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He shook his head, shadows playing around the sharp lines of his cheekbones. ‘Those were fae spears. But she may have delegated the defence of this tunnel to someone else, or …’
The sentence finished itself in my mind before he could.
Or she was playing some other game entirely.
Were we going mad? But there was no denying that these traps, deadly as they were, were not at all deadly enough for the Mother at the full force of her wrath. Hell, even I could have done a better job, had I truly wanted to stop someone from coming through this tunnel … so where, then, was all the damage she could so easily have done?
My hands were going clammy. Were we focusing on the wrong things entirely, while the true threat was hovering just out of sight?
‘Perhaps she’s just trying to delay us,’ I whispered. Was it my high-strung imagination, or did the voices behind us sound like they were coming closer now? ‘If we have to throw pebbles at every inch of the ground before we can safely walk on …’
‘She could just have installed a shield like the one around the Cobalt Court,’ Creon said tightly. ‘She shouldn’t know you’re able to get through it.’
No arguing with that.
So …
I saw the question rise in his eyes as it rose in my mind. So did that mean the Mother actuallywantedus to make it through this part?
That could hardly be good news. Whatever she had waiting for us beyond, it would likely be significantly more unpleasant than anything we’d seen so far. Then again, even if it was, what could we do about it?
Turn around?
The howls of our pursuers didn’t give the impression they’d be much more welcoming than the High Lady herself.
‘Your iridescent magic,’ Creon said, his voice urgent as he undoubtedly reached the same conclusion. ‘Do you think it’s possible to see traces of other magic with it? Could you use it to find traps, I mean?’
‘Iridescence and … yellow, perhaps?’ It was hard to think straight with the unmistakable sound of a horde of fae hurtling closer. ‘To change magic into something visible?’
He’d already changed my shirt again.
It wasn’t careful, the burst of magic I flung around. It was the opposite of elegant. Glaring, lemony yellow, garishly dazzling pearlescence – like a child’s drawing, made up of colours too bright to be true. But my shirt lit up like the sea sparkle that would glow in Cathra’s waves on hot summer’s nights, and so did the spot on my shoulder that Creon had healed on our arrival in the tunnel.
‘Good.’ He turned a small slab of wall iridescent – allowing me to spare the yellow in my shirt, which he wouldn’t be able to replenish. ‘Let’s run.’
I drained all iridescence in the wall at once. Nothing started glowing in the sparsely lit tunnel before us.
We sprinted to the next bend.
I lost track of time and direction within minutes. Behind us, voices and footsteps echoed through the tunnel, coming rapidly closer. We darted through the meandering tunnel in a routine that established itself – sprint, corner, magic, over and over again. Every few hundred yards, a spot lit up in the tunnel walls around us, and we’d have to stop to set up a shield and jump through, hoping for the best … But we managed to pass every trap without touching the magic-worked floors, and left them behind without triggering anything, undoing the sparkling mark before running on.
It was just after passing one such trap that the vengeful shouts behind us suddenly morphed into shrill screams of pain.
‘I’m guessing they found the bath,’ Creon muttered beside me.
I managed a tense grin. Good news; either our pursuers would progress more slowly, or they’d soon be confronted with the next trap, which had seemed set up to release something from the ceiling upon our passing.
We rounded one more corner, and another one. Passed one more sparkling trap – this one, it appeared, triggered by touching the wall in the wrong spot – and hurried around one more bend in the tunnel.
There, appearing so suddenly before us that I jumped …
A door.
A perfectly common, perfectly innocent door, worn wood and iron lock, beckoning us closer like the answer to a prayer. Had we already come this far – could this really be the place Rosalind had talked about, the locked entrance to the basement of the White Hall?
It didn’t seem impossible. We’d been running for a while, and the city wasn’tthatlarge.
‘Could you check it for magic?’ Creon said in a hushed tone.
