The sneer fell off the Prince of Envy’s face. Adrian was feeling pretty shocked as well, but he didn’t let that slow him down as he dived behind the brother who wasn’t actively trying to murder him.
“What does that spell do?” he whispered frantically.
“It prohibits movement,” Leander replied with the smuggest grin Adrian had ever seen. “Until I revoke it, no one who has heard my voice can walk more than ten paces from their original position. Just look at your feet.”
Adrian glanced down in alarm. Sure enough, his black boots were ringed with ghostly chains. He couldn’t feel them while he was standing still, but when he jumped back in surprise, the transparent chains tightened like a slipknot. He could still move if he pushed, but the binding pulled tighter with every step, and his face broke into a smile.
“Nice work,” he told his brother. “But why did you trap us as well? And why didn’t you teleport Bex or Nemini?”
“Because that’s how the Binding of Deepest Bedrock works,” Leander replied with a shrug. “And because you were the only person close enough for me to grab before we fell out of range. Trust me, I’d much rather have gotten one of the queens.”
Adrian felt the same. “Where did they go?” he asked nervously, reaching down to touch the now solid-seeming marble under his feet. “What was that place?”
“I’m not sure,” Leander said, keeping his mirrored eyes on the Prince of Envy, who was standing at the far edge of the binding, muttering his own sorcery under his breath. “As keeper of Gilgamesh’s private spaces, Envy has access to all manner of pockets and subworlds that our father created to house his projects over the years. The Hells, the chain desert, Limbo, even Heaven itself are all created spaces and thus technically part of Envy’s domain, but there are hundreds more, most of which are top secret. That cavern, for example, was nowhere I’ve ever seen before.”
“Well, we need to figure out how to get back to it,” Adrian said anxiously. “Bex and Nemini are trapped down there!”
“I’d love to,” Leander said. “But…”
His mirrored eyes flicked to the white sword in Envy’s hands, and Adrian sighed.
“Right then,” he muttered, moving closer to his brother. “What’s the plan?”
“Be very careful,” Leander whispered, never taking his eyes off his brother’s sword. “The Princess of Envy is a contrary creature. She always longs to be somewhere else, which is what allows her to move between so many different places. She can cut a path to any location her wielder is aware of, but her true power is jealousy.”
Adrian scowled. “How is being jealous a power?”
Before Leander could answer, the Prince of Envy whirled around. Whatever sorcery he’d been muttering must not have been able to beat Leander’s, because the prince lashed out at Adrian with his sword instead. Adrian instinctively tried to defend with his own sorcery before remembering he couldn’t do that anymore. He’d used up every drop of his white quintessence blood growing his new tree, which meant he was back to being just a witch.
Under any other circumstance, Adrian would’ve counted that as a major win. In the current situation, however, it was a serious problem. He’d grown his vines all the way around the palace by this point, but this room was made of solid stone with no windows or skylights. He’d loaded his coat with fresh spell reagents when he’d stopped by his cabin before the assault, but it was all raw materials. He hadn’t had time to prepare any throwable curses, and he didn’t think his brother would be polite enough to wait while he set one up. But just as Adrian was realizing that his lack of preparation was about to get him killed just like Boston had always said it would, Leander shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Ishtar’s Charging Bull!”
Sorcery leaped from his words, and a giant spectral bull appeared in front of Adrian, its curved horns already in position to knock the Blade of Envy away. The spell’s shape hadn’t even finished solidifying, though, when the needle-sharp Blade of Envy shimmered like a mirror, and asecondsorcerous bull appeared, colliding with Leander’s in a blast of sorcerous power that knocked all three princes flat on their backs.
Adrian was the first to get back up. He scrambled to help Leander next, hauling the prince, who’d been lying at the edge of the glowing binding’s range like he’d just been run over by a truck, back to his feet.
“I see what you meant now about jealousy being Envy’s power,” he said as he steadied his brother’s weight. “She’s a mirror sword.”
“She’s much worse than that,” Leander warned, clinging hard to Adrian’s arm. “The Blade of Envy doesn’t just duplicate attacks. She adds her prince’s sorcery on top as well. As you just saw, any sorcery I throw will bounce back with the same strength I usedplusthe Prince of Envy’s.” He shook his head with a grimace. “We should call for help.”
“Help from whom?” Adrian demanded. “I’m the only Blackwood who can enter the palace, Iggs is injured, and the rest of the demons can’t stand up to a prince. Even if they could overwhelm him with numbers, he’d just teleport them all to Limbo or somewhere even worse.”
“Then what do you suggest we do?” Leander snapped. “Because unless you want to get blasted to the floor again, my sorcery is useless.”
Adrian fell silent. He still had the comm Bex had given him in his ear. One tap was all it would take to call Iggs and tell him to send Boston or the war-demon captain or anyone else to help. That felt like the strategic move, but Adrian hated the idea of calling Bex’s people into a battle they couldn’t win.
He didn’t like any of his options, but Adrian was going to have to come up with something soon, because the Prince of Envy was already back on his feet. He lurched at them with a snarl, straining against Leander’s invisible chains as he struggled to get within striking distance. And it was there, watching Envy’s jaw clench as he tried his hardest to murder his brothers, that Adrian got his idea.
“I know attack sorcery is out,” he whispered to Leander as he pulled them both to the farthest end of the binding spell’s ten allowed steps, “but you can still cast defensive spells, right?”
“Sure, if you want to hide in a cage while that filthy fanatic beats his way to us,” Leander grumbled.
“A cage would be perfect, actually,” Adrian said with a smile. “Do it.”
Leander looked at him like he was crazy. He must have truly been at his wit’s end, though, because he did as Adrian asked, speaking a line of sorcery that went much too fast for Adrian’s sorry understanding of ancient Sumerian to follow. The moment the final word left his lips, a ring of stone sprang fromthe floor and flew toward the ceiling like a spear, closing the two brothers inside a cylinder of what appeared to be solid granite.
“There,” Leander gasped as he fell back to his knees. “That’s the biggest Seven Walled City I can manage. Envy isn’t an idiot like Hate, though, so it won’t take him long to—”
