“Help me get these open.”
“If it’s spelled shut, I may be stable enough to offer a hand,” I suggest, quietly desperate to serve a purpose for my beautiful keeper.
Her dark eyes connect with mine, and she shakes her head. “I’ll need your magic inside to get rid of the malediction. This door is different. Douglas knows what I mean.”
The ex-bounty hunter huffs as he moves to her side. “Yeah, yeah. Keep your mouth shut.”
I bristle with irritation at him speaking to her like that. Everett scowls, too, but steps aside as they focus on whatever magic is sealing this temple shut.
While we wait for them to figure out how to unseal the temple, I glance at Everett and then away.“Tha’me a bhith air mo frirthadh.”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say,” he reminds me.
Right. I pull the correct words from my messy mind. “You could have frozen me.”
“I still can.”
“I meant that it would have made the lastmohsan sia—six months,” I correct, “easier for you.”
Everett brushes snow off his shoulder, fixes his coat, and again pulls on the feral Baelfire’s leash to keep him from trying to wander off again.
“I considered it. Thing is, I don’t know what being frozen long-term does to someone’s brain.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity of him trying to preserve a brain as senseless as mine has become. Still, with Maven miraculously back with us, I have a newfound appreciation for the lengths Everett went to keep me alive, fed, and comfortable despite my self-imposed imprisonment.
It takes work, especially since the voices in my head are counting backward in fae at different intervals to confuse me for fun, but I finally get it out.
“I owe you.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffs. “I don’t want a favor from a fae. Your kind are too crafty with shit like that. Just shut up and help break whatever spell Crypt is under.”
Only a moment more passes before Maven and Douglas finish, and the great double doors swing open. With the concentration they both seemed to be displaying, I expect to feel a tingle or awareness of their lingering magic as we all walk into the dusty, abandoned temple—but I sense absolutely nothing.
Odd.
Of course, it’s odd. This is a trap. This is where they take necromancers to be slaughtered.
They’re all conspiring against you.
Look! Behind you!
I whirl again, trying to see any threat, but there is none. There is only the mindless, feral creature occupying Baelfire who snaps his teeth at me when he catches me looking before sneezing blue fire.
Cold morning light illuminates this space from massive windows high above, highlighting the fact that we are utterly alone here, except for Crypt DeLune. He’s just as Maven described on the way here, trapped in various layers of a heinous-looking malediction.
I’ve never seen this incubus unconscious before.
Incubi need to feed far less than any other creature—they can survive for months, sometimes years, before they finally begin to starve. But the longer they go without consuming dreams, the weaker they become. If he’s been trapped like this for months, this monster-spawn’s strength has been wasting away. Weakening. Growing more vulnerable by the day.
Now would be the perfect time to end him, voices whisper in my head as we approach.
I stop outside the hostile runes encompassing the Nightmare Prince, studying the powerful, sinuous malediction he’s trapped inside as the others stay back a few steps. This is truly a terrifying spell to behold, so strong that my hair is standing on end and I can practically taste the acridity of the death magic woven into it.
There’s another magic in this, though. One I can’t identify.
“Yuck. Have fun, Crane. That’s one nasty malediction,” Douglas says.
I hesitate, looking at Maven as thousands of glowing frogs appear and hop about this space. Since no one else sees or reacts to them, I pretend I don’t see them, either.
