“We have to warn Aidas,” Hunt said, squeezing her hand. Bryce looked at Rigelus once more—at his smirk of triumph at outwitting them—
And with a shove of her power, she teleported herself and Hunt out of the palace.
Right to the chaos of the hills beyond the city.
* * *
Ruhn and Lidia raced along the palace corridors, veiled in his shadows.
They’d found no sign of her sons. Nothing in the dungeons, the sight of which had given Ruhn such a jolt of pure terror he had nearly dropped their concealing shadows. And nothing in any of the holding cells. They’d made their way through the palace as quickly as they could while staying undetected. Dec had disabled many of the cameras, and Ruhn’s shadows took care of the rest. But after twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Ruhn grabbed Lidia’s arm before they could race down yet another hallway.
“We need to stop and reconsider where they might be,” Ruhn said, breathing hard.
“They’re here—he’s got them here,” Lidia snarled, struggling against his grip.
Ruhn held firm, though. “We can’t keep running around blindly. Think: Where would Pollux take them?”
She panted, eyes wide with panic, but took a breath. Another.
And that cold, Hind’s mask slid over her face. “I know how to find them,” she said. And Ruhn didn’t question her as she took off again, this time heading back down the stairs, down, down, down until—
The heat and humidity hit him first. Then the smell of salt.
The one thousand mystics of the Asteri slumbered in their sunken tubs, in regimented lines between the pillars of the seemingly endless hall.
“Traitor,” a withered, veiled female hissed from a desk in front of the doors, rising to her feet.
Lidia pulled out her handgun and sent a bullet through the female’s skull without hesitation. The blast rocked like thunder through the hall, but the mystics didn’t stir.
Ruhn stared at Lidia, at the place where the old female had been standing, at the blood now sprayed on the stones—
But Lidia was already heading for the nearest tank, for the controls beside it. She began typing. Then moved to the next mystic, then the next, and the next.
“We don’t have long until someone comes down here to investigate that gunshot,” Ruhn warned. But Lidia kept moving from tank to tank, and he peered at the first monitor to see the question she’d written. Where are Lidia Cervos’s sons?
She stopped typing at the seventh mystic, and stalked along the rows of tubs.
Ruhn moved to the doorway to keep watch, hiding himself in shadows as he monitored the hall, the stairs at their far end. They’d be lucky if it took even a minute for inquiring ears to get down here—
Lidia gasped. Ruhn whirled toward her, but she was already running.
“Pollux has got them under the palace,” she said as she reached the door and raced out, Ruhn running alongside her.
“Under?” Ruhn asked, trailing her down the stairs.
“In the hall with the firstlight core that your sister discovered—under the archives.”
“Lidia,” Ruhn said, grabbing her arm. “It has to be a trap. To have them at the core—”
She pointed the gun at his head. “I’m going. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. But I’m going.”
Ruhn held up his hands. “I know, and I’m going with you, but we have to think through the—”
She was already sprinting again, the gun back at her side. The castle had filled with sound now, a cacophony of shouting, scared people trying to get out as fast as possible. It masked the sound of their creeping about, but … Lidia was frantic—desperate. Which made for a dangerous ally, Hind or no. She’d get herself killed, and her sons, too.
He couldn’t let her jeopardize herself like that. If anyone was going to put themselves in that lethal danger …
It’d be him.
Ruhn vaulted down the stairs behind Lidia. And when he caught up to her, he clicked the safety off his gun.
Lidia heard that click and halted. Turned to him—slow, disbelieving. She didn’t glance at the gun. She already knew it was there. Her eyes were on his. Unreadable, cold. The eyes of the Hind.
Ruhn rasped, “I can’t let you get yourself killed.”
“I will never forgive you for this,” she said, voice like ice itself. “Never.”
“I know,” Ruhn said. And fired.
One shot, right to her thigh.
She shouted in pain as she crumpled, the bullet passing through the wound and ricocheting off the stairs behind her, the thunder of the gun and her scream spinning into a chorus that shredded his soul. A chorus that, thankfully, was muffled by the chaos unfolding levels above.