded—she was using a power typically attributed to the Thaumas Dynasty, which made me wonder just what the Maere could actually do, given the right source of power.
We covered the same ground we’d previously trodden in half the time, as we reached the crossroads in the Ossuary.
She was breathing hard, the effort that it had taken to use magic obviously wearing on her.
I pressed a hand to her back, knowing that asking her to conserve her energy would be useless.
All I could do was be supportive. She took a few deep breaths, and then stood, the light in her eyes gone dim.
“Can you sense anything? I don’t think I can draw my sword right now.
I used too much energy getting us back here. ”
The corpse-garbed spirits reappeared as she spoke, and relief flooded me. I drew out the vox spiritus, directing it at the sentinels. “Can you sense the location of this woman’s mother?”
Rhiannon’s eyes were wild with wonder. She stepped a little closer to me, rotating as she watched the spirits carefully, our backs touching. One stepped forward, raising a bony arm to point. That way, its creaking voice replied in my head. Your queen is that way.
And then we were running again, down the tunnel the spirit had pointed towards without another question.
I knew Rhiannon would hate to go in without a better plan, but we had no time for that.
We had no time for anything. If Blaire’s people got the queen and Admiral Myrine to the surface, we might very well lose them.
We raced against that possibility, our energy—and hope—draining by the second.
There was sound ahead, the noise of struggle.
The sound of someone dying, and then a terrible howl.
Rhiannon moved faster than I thought possible, and I knew this time she was unable to spare any of the magic she had left in her for me.
I had to trust that whatever happened, she would be fine on her own ‘til I caught up. I pumped my legs harder, working to deserve her. To deserve her admiration and love. To be as strong as she was so she didn’t have to be alone anymore.
There was a dim light ahead. Rhiannon’s phone flashlight, I realized as I approached.
She’d laid it on the ground and was cradling a deathly pale woman in her arms, rocking her slowly, tears streaming down her face. The tunnel was littered with bodies. I feared the face I would see when I stepped closer. Feared that my love was holding her dead mother in her arms.
But no, the woman she held still drew breath, and she looked nothing like Rhiannon.
In fact, her face was familiar to me, though I’d met her only once a few months prior.
She was Admiral Myrine, the woman who’d posed as Mother for so many years to manipulate the Orphium Maere, and Saints knew who else.
The queen’s second-in-command. And she was still alive.
Her wiry body was outfitted in modern tactical gear. Lightly padded armor, made from the finest new materials. Strapped to her back were two antique guns, which was confusing—why hadn’t she drawn on her captors?
“They got away,” Rhiannon cried. “They got to the surface.”
“Was she conscious when you found them?” I asked, bending down to unfasten the harness so the Admiral could breathe better.
Rhiannon shook her head. That, at least, explained why the Admiral hadn’t drawn on them. There was a ladder right behind her, and green neon light from above shone down in a dull glow.
We had been too late. Rhiannon shook her head, helpless and in distress. “How could they have taken them?” She choked on a sob. “They’re human.”
Myrine coughed in Rhiannon’s arms. “Blades of adamantine,” she spit out. “And shackles of the same. For her—they just stabbed me.”
Under the spot where the harness wrapped around her torso, a wound bloomed, wet and sticky.
Rhiannon helped her out of the harness, tearing a strip of fabric from her nightgown to wrap around the wound.
The Admiral looked as though she might protest as I picked up her guns.
Slender as the woman was, the harness was adjustable enough that it fit me.
The Admiral closed her mouth as I stared back at her, wincing when Rhiannon tightened the dressing. The mineral Myrine named was fictional. A boogey-tale to scare parapsychs, adamantine was said to steal powers from us. But it didn’t exist. “That’s not—”
“It’s possible,” Myrine bit out. “Everything is possible, you fool. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Don’t speak to him that way,” Rhiannon said.
The tenor of Rhiannon’s voice was rich, resonant as ever, but there was a chill to it I’d never heard.
Rhiannon was always strong, always. Even in what she probably considered her weakest moments, her fallibility was what made her unbreakable.
She was always warm, pliable—no, she was flexible. She made room for others.
This tone was closed off. Imperious in a way that expressed a kind of authority I never imagined she wanted.
It was the voice of a tyrant. The voice of a queen.
I looked at the woman I loved and saw the mother who had harmed her spirit, who’d taken away her confidence in herself, and I understood why she ran.
It was effective, though. Myrine bowed her head. “My apologies.”
“Are you well enough to walk?” Rhiannon asked, sounding more like herself again, to my relief.
Myrine nodded, standing. In the dim light of the tunnel, I caught sight of her face. She was much as I remembered, a woman with strong features that carried the expectation that others did what she told them to. “I can walk. But I can’t use magic. It’ll be a while ‘til I’m useful to you again.”
“You’re useful to me now,” Rhiannon growled. “I need you to tell me everything you know.”
“Rhiannon—” I kept my voice as calm as I could, given the circumstances. “We should take her back to Hemlock House, tend to her wounds. And you should rest.”
Rhiannon’s eyes turned on me, angry and sorrowful. I thought she might argue, but her shoulders slumped. “Yes,” she agreed. It was the last syllable she was able to utter, I realized. She’d overdone it and was holding on by a thread.