A bead of unease slipped around my chest, spreading wings that rustled beneath my skin.
“What?” I asked.
The male’s jaw ticked, and Mora scanned the tunnel curiously. “Why did the power attack your sister?” Lancaster asked pointedly. There was something in the glare he gave me that I didn’t understand, like he knew about Jezebel’s contrasting spirit power, though we hadn’t given the fae any details beyond her connection to the khrysaor.
“No idea.”
Lancaster sucked in a breath. “Learn the magic,” he demanded, and annoyance riled within me. “There may be possibilities beyond the mortal bounds—things bolted by the hands of higher powers that could be cracked.”
As his words trickled off, we neared the end of the tunnel and the looming, black chamber. Another shudder went through the walls. It rocked into my bones and spurred my frustration with it all. With the fae acting superior, with the Angels leaving me without answers, with the magic indeterminable as friend or foe.
“I want to master it,” I swore. “Iwillmaster it. But I won’t risk the lives of others to do so.”
Before Lancaster could respond, I faced the chamber. I allowed myself one moment to study the darkness, then, I took the final step across the threshold.
The stone beneath my boot shivered and dropped an inch as if a lock had flicked. To our left, the wall burst in a spray of rubble and dust. Decaying, bone-white fingers punched through the air, intent and searching, horror sluicing through my veins.
And those hands latched around my throat.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Malakai
“Handle us a little rougher,why don’t you?” I sneered at the guard whose knife was dangerously close to piercing the skin of my neck. The manacles he’d slapped around my wrists rattled.
“Don’t tempt me,” he mumbled as he dragged me along the halls and wrung his massive hand around my arm. Even through my leathers, my skin burned, but I bit back any show of discomfort, glaring at him.
“Or?”
He dug the knife in, enough that a line of blood trickled down my throat. But I reached deeper within myself, into the place I went during the years I’d been tortured. Into the ghost I’d forced myself to become for each lashing, each hot iron against my flesh, each blade recently sharpened and held tauntingly before me.
To when none of it mattered, because the reason I was there outweighed it all. I dragged up the unfeeling beast I’d let myself become and stared blankly at this Starsearcher guard.
“I’ve had worse,” I said.
“Keep talking and I’ll do my best to top it.” I refused to give him a reaction. “Or maybe she will.” He jerked his chin ahead of us to where a tall female guard led Mila.
Damn fools if they thought she couldn’t take out that woman because she was smaller. Mila could have a grown man on his back faster than many male warriors I knew.
Still, the threat was enough to make me bite my tongue momentarily. To make him think they had an edge here. Clearly, they didn’t realize Mila was a general or that we had both survived torture and walked free.
They’d taken our weapons. Slung them in their own belts and across their backs. Fools. That only kept them within our reach as they led us through a veritable maze of hallways. Sure, our hands may be chained, but the iron links were another weapon.
In this situation, everything was.
This manor was palatial, the chancellor within conceited enough to build himself such a grand home. But it lacked the antiquity of the Revered’s Palace, which stretched back to Damien himself. As the guard shoved me around corners, I took stock of every piece of artwork that marked various halls, counting as I committed the path to memory.
Finally, after twists and turns that were unnecessary given I’d seen the layout of the building, a pair of ivory doors towered ahead, what looked like pure silver outlining the frame and handles.
“Welcoming us for dinner?” I grumbled.
Mila shot me a half-smirk over her shoulder, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. They could do their worst, and we’d survive it together. We’d see all the tomorrows. “They really should learn to treat their guests more kindly,” she intoned.
Her guard gripped her neck, jerking her around aggressively. “No talking.”
“Touch her like that again and I’ll rip off your hand,” I swore, voice lethal.
“You’re digging your own grave with those pointless threats.” Mila’s guard said, flicking her braid over her shoulder. “And this isn’t a dining room.”
