“Shit.” My keeper glances at me. “Without the charm that keeps her from feeling what everyone around her is feeling all the time, she’s going through an empathic overload. We have to…” She trails off with a slight frown. “You recognized her. Have you met her before?”
“Once, as children.”
She lets her curiosity go in favor of the here and now. “Can you get her and the others out of their chains? We need to set them free and get them to safety before all hell breaks loose out there.”
“Right away, darling,” I reply as cheerfully as I can before dropping back into Limbo so she won’t witness more of the searing agony.
50
MAVEN
Where are you?Everett demands telepathically, worry saturating his voice.
Now probably isn’t the right moment to tell him I’m trying to get a response out of his unconscious sister, who he thought was dead, while a bunch of ghosts watch.
I’m in the catacombs,I reply.
Crypt and I won’t stay here long. I doubt Amadeus is near his chambers now that the attack’s begun.That’s fine. It may even be easier to track him down in a fight.
The important thing is getting these living survivors out of here, especially Heidi.
Cautiously, I lift my glowing hand to see if my match’s sister is hurt anywhere, but my attention is momentarily arrested by her face. She must have been wearing makeup in that picture of her I saw at Everbound, because now I can make out a pink port wine stain birthmark covering one of her cheekbones and ears, just under her right eye, all the way down to her upper lip.
So this is why her bitch of a mother made that comment about her children being disfigured.
What a fucking idiot. If anything, it makes Heidi’s soft, pretty face far more interesting. She doesn’t look much like Everett, aside from her nose. After another moment of examining her, I decide she’s been incarcerated and in hell for too long, but otherwise, she’s unharmed.
Somewhere in the tunnels behind me, I hear chains clinking as Crypt frees the others. The ghosts drifting through these catacombs whisper and hiss unintelligibly.
“Heidi?” I whisper again.
No response.
Motherfucker,Baelfire swears through the bond about something I can’t see.
I tense, all kinds of horrible possibilities for his alarm crossing my mind.Bael?
Aww. You almost never call me that. That’s so fucking cute. I can’t wait to hear you moan it next.
Never mind. If he can flirt, he’s fine.
Your multifaceted plans to throw off the Entity’s future sight appear to be working,sangfluir,Silas says next.His forces are scrambling. We have the edge right now.
It’s a damn good thing we’re bringing so many Undead on our side to this shitshow,Everett muses through the bond.There are alotof shadow fiends and old-world monsters out there.
A regular ‘thank you for being the best of us’ will suffice,Silas says smugly. Then he swears.Baelfire, remind your draconic brother not to set our Undead army ablaze. Everett, let the other Reformists know we’ll converge soon at the—gods above, isthatthe arena? It’s fucking massive.
Baelfire laughs.That’s what Maven said the first time she saw my?—
Shut up,lizard,Everett sighs.
I take their back-and-forth that to mean that the Reformist attack is in full swing above us. Now is the time to target Amadeus early on, before the tide can turn toward either side in this battle and while we still have the advantage of his visions being skewed from all the possibilities.
Everett’s sister is still unresponsive as she silently cries, too overwhelmed and paralyzed by the emotions of everyone nearby to move. Honestly, however long she’s been here, I’m shocked she’s still alive. Whatever Everett may think about his sister’s ability to fight, she has to be strong in her own way to endure this.
“Ready, darling?” Crypt asks, slipping back into the catacomb tunnel behind me. His attention drops to the incapacitated empath. “I can carry her out with the others through Limbo. The dream realm is so thinned and damaged in the Nether, I doubt it will warp anyone’s mind.”
I trust his judgment there. Since we need to get these people out of here as soon as fucking possible before I track down Amadeus in the chaos above, I nod. Crypt reaches down with a stolen key to unlock the shackles on Heidi’s wrists. As he does, his fingers brush her arm.
