Dark lines crawled and crackled across the stone before my very eyes, where a second ago there had been nothing.
Twobble sucked in a breath behind me. “That would have been bad.”
My pulse thundered in my ears.
“She showed her to me on purpose,” I whispered.
Keegan’s grip tightened gently on my arm.
“Yes.”
Caleb and Bella burst onto the lower landing beneath the balcony, both breathing hard and covered in dust and streaks of shadow. Bella’s eyes flashed gold as she scanned the tower entrance above.
“Don’t step through,” she called. “The stairwell is full of mirrored runes of some sort.”
“And the tower’s steps are folding inward. She is trying to make every entrance lead to the center,” Caleb confirmed.
My stomach twisted.
The center, where the deepest dungeons lay, and where the compound’s magic was undoubtedly stronger.
She wanted me trapped, probably where my mother and daughter might already be.
Keegan looked toward the open doorway again. “Then we don’t use the entrance she’s offering.”
Caleb’s gaze snapped upward. “There’s a breach on the north face. Small, but it leads into the old servant passage.”
“How do you know that?” I called.
He gave me a grim look. “Because something just tried to kill me coming out of it. I thought I’d take a gander.”
Bella snickered. “Useful information.”
She climbed along the broken stonework with impossible speed, reaching the balcony edge and pulling herself up beside Keegan. “We can get in there if the witches keep the upper creatures busy.”
“They will,” Stella shouted from above, sounding offended that anyone might doubt it. I loved her vampire hearing.
A masked fighter leapt onto the lower stairwell behind Caleb, and he turned immediately, swiping it as the shadow dissipated beneath the suit.
“We move now,” Keegan shouted. “Before she changes the tower again.”
The pendant beat once against my chest, and a door slammed somewhere deep inside the compound.
Celeste hollered, and every ounce of air left my lungs.
Keegan’s fear hit his face before he could hide it, and that frightened me almost as much as the sound itself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Maeve, I’ll find your daughter,” Gideon’s voice pulled me out of my terror as I spun around to see him standing next to Keegan.
“When did you get here?” I asked, panic pulsing through me as I sat back on the broom in an attempt to follow Caleb’s direction.
The urgency in Gideon’s gaze worried me even more.
“We will find Celeste together,” Keegan said.
“What, you don’t trust me?” He laughed and Keegan ignored him.
