“Why are you here?” she whispered back, her voice shrill with urgency. “How did you find me?”
“The same way they found you.” He tilted his head toward her three daemon stalkers. “You’re alone. Where is Lyre?”
“He’s … nearby.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed and she asked again, “Why are you here?”
Reed’s expression hardened. “To tell Lyre he’s a fool. He’s been here too long. You have to leave the city.”
“That’s our plan,” she snapped, unimpressed by his tone. “We just need to—”
“You have to leave now.” His gaze flicked across the square. “Samael’s best killer returned empty-handed and injured. Samael has put out a bounty for an incubus and a nymph, with descriptions of you both. You’re to be captured alive and presented in Asphodel for a generous reward.”
An icy shiver ran through her.
“Every bounty hunter affiliated with Hades is either here or on their way. It won’t take long for news of the bounty to reach other mercenaries.”
“We’re leaving tonight,” she whispered, gripping her shopping more tightly to suppress her shivering.
“Good.” Reed pressed closer, jostling her shopping bags as he brought his mouth to her ear. His breath warmed her skin as he whispered, “I’ll distract the bounty hunters while you escape.”
“But—but why are you—”
“I can’t stay here any longer.” He stepped back. “Get Lyre out of the city.”
“But—”
“Go.”
She stared at him helplessly, then ducked under the table. Popping out on the same side as the immobilized seller, she stayed in a crouch, hidden behind the rows of bulky booths, and raced toward the nearest dark alley.
As she dove into it, she glanced back. Reed stood with his umbrella resting on his shoulder, watching her. When their eyes met, he casually raised his hand in front of his chest. Light flashed from between his fingers.
In a silent whoosh, a golden cloud burst from the gem he held. The fog billowed outward, blanketing the entire square in seconds. Alarmed cries rose and colorful lights flashed as daemons tried to counter the unnatural mist with their magic.
Sucking in a breath, Clio turned and ran, leaving the square behind.
If Reed had found her so easily, that meant others could too. And with every mercenary from the Hades territory hunting them, their chances of evading capture had dropped to a terrifying new low.
Getting out of the city had never been more critical, and she desperately hoped their Overworld guide would be waiting for them in a few hours as promised.
Clio disarmed the wards on the door and slipped into the room, then reengaged them. Still catching her breath, she half-heartedly wiped her wet boots on the mat and crossed to the screen that separated the bed from the rest of the cramped unit.
Lyre lay under the patchy blankets. His skin had regained its usual warm tan, and he was back in glamour. He was staring at the ceiling, and when she stuck her head into view, his amber eyes dropped to hers.
“You’re awake,” she said with a sigh of relief as she hurried to the bed, fumbling with her shopping bags.
“Hmm,” he agreed, his gaze again lifting to the ceiling, a small wrinkle between his eyebrows.
She frowned worriedly at him, then glanced up to see what he was so focused on. The ceiling was blank and boring, marked with water spots and weird brown splatters. A faint shimmer of green magic hinted at the wards she’d embedded throughout the apartment, barely visible without her asper in focus.
Lyre squinted at the ceiling, his gaze shifting from one spot to another. There was nothing there but the wards.
Her stomach sank to the floor.
He finally looked at her, a strange blankness in his eyes. “My wards,” he murmured.
Swallowing hard, she nodded. When she’d cast his wards over their unit, she’d figured he would notice them before she could remove them. She just hadn’t expected he’d notice within minutes of waking up.
“How?” His question was calm, but something in its simplicity demanded an answer.
She sat on the edge of the bed and piled her shopping bags beside him. Breathe in. Breathe out. “All nymphs can use astral perception, but some of us … a very few nymphs possess an additional ability. It’s called mimicking.”
His expression went even more blank than before. He said nothing.
“I can mimic any magic I see with my asper. When I was at your house in Asphodel, I had to examine the wards to disable them. Since they’re the best wards I’ve ever seen—the best you’ve ever created, I’m guessing—I used them to protect us here.”
She pressed her hands together and waited for him to respond. The silence stretched between them, crackling with things unsaid.
“A mimic,” he echoed flatly.
“Yes,” she whispered, staring at her lap. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
The painful quiet was broken only by the rain drumming on the roof. Then, out of nowhere, his laughter rang out.
Head jerking up, she gaped at him. He laughed for half a minute before gulping back his amusement and pushing up into a sitting position, one hand pressed to his side where his ribs had been broken.
“A mimic,” he gasped, catching his breath. “Oh man. I can’t believe it.”
Merriment danced in his eyes and she clenched her hands, wanting to check if he was feverish but afraid of insulting him. “What’s so funny?”
“It explains everything. Your tour. Your obsession with those damn prototypes.” He barked another laugh. “How much did you see? All our best wards. All our—damn.” He leaned against the wall at the head of the bed, grinning at her. “You were never going to buy something, were you? Damn that scheming prince.”
“Um.” She blinked at him. “You’re not … angry?”
“Angry? Hell no.” He squinted at the ceiling. “Okay, I’m annoyed that you’ve been pilfering my weavings, but ripping off Chrysalis—I would love to be a fly on the wall if my father ever finds out what you were up to.”
She blinked a few more times, struggling to reconcile his reaction with her fears about how he would respond.
He tensed. “You said you can mimic anything. Does that include the KLOC?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “That’s the only spell I’ve ever seen that I can’t copy. With the moving parts, I couldn’t even figure out how to activate it.”
He relaxed again, his amused grin returning. She stared at him. All this time worrying about his reaction, and he thought it was funny?
His eyebrows rose. “What’s that scowl for?”
She hastily cleared her expression. “Nothing.”
“That was a mean scowl.” He leaned forward and his bright eyes captured her. “Are you angry with me?”
“The only thing I’m upset about is you almost dying on me.”
“Oh, right.” He glanced around the room. “Didn’t I get stabbed in the back? How am I alive?”
“I healed you.”
“But how did we get back here? You couldn’t have carried me.”
“We walked.”
“We did?”
She nodded. “It took a shock of magic to wake you up. I also got your bow and as many of your arrows as I could find. You don’t remember any of that?”
As he scrunched his face, struggling to remember, she glanced at his bow and quiver leaning in the corner. While collecting his arrows, most damaged with their spells spent, she’d found one on the bridge that hadn’t been used. At least, its spell hadn’t. Later, she would ask him about the terrifying blood-magic weave embedded in that black-fletched bolt.
The irony was painful. After all her life-risking efforts to search Chrysalis for a weapon powerful enough to terrify Irida’s enemies, he’d been carrying one all along.
“I can’t remember anything after getting stabbed.” Lyre frowned. “What
happened to Ash?”
“He was injured, though not as badly as you. I threw a few spells at him and he took off.”
“I shot him with a poison-tipped arrow. Not sure why it didn’t kill him, but it must have had some sort of effect.” His attention fixed on her shopping bags. “Is that food I smell?”
Amused, she opened the food bag and lifted out a tinfoil packet. Warmth seeped into her skin and she passed it to him before pulling out a second one for herself. She stared at it for a moment.
“Actually,” she said abruptly, “I am angry with you.”
He paused halfway through ripping open the wrapper, his expression wary.
“You made me run away from Ash.”
His gaze dropped from hers and he pressed his lips together. “I didn’t have time to explain or argue about it.”
“You forced me to leave with aphrodesia.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I only did it to—”
“You almost died.” Her hands clenched, crushing her dinner. “Why didn’t you let me help? We could have fought him together!”
His eyes darted up, surprise flickering across his face. “Against Ash? He would’ve killed us both. You had a chance to—”
“To run away and leave you to die?” She glared at him. “That is not an acceptable outcome. Not for anything. We’re in this together, Lyre.”
“Together?” he repeated, his voice oddly quiet.
“We escaped Asphodel together, and we’re going to the Overworld together to get your clock back. So do not ever send me away like that again. If I want to leave, then I’ll decide. You don’t get to decide for me.”
He nodded, his attention returning to his food, but he didn’t resume opening the foil. She pursed her lips, then reached out and smacked him upside the head.
“Hey!”
“That was for using aphrodesia on me. Again.”
He rubbed his ear, casting her a flinty look. “I was saving your life.”
“You were being a self-sacrificing idiot. I’m not useless, you know.” When he smirked, she gave him her meanest glower. “Whatever you’re thinking about saying, I suggest you reconsider.”
He snickered and ripped his dinner open to reveal a thick bun loaded with shredded pork and strips of roasted vegetables. In the time it took her to eat her bun, he ate the other three.
He crumpled the foil wrappings into a ball and tossed it in the direction of the kitchen. “What else did you buy?”
“Supplies for the Overworld,” she replied, pulling the nearest bag toward her. “A change of clothes, water bottles, a blanket, dried food—”
As she moved the first bag, the second one tipped over, and the clank and clatter of metallic objects accompanied the expected sound of crinkling paper. Clio went still, staring at it in confusion. Cautiously, she reached for the paper bag, pinched the bottom corner, and upended it. A pair of khaki pants and a gray shirt fell out, along with a black cloth bag with a drawstring—a bag she hadn’t purchased.
Before she could warn him, Lyre picked it up. The contents clinked energetically as he untied the drawstring, pulled it open, and poured a mixture of uncut gems, steel marbles, and arrowheads into his palm.
“What the hell?” he growled.
“I didn’t buy that,” she stammered.
“I know. These are my spells. This is everything … everything I left behind. All the spells I had stashed in my house, my workroom, and a few other locations.”
“Reed,” she whispered.
His sharp stare snapped up. “What?”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you yet. Reed found me at the market. He came to warn you that Samael put a bounty on us.” She looked at the bag in disbelief. “I had no idea he’d slipped that in with my shopping.”
Lyre’s terse suspicion morphed into surprise. “Reed came to warn me? Did he say anything else?”
“Just that he couldn’t stay here any longer.”
He nodded slowly. “He must have snuck out, but his absence won’t go unnoticed for long. I doubt he’ll be able to get away a second time.”
“What’s your relationship like with Reed?” she asked, hesitating over the question. “He seems different from your other brothers.”
Lyre poured the bag’s contents into his lap and sorted through it. “Reed and I worked together a lot since our talents are complementary. He isn’t competitive like the others, so he never had a problem with me.”
Reed seemed to care a lot more than just “not having a problem” with Lyre. She nibbled on her lower lip. “Is he like you? Is he trapped by Chrysalis too?”
“He …” Lyre’s hand paused above a ruby shard. “Reed just likes to weave. He doesn’t care what, or why, or for who. Chrysalis is exactly where he wants to be—the one place where he’ll never run out of weaving projects.”
“He doesn’t care if he’s making evil spells?”
“How the spell is used doesn’t matter to him. He’s all about the weaving—the process of it.” He selected three steel marbles and lined them up on his palm. “Coming all the way here to warn me … it’s more than I would have expected from him.”
“Do you think it’s a trick?”
“Doubt it. Reed is the least deceptive daemon I know.” He arched an eyebrow. “He makes you look like an outright con man.”
“Me? A con man?”
“Con woman,” he corrected with a smirk as he shoveled the spells back into the bag. “Either way, his warning about the bounty means—” A yawn overtook him. “The bounty means we need to—” Another jaw-popping yawn.
She pulled the bag from his hands and stood. “We’re safe here for now. You should sleep for a few more hours.”
He nodded, his eyelids already drooping, and slumped back onto the limp pillow. She cleared off the mattress and tucked their new belongings in the corner. By the time she returned to the bed, he was asleep again, his body shutting down to conserve strength as he recovered from the toll his battle and healing had taken on him.
She hesitated, then brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. He’d used his aphrodesia to make her flee from Ash, proving once again he could control her mind whenever he wanted to. Yet he hadn’t done it to hurt her, to take advantage of her, or to betray her.
He’d done it to save her life. And he’d done it expecting she would never forgive him.
Her fingers slid down his cheek and brushed across his lips—the lips that had kissed her with fierce lust and soft passion. The latter made her heart race, but the former sent a thrill of fear running down her spine.
His soft, sweet charm was one side of him. The brutally aggressive lust was the other side. Gentle and fierce. Charmer and seducer. He was both, and she kept forgetting that.
She brushed her fingers across his lips one more time, memorizing the zing of fear, the terror of his aphrodesia sweeping through her mind and erasing her will. She had to hold on to that fear or she would have no shields left to barricade her heart.
Charmer, seducer … and, if she wasn’t careful, heartbreaker.
Chapter Fourteen
Lyre held his arms out to the sides and waited for Clio’s judgment. Her summer-sky eyes ran over him from head to toe before returning to his face.
She wrinkled her nose. “It looks terrible. Black doesn’t suit you at all.”
“It’s a disguise. It’s not supposed to be flattering.”
“But …” She pursed her lips. “Well, you don’t look like an incubus anymore.”
“That’s the important part.” He glanced at his reflection in the glass balcony door. The illusion that had darkened his hair to raven black and his eyes to the color of tree bark wasn’t doing him any favors, but even a terrible color scheme didn’t take away from his looks that much. “Maybe I should create the illusion of an ugly nose or something.”
“You’re fine. The bounty hunters are looking for a blond guy.” She grabbed a sweater off the bed and tos
sed it at him. “Let’s go before we miss Sabir.”
As he pulled it over his head and drew the hood up, she twisted her hair into a bun and jammed her new hat on top of it. They checked the room one more time, then headed down the stairs. He couldn’t say he would miss the place. The cockroaches would probably miss them, though.
The rain had finally let up, but the street shone with puddles and the air was heavy with the threat of more precipitation. The moment they set foot outside, Lyre’s senses jumped into high gear.
Ash had given him advance warning once, but the draconian wouldn’t extend that mercy a second time. Not after the way their last fight had gone. Women weren’t forgiving of incubi who used aphrodesia on them, but men got damn vicious over it. Having their mind wiped by male sex magic tended to shake them to their very core—and leave them feeling especially vengeful.
And now, according to Reed, he and Clio could expect more mercenary company to show up.
Walking briskly at Clio’s side, he took a moment to marvel at the idea of Reed coming to Brinford to pass on a warning—and to deliver his lost spellwork. That black bag of magic was the source of the complex illusion disguising him. Creating a simple illusion for hair color was easy, but creating one that other daemons couldn’t detect was much harder.
His brother’s visit had come in the nick of time; a few hours later and Clio would have missed him entirely. Lyre appreciated Reed delivering his lost spells, but that wasn’t what had drawn his brother into the city. Nor had he come to deliver a warning—at least not a warning about bounty hunters.
Reed wasn’t the type to go out of his way for anything less than the most dire of circumstances. A bounty was bad, but Lyre was a master weaver. He had more than enough spells to deal with the average mercenary—Ash being an exception, but the draconian wasn’t “average” in any sense of the word.
Reed had come to deliver a different warning, one he hadn’t shared with Clio. Lyre could guess what it was, though. So far, his hunters had come from Hades—reapers, draconians, and now mercenaries. But there was someone else who would be even more brutally determined to see Lyre killed as quickly as possible.