“If it’s true that you could get stuck in here with us, you need to leave as quickly as you can,” Malia says, squeezing my hand as she passes me, her courage only making the ache in my heart grow worse.
She and Taniya cross the threshold, and I follow with my demon wolves inside. I’m grateful when Ace and Temple stop at the doorway, blocking the entrance so that the soldiers can’t enter as well—not that any of them seem inclined to step foot in here with us. They hover outside the room, alert and scanning the empty hallway outside.
My sisters draw me to the farthest corner for the greatest privacy. Tyrus said that power can’t work inside the prison, but I brush the communication rune below my left ear, hoping I can test it, only to find the energy within the rune is silent. Malia mimics my action, pressing her fingers to the side of her neck, and shakes her head. “The rune doesn’t work.”
My heart sinks, but Taniya demands my attention.
“Watch your back,” she whispers, fiercer than earlier, her wolf and her harpy surfacing in her voice, a frightening combination. “Crone, Arga… There’s something going on between them. They’re planning something.”
I wrap my arms around her, holding her as tightly as I can. “I love you too, and I promise that I will treat everyone as my enemy until I know for sure they can be trusted.”
“Even Roman?” Taniya asks, pulling back to pin me with her teal-blue gaze.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Especially Roman.”
Malia joins in on our hug, her voice hoarse. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. We’re probably as safe in here as we’d be out there among the demons—”
I begin to shake my head because they’re not safe at all, but Malia hurries on and her worry for me glistens in her eyes. “But you… You’re going to be surrounded by your enemies. Those royals do not like interlopers. I’m just glad you’ll have your demon wolves with you.”
My throat is tight as I breathe in my sisters’ scents, hoping I can hold on to this moment through all the shit that’s in my immediate future. Leaving them in this demon prison will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
“I’d leave one of my wolves to protect you,” I murmur huskily, “but they’d lose it if they were trapped, and then you’d have a completely new danger to contend with.”
Taniya snorts as she pulls back, and I’m surprised by how calm she appears. “We’ll be fine. Not even a prison maze with more spells than Malia has heard of will keep us down. You just focus on the first trial.”
“I will,” I promise her.
“We need to move!” Tyrus calls from the doorway, keeping a good three feet between himself and Ace, who lets out a consistent, low rumble.
Malia’s hand on my shoulder draws me in for one last hug.
We don’t speak again because there are no words to make this moment any more bearable, and when I manage to catch my breath, I stride toward the door.
I tell myself not to look back because if I see my sisters’ faces, I’ll break, and right now I have to be strong for us all. Even so, I can’t walk away without pivoting at the door, one last look.
It makes me pause.
Malia has already turned toward the shelf, a puzzled expression on her face as she reaches for one of the books. “This is a book of spells…”
Taniya’s head is tilted back, peering upward as if she can see something beyond the ceiling. “I think I might be able to fly up there…”
My forehead creases, a moment of alarm as both of them appear to have forgotten me completely.
“Princess!” Tyrus’s shout has me snapping to him. “Whatever your sisters are seeing right now, you won’t see it yourself. The prison is already doing its work on them. We need to go.”
Blitz and Luca dart ahead of me, and Temple growls before she runs into the hallway. Ace is the last to move, but even he leaps from the room as soon as I reach him. The fact that my demon wolves are spooked screams at me to hurry.
The moment I step beyond the door, it slides closed behind me. I don’t hear it. Everything is magical and silent in here, and my sisters’ scents and energy vanish as they’re locked away, leaving me more alone and afraid than I’ve ever been.
Hurrying, I step back onto the light beam with the soldiers, and it whisks us along the hallway.
The silence around us presses in as the light beam shoots us down another hallway and then around a corner. Tyrus is alert beside me and so are his men. I scan the passing prison cells, but it’s even more difficult to see beyond the blurred movement of the light beam.
I count the heartbeats, hoping the beam will take us to the exit, but there are no guarantees. Needing to distract myself from the possibility that the light beam will only take us deeper into the prison, I ask Tyrus, in a hushed whisper, “If your family is imprisoned here, don’t you want to see them?”
“They would not want me to be imprisoned here with them,” he bites out. “Their only hope of getting out is if the King is found. The longer Crone is in charge, the more demons she will send here.”
Every time Tyrus speaks about Crone, he grits his teeth. Given how readily she was prepared for me to kill him, it doesn’t surprise me. “What was my father like as a leader?” I ask.
