A long pause met me on the other line. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Why don’t I ask him?” I replied. “Because I’m trying to figure out who the fuck to trust, and—”
Shai grabbed the phone from my hand and turned on the speaker. “Legion, it’s Shai. Someone turned me in to the mortal police in Sudbury. Now that someone was either you or Kas. We all know someone from our team gave advanced warning to the hunters, the cops. So if you have any knowledge of Kas’s abilities, now is the time to tell us. How good is he at creating illusions? Can he glamour himself to look like another person?”
Legion waited so long to answer, I almost thought he’d hung up. “Shai,” he said softly, at last. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Straight from the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord. Can you answer my question?”
“Kas is extremely powerful, yes,” he said at last. “He’s an artist. You’ve seen his work. His illusions are as skilled as his drawings. Yes. He can appear as another person. He really loathes the entire concept of the monarchy. But I have a hard time believing—”
“Legion,” she interrupted, cutting him off. “Sorry, but that’s all we needed to know.”
“It’s not Orion,” I shouted. “It’s Kas, Legion! Pretending to be him. He created the illusion. I’m going to guess you haven’t seen the two of them in the same place at the same time today.”
“I haven’t,” he admitted.
“Meet us outside the City of Thorns,” said Shai. “Where the secret entrance leads underground. Stay away from Kas and King Orion. We’re going to need to work together.”
“And Legion?” I shouted. “I’m going to need more of that antidote.”
42
ORION
I lay on the cold stone floor of my own cell, my hands bound behind my back. The caustic poison slid through my veins. In a few days, the poison wouldn’t matter. In the dungeons, outside the city walls, my magic would ebb from me.
I’d be locked in here once more—my old home.
Kas had bound my wrists behind my back and gagged my mouth. I’d left my cottage before dawn because I’d wanted to bring Rowan back my favorite fresh bread. I didn’t need guards—at least, that’s what I’d thought.
But all it had taken was a few darts fired from a distance, and I’d fallen to my knees.
I remembered Kasyade, all those years ago. When the mortals had taken me from my home and marched me past Molor’s severed head on my way out, Kasyade had been standing there, watching it all. An older boy, a friend of Molor’s, he’d watched it unfold. I’d screamed at him for help, and he’d done nothing. Hadn’t even looked upset. He’d just watched.
He’d always been competitive with Molor, resentful of his aristocratic background. I remember thinking that Kasyade was delighted to see his friend’s head ripped off.
Kasyade must think I was going to end his life at some point for that.
And he was probably right.
The cloth in my mouth smelled of some kind of oil, and I wanted to vomit, but that would make the situation considerably worse. The effect of the Ladon venom and hawthorn was only getting more painful, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be conscious here, or if I’d ever wake again.
The worst fucking thing was that Kas had probably learned about this particular poison from the demon hunters after Rowan had been captured.
A tiny light burned in my chest. Would Rowan know the truth?
Kas said she wouldn’t. He said she’d come to rip out my heart, that she didn’t really trust me anymore.
From the damp floor, my gaze slid over the carvings in the walls. It had always been so quiet in here during the decades when they didn’t even bring us food.
It had just been Ashur and me, starving together in cells side by side.
My gaze flicked to the noose hanging across from my cell, where I’d last seen my mother. They’d left her there so long…
Ashur had shown up right after she’d died, I think. Mom and I had been the last ones, then Ashur. My thoughts were growing foggy, and I couldn’t remember where he’d been before she’d died.
And his face—I couldn’t remember that, either. He’d been strong, and then he’d grown weak. He’d lost his mind. But every time I tried to remember his expression as he was dragged away to his death, I only saw my own—an agonized, ravaged visage. My own.