When they came to a single door, Xander paused briefly. “You’ll both find what you need inside. And if you need anything else,”—he pointed upward—“you know where to find me.” He then continued on upstairs, his light footsteps disappearing overhead, and they were left in silence.
Damien and Amma glanced at one another and then the single door, but when Damien swung it open, there was a small parlor inside with two bed chambers off of it. Amma wasn’t sure if it were relief or disappointment she were feeling, but when Damien shut the rest of the tower out, and the hollow silence of the stairwell was replaced by the more cloying silence of the closed chamber, it all changed to intense trepidation.
She went to step forward, but Damien threw out a hand. “Wait.” There was a pulse of arcana, one that he didn’t spill blood for, but that she could feel. It crackled out into the room like tendrils sweeping over everything, and then there was a yelp from each of the bed chambers.
“Unless you’d like to be banished, get out now,” Damien called into the space, and slips of shadow scurried through the doorways, keeping to the edges of the walls. Kaz flew upward to wrench the door open by its handle, and a darkness tripped over itself to escape. Kaz shoved the door closed again with a shiver.
“Even you don’t like those things?” Amma asked, rubbing away the chill from her arms through the thin fabric of her ruined dress.
Kaz shook his head, looking after where they’d gone. “They’re a whole different kind of imp. Sneaky and weird.” He clacked his claws together, placed himself low to the ground, and started scurrying off through the space. “I’ll check for anything else, Master.”
When he was gone, Amma looked over Damien standing limply beside her, gazing off into the fire burning blue in the parlor as if in a daze. “You look exhausted.”
He blinked over at her. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t.
“Well,” she said softly, “thank you for…everything.”
“For stealing you?”
Her heartbeat sped up at the thought of truly being abducted, but that hadn’t been what happened, even if she was in a strange and frightening place. “For besmirching your name. Well, Xander’s name, I guess, but so many people saw your face, someone will put it together that you were lying eventually, and now you can never—” She cut herself off before going on, knowing what she wanted to say was…silly. Why would he ever want to go back to Faebarrow? “Well, you’ve just made things complicated for yourself.”
“It was nothing, really,” he said ruefully, taking a few slow steps deeper into the small parlor, giving it a look over. “I might not have actually been attacking your home or taking you against your will, but Iamevil, after all.”
Amma’s stomach clenched, staring at the back of him, hands clasped, tall and looming as he blocked the fireplace, body like a shadow in the low lighting of the room. She wanted to scream at him to stop saying that, especially after what he had done for her, but then Xander had given away the secret Damien had been keeping, the plans he had made, the prophecy he was set to fulfill, and Amma had to remember she was a hitch in those plans—a hitch that needed to be resolved.
“I think I should go to bed,” said Amma, weary, and she started toward one of the rooms.
“Wait.” Damien’s voice cut into her, making her stop. “The Lux Codex. Sleep with it.”
Amma turned to him fully, gripping the book to her chest.
“Don’t just keep it nearby, but in the bed, against you. It will be the best deterrent.”
What exactly did he mean to deter? “You think Xander will come into our rooms?”
“I don’t know what he’ll do, but other than me, that book is the best protection in this place. It will keep anything infernal from touching you, including blood mages.”
Amma glanced down at the Lux Codex, trying to hide the warmth on her face and her preference for his body over some hard-edged book in her bed. She swallowed. “All right. I will.”
Kaz was just skittering out of the bed chamber as Amma went into it. He gave her a frustrated look, but confirmed there was nothing else inside. When she closed the door after him, she looked around as if she could identify the kinds of things Kaz might or even do anything about them if she could, then gave up.
Only the red, arcane glow of a pile of rough-cut rocks on a table at the foot of the bed lit the space, but it was an opulent room even in the dark and exactly Xander’s style. There was crimson and gold woven into everything, tapestries on the floor, the bedding, the wall hangings. She caught her reflection in a massive mirror with a gilded edge in the corner of the room, and she pushed off the door to go to it. She could see the room behind her, and even though she was donning a pale blue dress, she didn’t necessarily look out of place, just as done up, just as opulent as everything around her, but looking like she’d been dragged through the Abyss.
She was careful to put the Lux Codex right beside her as she finally reached to her back and wrestled with the cords to shuck off the poofy gown. It fell around her feet like a thick fog, but her body immediately felt better, the itch of the fabric gone, the weight of the layers gone, all of itgone, just like—she winced suddenly at the realization—just like her: she was gone. She had left…no, she had abandoned Faebarrow. Again.
Amma tripped, staggering out of the pile of fabric on the floor, catching herself on the edge of the bed before sinking to the ground. She sat there in her thin chemise, her dagger strapped to her thigh where she’d secured it before the banquet, just in case, suddenly cold in the space of the room and alone. This was what she wanted, she knew it, she asked for it.
Amma had spent a lifetime doing everything right only to have things go so wrong, and even as she had tried to fix things, they only got worse. Running away had been her only option before, so she did, on a desperate quest for magic to protect her home. But even if she had gotten the Scroll of the Army of the Undead back to Faebarrow on her own, how would she have read it not knowing Chthonic? How would she have commanded a skeletal army? She would have gotten everyone killed including herself. Or there was the much worse alternative, she realized, surviving the ordeal and being stuck with Cedric. She would have never been able to do anything for Faebarrow or herself without Damien.
But what about this decision? Accepting Damien’s offer to use the scroll on her behalf and then spiriting her away from whatever gruesome aftermath they left behind? And now she was sitting in the Chthonic Tower in a place called the Accursed Wastes with not one buttwoblood mages. Not to mention all of the imps.
Her eyes snapped back up to the small table where the Lux Codex was, and she scrambled on hands and knees to it. But when she reached for the book, the sight of the dried blood on her hands—Damien’s blood—made her freeze. He’d hurt himself for her, but he’d done that for himself too, hadn’t he? He certainly looked like he was enjoying the mayhem he’d called down on Faebarrow, the chaos, the death.
Amma shook her head and grabbed the Lux Codex, crushing it to her chest as she squeezed herself into a ball on the floor. What was she thinking? Moments before she had been pining over Damien, she’d been wrapped up in his arms, she’d almost kissed him, and now?
She had seen how his eyes flashed with eagerness at Xander’s offer, she had heard him say he was evil more times than she could count, and now she knew exactly what he was destined to do. It wasn’t enough that he had made himself the villain in her home, the place she had sworn to protect and love, but he was planning on razing the entire realm to the ground.
