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Willa tried to shrug, but the chains held her in place. I briefly wondered if she could simply cast a spell or use her magic to get out of them. But one fact remained: we wouldn’t make it out of this castle without help, so where would we go? The only thing freedom from those chains guaranteed right now was that someone would die for our disobedience. I wasn’t willing to risk that.
“I think so,” Willa said.
“You’d still need the right ward for Sylas, though,” Quinn offered.
“I don’t suppose you know it?” She seemed to know plenty of other things around here. “You’ve been with him for years.”
Quinn shook her head. “I don’t. He definitely would not let that information slip to me. Imagine if I’d warded against him here.”
“Would that even work?” Willa asked. “I thought Mrak’s was effective only because he wasn’t actually on our plane of existence. Not fully.”
“Agreed.” I ran my hand through my blonde hair and bit my cheek. “Let me make the blade first. None of this matters without a weapon to show Sylas so I can be close to him.”
“I’ll try to think of something that’d work for a ward,” Quinn offered. “Since we’re hanging around here, anyway.”
My gut twisted. An instinct kicking in. I glanced at Willa and held her gaze, a silent question on my lips. Willa shook her head. Over the years in Lazarus’s community, we’d gotten pretty good at communicating without words. But I wondered if looks would be enough for the question at hand.
Could we actually trust Quinn? She’d been with Sylas long enough to be swayed to his side. His thinking. His agenda. He’d turned her into a shadow demon on top of it.
Quinncouldbe a plant. So it was a good thing Sylas had probably already assumed a risk in bringing me here. There was a less than zero chance he thought I actually wanted any of this—leaving Mrak, marrying Sylas. Any of it.
I’d done this solely to save more demons from dying.
Except for one.
So, did it matter then if Quinn was a plant? If Sylas could assume I’d attempt to kill himatleastonce, did it matter if Quinn knew my forging process and plans?
No. Not really.
“I’ll work on it,” Willa promised, a seriousness locked in her gaze that I hadn’t seen in years. “Start the sword. Do you remember the diagram Leif had?”
“Yes, very clearly” I said as I lit the forge with my magic. “Hang in there. We’re all getting out of here alive.”
I just need a bit more of a plan first.
One step at a time, I reminded myself. And step one was making a blade that looked like it could kill Mrak.Let’s hope Leif’s diagram is right.
I collected my materials and began forging with my own fire magic as the source of heat and power. Which was a long process not easily made quicker. Hours passed as I worked with raw nightsteel to make the beginning stages of a blade. Sylas had everything I needed except for time. So, I had to find some. I started the blade over a few times, wanting to stretch out the process as long as possible while I wracked my brain for everything I knew about the blade Leif had originally wanted me to make.
Shadow dispersing. A ward against Mrak. Leif had thought Mrak had taken Quinn, because Leif hadn’t realized at the time that other shadow demons had been on Earth. So the question then became: how did Leif come across a ward against Mrak? Had it been specific to him, or was there a guide somewhere to protect yourself against shadow demons? Maybe we could make one for Sylas if one didn’t already exist.
Gods, there was still so much I didn’t know. I’d spent most of my life as a child or imprisoned by Lazarus as an adult. Everything after that had been a blur of using the one skill I had to earn a living. I’d learned witch sigils and some runes, but nothing likethis. Even Willa was struggling to think of something that would work against Sylas. But we kept coming back to one answer: it had to be specific. Especially with all the power he’d gained recently from so much death.
Still, I worked. It was hot with no reprieve, and I felt bad for Willa and Quinn, who were chained and couldn’t so much as fan themselves effectively with their hands bound. Every half hour, I stopped to give them water and wipe away the sweat from their faces.
In between those breaks, I tried to focus my mind as I worked. Tried to imagine communicating across planes and worlds. I reached out in my mind, opening it to Leif the way Mrak had reached out to me for a year.
I wanted to tell him about Quinn. I wanted to ask him for a ward against Sylas. But the only thing I heard as the hours dragged on were the sounds of my forging. I wasn’t strong enough to reach Leif, and he wasn’t Seer enough to hear me.
By the time it afternoon came around and Sylas returned, all three of us were drenched in sweat. We were exhausted, me most of all.
“How goes progress?” Sylas asked as he appraised us. His own blade was drawn, this time held to Quinn’s throat despite the fact that attacking him was the furthest thing from my mind right now.
I held up the half-blade I had finished. “Nightsteel takes a while. It’s tough to work with. I’ll finish by end of day tomorrow.”
Sylas’s six eyes narrowed. “You have until morning.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I argued.
