I led the guys down the hall to another set of stairs, hidden by a thick door. These narrow steps held a lot of memories, both good and bad. Sometimes, when I was little and had been banished to the attic, I’d sat on the bottom step and listened to the sounds of the household I couldn’t enjoy. I had run up these stairs with joy, and crawled up them battered and broken.
“You’re breaking my heart,” Lierick whispered, his hand stroking down my spine.
I stepped onto the landing of my attic room, the guys following closely behind. It looked as I remembered it, but with more dust. Except for the bed. Has someone been sleeping in it? A chill crept down my spine as I walked across the threadbare rug toward it.
Lierick’s shouted, “Wait!” was too late. Wards at the edges of the room slammed down, and it was like the magic in the room got sucked down into a vacuum.
Fuck.My eyes flew around the space, and it wasn’t until I looked up that I sawtalsembedded in the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, turning it into a prison. There weretalsagainst the First, Second and Third Lines, rendering Lierick, Iker, and Hayle without their magic in here.
I stared hard at the last one, its magic familiar but wrong.
Lierick appeared. “Take us back. We’ll kill him now, like he deserves.”
I closed my eyes, reaching into my chest for that magical reservoir Lierick taught me to find. But it wasn’t there. It was gone, or hidden away. My eyes flew open, and they could see my panic.
“I wouldn’t bother.” My father was watching us from the doorway. “The storerooms below this building had many treasures, some worth more than others. Some I didn’t even know the value of, until someone enlightened me. When your neighbors were historically the two most powerful Lines in Ebrus history, it paid well to invest in some powerfultals. I should be thankful to my ancestors, I guess. They even had ones that inhibited our own Line, especially the women. Everyone knew the females of the Halhed Line went crazy—or so your grandfather told me. However, the stores held some interesting tomes about the females of the Ninth Line that I found very… enlightening.”
He knew. He knew about my power.
“Why?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “Why do anything? Money and power. And Feodore Vylan has a lot of both. I’m sure he’ll be upset that he won’t have his precious son, but he did suggest that the rest of his party would be sufficient. Wait until I tell him what you canreally do. His very own Recreationist. I’m almost glad Boellium didn’t kill you on your first day.” He snorted. “Almost.”
Hayle ran at him, but whatever warding was on the doorway repelled him right back into the room with so much force, it knocked him out cold. “Hayle!”
My father laughed, a cruel, awful sound. “I don’t think the Baron of the First Line will have to wait long. By all accounts, his Heir pants around after you like a stray dog.” He looked down at Hayle. “No offense. He’ll be around sooner or later, and then his own Baron can take care of it.”
I was shaking with fear and rage and panic. “Kian and Bach won’t stand for this.”
My father’s face finally contorted into something ugly. “Fucking disappointments. Don’t worry about your brothers, Avalon. I don’t need two Heirs anyway, and by the time Kian returns, it’ll be just in time to plan his brother’s funeral. So sad you couldn’t stay to attend.”
With that, he slammed the door again, and I trembled. We’d walked into a trap. I’d been cocky and complacent, thinking I’d conquered bigger monsters. I’d forgotten the monster who knew me the best, who knew my weaknesses, my history.
I tried to find that magical well once more, but there was nothing. I knelt beside Hayle as he blinked his eyes open.
“Are you okay?” My voice sounded small—the effect my father had always had on me.
Hayle lifted a hand to the back of his head. “I’m fine, Avie.” His fingers came away with blood, and I held back a sob. “I can’t contact Alucius or Quarry. I can’t even speak to Braxus.” He looked at the hound near his feet sadly. Braxus whined and nudged his hand, and I couldn’t imagine how bereft they’d feel, losing that connection.
Lierick shook his head. “I didn’t see any of this in his thoughts. They were hazy and opaque, but I assumed it was the liquor. I’ve failed you both. I’m sorry.”
Iker was looking at the walls and windows, standing on a chair to get a closer look at the talismans embedded in the ceiling. They ran along the support beams of the ceiling. “They are embedded deep into the foundation of this beam. If we hack them out, it’ll bring the whole roof down on top of us.”
I couldn’t believe we were trapped here, in my childhood hell, and by my father, of all people. How long had he been plotting this with Feodore Vylan, a man he’d called a psycho on more than one occasion? When had he, who’d made my life so miserable for “murdering” my mother, decided that killing the majority of his children was an acceptable solution?
Hayle moved to sit on the tiny pallet on the floor that had once been my childhood bed, tugging me over to settle me between his thighs. “Don’t worry, Avie. Vox is still out there, and if there’s anyone who could outcunning your father—with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back—it’s Vox motherfucking Vylan. He’ll figure it out.”
Vox was oblivious right now, though. As was Bach. I had to warn them both.
My father had obviously planned this out, as those talismans in my ceiling were new. There were no windows or weak spots in this tiny prison, and I was fairly sure the whole thing would be warded against us leaving, much like the door. There were only air vents, the same ones I used to look through to see the stars late at night as a five-year-old.
Someone had given my father a powerfultalto keep us in, and there were no prizes in guessing who.
But my father had always been blinded by himself. By his pain, or in this case, by his own perceived cunning. Because I had one extremely non-magical ace up my sleeve. Literally.
Epsy climbed from the sleeve of my jacket, where he’d been huddling against the cold. I walked over to the air vent and held him up to it. “Every single hope we have rests on you now, Epsy. Find Vox and Alucius. Warn them, somehow.”
My eyes snagged on a piece of blue silk. It was the last gift my mother had given me: a tiny blue ribbon to tie back my hair. I’d been wearing it when she died, and my brother had kept it, tying it around my chair back where it had stayed for my entire life.
