I manage to twist and land on my feet, a glow of triumph rushing through me.
“I’ve seen the blacksmiths at the Three Bridges do it dozens of times.” I grin at Aster.
“Bet they don’t use their feet though.” She winks. “Darling, you’re a genius. Now come on?—”
I put my finger to my lips as I hear footsteps outside, likely the guard drawn by the sound of me falling. I plaster myself to the wall beside the door, waiting.
As soon as the guard steps through, I give him a hard kick in his back, sending him stumbling within reach of Aster. She wraps her legs around him and presses her lips to his forehead.
“Sleep now,” she murmurs, and I feel the tickle of her power radiating across the room, making my own body feel alert and weirdlybuzzy.The guard, meanwhile, goes limp, sliding to the floor.
“And you were impressed withmyparlor trick?” I say, hurrying forward to pull the key from the guard’s belt to unlock my irons and then hers. I massage my wrists, getting some sweet relief where the metal rubbed the skin raw—not helped by the itchiness from where Kaliban’s blood got on me. I grimace at the sight of Syrus’s protective runes, now partly erased. Water might not be enough to wash them off, but the demon blood stripped enough of my skin to create big gaps in them, leaving only inflamed flesh.
“You should probably have this,” Aster says, handing me the guard’s sword. “You’ll be able to put it to better use than me if we run into anyone.”
“Yeah, let’strynotto do that,” I say. Going up against demons in hand-to-hand combat didn’t go so well for me last time.
As we creep along the corridor, it becomes clear we’re in the lower reaches of Kaliban’s home. There are few windows, and the ones thatarebuilt into the thick stone are small and high, casting everything in a dim purplishglow from the ourani light. The space is built like a fortress—more rustic and utilitarian than the castle in Malice. Maybe I shouldn’t judge the place by its dungeons, but something tells me that the rest of Kaliban’s home looks the same. It makes me think of an army barracks, a place to house soldiers rather than people.
But right now—thanks to the fight going on at the border, I assume—there aren’t many soldiers around. This part of the dungeon is empty aside from our knocked-out guard. As we reach the end of the corridor, there’s only one more demon posted at the entrance, standing between the dungeons and another chamber blocked with a thick iron gate, a staircase opposite her.
“I’ll distract her and you sneak up and knock her out,” I whisper to Asterim. “Be quick so she can’t yell for backup.”
It works well, the demon springing into action as I sprint out of the dungeon toward her, wildly swinging my sword. But she’s barely drawn her own blade before Asterim is on her back, pressing her dainty hands to the guard’s neck. When she’s down, we drag her out of sight, tucking her into an empty cell.
“Kaliban must be up there somewhere,” Aster murmurs, looking at the staircase when we’ve returned to the corridor. “If he wants Syrus to come find us, then he must be lying in wait.”
I shudder at the thought of facing the huge, red-horned demon again. There’s something so relentless about him. As if he’ll keep going after what he wants forever, no matter the consequences—as brutal and blunt as a hammer striking a nail over and over, until the wood around it is cracked and splintered.
My eyes fall on the iron gate on the other side of the hall, a tension building in my stomach. It’s accompanied by that same strange buzzing—a vibration thrumming through my bones I last felt when I was near the trade rift in Strata. But that concerns me less than the feeling that there’s something in there we should see.
If I’m really nephilim like Hathwell said, then maybe my gut instincts all these years have been an ephilium sixth sense, a knack for premonitions passed down through my mother’s line. If it is, then I’d be foolish to ignore it.
I hurry back to the sleeping guard, rifling through her pockets for her keys.
“What are you doing?” Aster asks under her breath, bewildered as I return and head straight for the gate.
“I need to see something,” I whisper back, trying a few keys that look like they might fit and getting it right on my fourth try.
The chamber has a narrow entrance, but it opens up into a long, low room a little further along, with a vaulted ceiling that has a strange light dancing across it. I move carefully forward, stopping when I see the first body lying on the tiled floor, just beyond where the room widens out.
“What happened to him?” Aster gasps, but I recognize the signs all too well—a naked, emaciated corpse, bones all but poking through the thin skin, as if its creator forgot to put any flesh on them.
I step over the dead demon, casting my eyes over the four other bodies in the chamber—each either too thin or too misshapen to have survived long enough to leave the room. Now I can see the source of the strange light on the ceiling. It’s a reflection of the lamp light hitting the gently undulating pool in the center of the room. It’s almost black in color, with the vague shape of more bodies drifting in its depths. Souls waiting to be reborn.
It’s the stolen water from the Morphos.
Aster kneels beside one of the risen bodies, closing his eyelids for him with a gentle sweep of her fingers. She sniffs, clearly holding back tears.
“They never had a chance.”
“Kaliban took the water,” I say, even though it’s blindingly obvious to both of us now. I just need to say it out loud so I can keep trying to wrap my head around it.
“He must’ve been trying to recreate the lake,” Aster says. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. He wanted a version of the Morphos for himself he’d have unlimited access to.”
Anger burns in my veins at the sheer senselessness of it.He’sthe one who’s been making the souls get lost, and for what? Because he wanted more power? More soldiers? Because he couldn’t stand the idea that Syrus was the one in charge of Infernum’s most important commodity? If Kalibanhad his way, he’d be snatching every soul he could from Strata and sending them back to die on the battlefield.
But also, nothing about this plan seems to need the sorcerers to execute it. Hathwell was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know about the lake. Which still leaves a question about what they were up to with the demons. Not that the answer to that is really a priority right no?—
