Page 41 of Serpent and Shadow

Alaric was right.

If I went in there blind, I would be in there too long.

“What makes you so sure it’s the main one?” I asked. “The main dungeon?”

Alaric drank down his last few swallows of coffee and set his cup down on the table.

Wraith stretched out between the two of us now, and Alaric’s fingers found the back of her head and massaged between her ears. The cat purred and stretched out on the red leather, her eyes closed as she leaned into his touch. I stroked her little feet and she stretched her bottom half towards me, curling her tail.

“It’s deeper underground,” he said, still rubbing Wraith’s head as she purred. “From what Cal told me, the one in the cemetery is harder to find, so that’s the advantage of using that one. It has hidden doors, and is covered in illusions and reality-bending chimaeras. Cal told me once that his father would put him there when he wanted to forget about him for a while.”

I paled.

Alaric coughed, his own expression growing taut. “I suspect, in this case, he’d want Cal near him. He’d want him close.”

His words made sense to me. Once they sank in, I’d found myself nodding.

I’d also felt like I might be sick.

His words still rang true to me now. More than that, they felt true. They felt like what I’d been seeing and feeling in my dreams every night since.

Bones was underneath the Black Tower.

Which meant I needed to learn how to phase.

It was no longer simply an option or something theoretical; I had to figure it out, or I’d never get him out. Cal was right. I couldn’t give Malefic what he wanted. I couldn’t risk setting off the alarms by trying to walk through his chimaeras. I had to bypass all of that, get in and get out, and the only way to do that would be by phasing.

In that same conversation, Alaric made me promise I wouldn’t do any of it alone.

“…I’ll draw you a map. I’ll help you research, and see if I can figure out that collar thing you told me about… but only if you’ll let Mocking, Nyx, and me help for all of it.”

At my raised eyebrow, he’d met my gaze, his words determined.

“I don’t know exactly what you have in mind, but I do know there’s a lot you’re not telling me. Promise me you’ll let us help,” he demanded. “Promise you’ll let Blackstone help, and Forsooth, if we all agree it’s safe. Really, just promise me you’ll take as much help as we can possibly give you, and I’ll take you to Greythorne castle tomorrow, Leda, and show you everything I know about the family chimaeras.”

My throat had tightened as I met his gaze.

The urgency and seriousness in his eyes had made my vision blur all over again.

I’d reached over Wraith and gripped his arm in my hand.

“I promise,” I’d said, and I meant it.

I’d kept that promise.

I’d been working with Alaric, Nyx, Jolie, and Luc on trying to find a way to break into the Bones mansion ever since.

So far, I didn’t feel any closer.

I’d considered dropping out of classes altogether, but Forsooth strongly urged me to remain enrolled and visible at the school. He said the only reason I wasn’t being looked at more closely by the Praecuri, and even by the King, was that Forsooth convinced them I was harmless. He’d also promised he’d keep an eye on me, and report back if my behavior changed, if I stopped attending classes, if my magic changed, if he saw me working magics related to Dark Cathedral, or he noticed any other anomalies.

Therefore, Forsooth explained, if I wanted to be free to pursue my “project,” as he put it, I needed to behave like an ordinary student, at least in public. I needed to very much not act like the wife of Caelum Bones, heir to Malefic Bones, leader of Dark Cathedral.

Caelum, I was soon to discover, had already joined their official list of wanted Magicals.

I’d tried to talk to my cousin, Valor, about why that was, but all I got was a cryptic note in reply, telling me to keep my head down and try to be patient. He’d promised he’d be in touch when he thought there might be any movement on the ground, good or bad, but I hadn’t heard a word from him since, and too much time had passed now for me to believe him.

In his letter, he hadn’t mentioned my being married to Bones, and while that wasn’t incredibly surprising, I definitely got the impression it hadn’t been an oversight.