He was supposed to still be trapped in a coffin, hidden away for later taking. Vanya knew he’d never even thought to look in the crypt for Soren when he’d been missing during the day. How long until he would have succumbed to the lack of food and water, screaming for help in the dark? But he was here now, walking ahead of Vanya instead of returning to the wardens who surely needed him just as much as Vanya did.
“I’ll cast you in shadow,” Yadvir said to Soren, voice a mere whisper. “I’m not the best at spells of subterfuge, but it will hold for what we need, and you’ll be able to enter before us when we reach them. I’ll drop it when the emperor requests it of me.”
Soren stood still as the magician channeled the aether through his wand. The spell wrapped Soren up in a darkness that made Vanya’s eyes slide right off him, as if he weren’t there—only a shadow to be ignored. Vanya didn’t like not knowing where Soren was, but he knew the best way to get Raiah back was if Alida didn’t know that Vanya knew the truth of where her loyalty lay.
Javier stood to the side and rapped his knuckles against the locked double doors that barricaded Raiah’s suite of rooms from the rest of the palace. “Hail the Legion! Open the doors.”
Vanya counted the seconds down in his head. When the minute mark hit, Javier gestured at Yadvir, who raised his wand and pointed it at the door handles. Magic twisted through the tumblers, tiny threads of aether pulling the gears out of position to unlock the doors. Javier nudged one of the doors open. No bullets met the motion, but that wasn’t to say they’d find themselves on the receiving end of such an attack.
Javier used his foot to kick the door open wider, shining the handheld gaslight into the receiving room. The light fell on more overturned furniture and a revenant doing its level best to eat through the cavity of a deadpraetorialegionnaire. Its head snapped around at their entrance, bloody mouth falling open.
Something dark flickered at the corner of Vanya’s eyes; he felt the passage of air blow across the side of his face. He couldn’t see Soren, gaze redirected from where he knew the warden to be. Whether or not the revenant could see him didn’t matter. One moment, the revenant was crouched on the floor. The next, it lunged at them at the exact moment its head left its neck.
The desiccated corpse thumped to the floor along with its head. The cut from Soren’s poison short sword was clean, and the poison ensured the revenant wouldn’t rise again. But the fact it had been behind the barricade made Vanya want to tear through the suite of rooms in search of his daughter.
It took everything inside of him—and Javier gripping his arm—not to.
Javier went first with the fewpraetorialegionnaires left and Yadvir following, what weapons they had left drawn and wands up. Vanya entered after, starfire curling around his fingers, with Cybele on his heels. The receiving room was empty of any further threats but also of Alida and Raiah. It left Vanya’s stomach knotted up with fear he couldn’t give in to.
He licked his lips and crossed the room to the set of closed doors across the way. “Next room.”
Javier forced that set of doors open, and they moved quietly into the next section of the inner suites. Vanya could hear the distant sounds of fighting on the palace grounds from those trying to hold back the revenants, but inside, the space was empty and quiet. They searched the entire second floor without finding signs of Raiah, but every door meant to barricade this area of the wing was closed and locked, barred from the inside.
“We’ll try the first floor. There’s a secured room on that level Alida might have brought Raiah to if they weren’t able to escape,” Vanya said.
Vanya doubled back to a set of stairs one hallway over, sending tongues of starfire drifting down into the dark like fading fireworks. No signs of revenants, but one could never be too careful.
Javier went first,praetorialegionnaires fanning out around Vanya. The shadow out of the corners of his eyes that stayed with him was Soren. Vanya gave quiet directions as they traversed the first floor in the dark. He noticed the metal shutters closed over the exterior windows, some with broken-off hands and arms lying on the inside floor, as if someone had chopped the revenants’ bodies to pieces in a frantic effort to seal the area.
When they came to the closed doors of an interior parlor, Vanya directed Javier to open it. As before, Javier announced their presence with a knock and a raised voice calling out their presence, making sure to stand to the side. “Hail the Legion! Open the doors.”
For a moment, everything was quiet.
Then bullets ripped through the door and would have cut down anyone who’d been standing in that area. Javier swore, gesturing at Yadvir. “Undo the locks!”
Yadvir knelt and leaned around the legs of apraetorialegionnaire, aiming his wand at the door. Vanya couldn’t hear the lock being undone, but he saw the way the knob turned, guided by the aether. The door unlocked, and Javier kicked it open farther while apraetorialegionnaire used what precious bullets they had left to force whoever was on the other side back.
In the wavering light from the handheld gaslight, the shadows seemed to move. The door was pushed wider, all the way open, and Javier snapped his wrist, aether lashing out from the clarion crystal tip. It formed interlocking hexagonal shapes that clicked into place before them. The shield was wide enough to cover the doorway and allow them to enter behind it. The shield was curved to protect Vanya more than anyone else.
Vanya went through first despite thepraetorialegionnaires’ cries, forcing Javier to lunge forward and keep him in sight. Someone had lit lanterns he knew were kept in the secured room hidden behind the wall paneling. The parlor had no windows, built that way to protect the iron-sided room few knew about.
Inside were false star priests who carried Daijalan weapons in their hands.
Inside was Artyom.
Joelle’s heir stood within an area of the palace he should never have stepped foot in, Vanya’s daughter cradled in his arms. She looked asleep, lying limp against the bastard’s shoulder, with the barrel of a pistol tucked dangerously close to her chest.
“A pity you’re not dead,” Artyom said.
Vanya was rooted to the floor, barely listening to the way Javier commanded thepraetorialegionnaires to hold fire. All his attention was taken up by Raiah and the nightmare holding her. “Give me back my daughter.”
Artyom’s mouth twitched into a smile. “She’s sleeping. When she wakes up next, she’ll be with family.”
“Iam her family.”
“Not for much longer.” Artyom’s gaze flicked around the room before settling on someone behind Vanya, eyes narrowing. “VezirCybele.”
“Traitor,” Cybele said with enough acid in her tone to burn.
