Taavin nodded, looking over his shoulder warily.
“Juth calt,” she said again to the next door that barred their progress, glancing over her shoulder at Taavin and making sure he followed her into a narrow hallway. Vi continued to press straight back through the building and toward the cliff wall.
A short humming sensation pulsed through the air. The air pressure changed and Vi’s ears popped. She rubbed them; Taavin did the same. They exchanged a look as a bell tolled, its frantic, high-pitched ringing echoed over the whole city.
“Any chance that isn’t for us?” he asked grimly.
“Us or Arwin, and it doesn’t matter which.” Vi pushed forward, no longer holding back with her magic. “Juth calt!” It exploded from her, knocking down the final, heavily locked door at the end of the hall that led to the back room she’d seen from the alleyway.
“A dead end?” Taavin turned, looking back the way they came. So far, no one was in pursuit. But Vi suspected it wouldn’t be long until someone was. If the pirates knew she would be coming for her father, then they knew right where she’d be headed.
“No, there’s a passage here.” She knocked along the back wall softly. Her hastening heartbeat led to trembling hands. But she tried to keep her rapping as quiet as possible. The pirates may know they were here given Arwin’s presumed progress on the shift, but they hopefully didn’t know where they were just yet. “Help me look.”
Taavin lifted a hand. Vi felt the swell of magic like a rolling tide around her ankles. “Uncose.”
The unfamiliar word rattled her bones. Magic ignited around his fingers, exploding forward from the glyph—most of it bouncing off the walls in an array of sparks. However some sank in like water slipping through a grate.
“How…”
“Uncosemeans to expose truth,” he explained, starting for the wall where the magic had vanished. “It’s a word Yargen recently gave me.”
“Convenient, when you were looking for a way out of the Archives of Yargen.” Taavin pushed in a knot of wood and the whole panel slipped open—jagged at the edges to completely hide the passage behind. He motioned for her to take the lead and Vi did so without hesitation. “Can I use that word?”
“Unfortunately not… It’s a word given to me by the Goddess herself. I doubt I could teach you if I tried.”
“If we survive this, I may want you to try.” Her voice dropped low as they started into the narrow passage. It was rough-hewn and natural in appearance—much like the caves they’d entered through—but this one was far better maintained and… she heard voices.
“… hear the bells?”
Vi recognized the voice from one of the two elfin’ra from earlier. She slowed as amber light danced off the outlines of stones, pressing her back against the wall. Taavin did the same on the wall opposite.
A second voice. “Do you know what it means?”
Vi pressed her eyes closed, taking shuddering breaths. She had to keep her head about her. She couldn’t give in to hope—not yet. Not when there was so much risk still and so much at stake.
“It means your darling daughter is here.” The first voice again. Vi inched forward. Her magic was building to an inferno inside her, ready to be unleashed on the whole room. It was a rage she didn’t know she’d been carrying. A rage she knew could melt the whole island into the sea.
“She thinks she can save you.” The second voice again.
Let there be only two.
She and Taavin inched forward to the mouth of what looked like a cavern. From Vi’s field of vision she could see a row of cells. Two were occupied with the husks of other unfortunate souls Adela had deemed too valuable or too lowly to give the comfort of death—people she already knew she couldn’t risk trying to save.
She was here for one thing only.
“She’s like a lamb, coming to slaughter.”
How many?Vi mouthed to Taavin silently. He held up two fingers, confirming her earlier suspicions. They could manage two.
A deep chuckle interrupted her thoughts. Its rasp echoed through the caverns and was attached to a voice richer than even Romulin’s. Even weary and worn, Vi knew the sound. She’d know it anywhere in this wide world.
“I think it’s you who will be slaughtered.” Vi felt as much as heard her father’s declaration.
“Do you think you can scare us?”
“No, and I think that will be your downfall. You should never underestimate a Solaris… least of all my daughter.”
Magic swelled on pride. It flowed out of her as sparks of fire and light, dancing on waves of power and heat that scattered off her skin. Vi pushed from the wall, swinging her hand in the same motion. Power for the glyph was already collecting under her fingers before they turned. Vi took a breath.
