The words chilled him, but he shook it off. He couldn’t stop now.
“There has to be something,” he muttered. He moved fast, pulling at drawers, shifting rugs, tapping on walls. “Come on. I was here.”
Thane didn’t stop him.
Riven’s eyes kept drifting back to the mural. The unicorn. Something about it nagged at him, drew him in. He stepped closer. Narrowed his eyes.
There. A glint. Just at the base of the horn. Something catching the light—metal? Glass?
Heart racing, he reached for it.
“I wouldn’t—” Thane began, voice taut.
Too late.
Riven’s fingers brushed the crack in the horn.
The wall ignited—sigils bursting in violent reds and golds, fire sweeping across the mural’s surface like a living thing. Heat blasted against Riven’s face.
Thane shouted his name—
And the wall erupted, magic screaming to life as a surge of fire hurtled straight toward his skull.
Chapter 57
One moment Riven stood frozen, the next he was slammed flat against the floor with Thane’s weight shielding him.
A crack of sound like a thunderclap split the room.
The lightning blast hit Thane’s back full force. It sent a ripple of blinding blue light arcing through the space, seizing along the walls and ceiling in jagged, branching veins. The mural behind them sparked and hummed, glowing too brightly to look at as ancient sigils lit up in sequence—reactivating a spell buried beneath paint and plaster.
Riven hit the floor hard, wind knocked from his lungs. But all he could see was Thane above him—jaw clenched, body twitching with current, the sharp smell of scorched leather thick in the air.
“Thane!” Riven gasped, shoving up to check on him. His skin prickled with static. The whole room buzzed with electricity, energy spidering out in glowing lines that connected and solidified, forming a cage of light around them.
“I’m fine,” Thane said, voice gritted between his teeth, but there was a harshness to it that made Riven’s stomach twist.
He reached out instinctively, trying to steady him—trying to see if the damage was worse than it looked. The back of Thane’s coat was burned through in a jagged line, the skin beneath red and blistering, faintly glowing with residual energy.
“You’re not fine,” Riven said, low and fierce. “You took the full hit.”
Thane batted his hands away. “No time.”
The magical current surged again, snapping through the cage with a sound like cracking glass. Sparks floated through the air, bright and alive. The arcane barrier shimmered with green-blue runes that pulsed in time with the current—each pulse tightening the perimeter.
“I triggered it,” Riven muttered. “Stupid. I should’ve known. I walked straight into it—”
“Stop,” Thane snapped, pushing up to his feet, though his movements were slower now, stiffer. His coat steamed faintly from the blast, the edges singed. “You touched a sigil no one was supposed to find. This was a trap. You’re not to blame.”
“But I was the one who set it off—”
“We’ll deal with that after we survive it.”
He reached down and hauled Riven to his feet. The arcane cage crackled again, casting blue-white light over their faces. The mural was still glowing, the painted unicorn now laced with sigils revealed beneath its surface.
“Cage spell,” Thane muttered, eyeing the runes. “It’s powerful. New construction, ancient base.”
“Can you break it?”
