An alluring fragrance drew Clio awake. She inhaled deeply and nuzzled her cheek into a soft pillow. The irresistible scent filled her head, an exotic blend of spices underlaid with an unexpected but delicious hint of cherry. It was heaven. She pulled in another breath as her eyelids fluttered open.

A bedroom? Anxiety pierced the silly cloud of contentment the scent had instilled in her and she pushed up on one elbow, trying to remember where she was. The unfamiliar room was a mess, with books piled by the wall, an unstrung bow standing in the corner, and clothing scattered around—male clothes.

A navy shirt hung half off the bed on the other side as though its owner had pulled it off and thrown it toward the floor. She picked it up, hesitated, then gingerly brought the fabric to her nose. That spicy cherry scent teased her, and a familiar face materialized in her mind’s eye.

Lyre. This shirt and the pillow smelled like him. This was … his bedroom? How had she gotten here?

She frowned at her nymph outfit, so much worse for wear than she remembered. Why was she wearing it? Wait. She’d put it on for Samael’s fancy event at the Hades residence—

Memories slammed through her. The little dragon under the table. The draconian mercenary. The warlord grabbing at him. Blood spraying everywhere. She’d fled, gotten lost in the halls, and wandered until—until someone had grabbed her from behind.

Dulcet.

She leaped from the bed and almost face-planted on the floor. Catching her balance, she looked around wildly. The last thing she remembered was Dulcet leaning over her in a dark cement room with a terrifying metal table in the center. She couldn’t recall anything beyond the cold touch of his magic.

But this wasn’t that room. And it smelled like Lyre, not Dulcet.

She dashed out of the bedroom and down a short hall. Barely seeing the cozy sitting room with a sofa and bookshelves, she locked on the table where a familiar figure was slumped, head resting on one arm, fast asleep.

“Lyre,” she gasped in relief, rushing toward him.

He didn’t react, and as she reached his side, unexpected fear stabbed her, so intense it cut like physical pain. She grabbed his upper arm and squeezed hard.

“Lyre? Lyre!”

She took in the dirt on his clothes, his split knuckles, the tears in his shirt with raw scrapes beneath. Completely losing her head, she gripped his shoulders and yanked him upright.

He slumped limply in the chair, head hanging over the back, arms dangling. Her heart jammed itself into her throat, and she put her cheek against his nose and mouth, waiting to feel his breath on her skin.

Nothing.

“No.” She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse. “Lyre, don’t you dare be dead. Don’t you dare!”

She couldn’t find his pulse. He wasn’t breathing. Panic screamed inside her skull. What did she do? What was she supposed to do?

“Lyre!” she yelled.

Unfamiliar magic pulsated through him. With a violent gasp, his chest heaved outward. His eyes flew open, then rolled back in his head as he convulsed. She grabbed his shoulders and eased him to the floor. Laying his head back, she knelt beside him, tears blurring her vision.

“Lyre! Lyre, are you okay?”

He kept shuddering and gasping, unresponsive to her voice. Clearly, he was not okay. Remembering that throb of magic, she passed her hand across her eyes to bring her asper into focus.

Red-tinted magic spun through his body, the threads pulsing grotesquely in time with his rasping breaths. She’d never seen such a tangle of magic with so many fine lines woven deep through him, hooked into his flesh. She touched his throat just above his shirt collar and stretched her senses out, feeling the shape and purpose of the magic.

A death spell.

But not just a death spell. It was so much worse than that.

Lyre’s lungs heaved, then his breathing weakened. His fingers contorted, dragging across the floor, and his whole body arched. The tendons in his neck stood out, straining against skin that had lost its golden warmth. His breath hissed through his clenched teeth.

Then he slumped to the floor and stopped breathing.

Quaking from head to toe, she kept her hand on his motionless chest and watched the threads of the spell flicker with reddish-gold power. The seconds crawled by, each one more agonizing than the last. Finally, at exactly thirty, the magic pulsed through his body.

He came back to life under her hand, heart hammering and lungs straining. Her fingers tightened around his shirt in furious despair.

A death spell that killed its victim, then brought him back to life to die all over again. And again. And again. It would keep killing and reviving him until his body gave out and his heart could no longer beat.

It was the most revolting magic she’d ever seen. And she didn’t know how to save him from it.

Staring intently, she analyzed the weave. Under her touch, he gasped and trembled as the magic wrung the life from him once more. It was woven into him in a way she’d never seen before, as though his body had absorbed it into his very essence. Her fingers slid down his left arm, following the threads to their source.

She stopped at his wrist. A chalky substance had dried on his skin, something that glistened like silvery powder. A wave of dizziness washed over her. Quicksilver. He’d been doused in a spell woven into quicksilver.

Dulcet must have done this. Lyre had gotten her away from the psychotic incubus, but now … now …

She searched through the weave, desperately seeking a trigger or a flaw or a way to stop it. Lyre slowly, so very slowly, slipped toward death again, and when he quit breathing, she couldn’t stop the tears from flooding her cheeks. She clutched his hand for the soul-rending thirty seconds until his heart launched back to life and he gasped for air.

“Lyre,” she wept softly. “I’m so sorry.”

She couldn’t remove the spell. There was no trigger. No way to disengage or unkey it. It was buried deep in his body, and though she could have torn the magic from his flesh, it wouldn’t save him.

The spell was killing him, but it was also keeping him alive. If she ripped the magic out, she would rip his life out with it. He would die.

Denial spun through her as she again searched the weaving for a different answer. If only she could stop the spell without removing it. If only she could destroy it in an instant, unmake it before it could take his life, erase it—

She jerked upright. Erase it. Unmake it. She didn’t possess that kind of magic. No one did.

But somehow, Lyre had created it.

The spell in the clock, hidden in his workroom. The one sealed under the bookshelf. It ate magic. It could devour the magic from his body without lifting the spell from his flesh first.

“Lyre.” She put her mouth beside his ear. “I know what to do. I can save you. But you have to hold on, okay? You can’t die. You have to hold on until I come back.”

As she leaned over him, his eyelids flicked open. Clouded eyes, amber hazed with dark shadows, met hers and his fingers squeezed her hand painfully. Then his eyes rolled back, and he went limp, panting and shaking.

Letting go of him was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She darted into the bedroom, grabbed a pillow, and tucked it under his head. Crouching, she stroked his cheek, then his lips, feeling his hot breath on her fingers.

“Keep breathing, Lyre,” she whispered. “Keep living. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She ran to the door and found the whole house locked down in heavy wards. Locating the triggers, she unkeyed them one by one, slipped outside, closed the door, and rearmed the wards. She hesitated, terrified he would die while she was gone—die for good.

But if she stayed, he’d have no chance at all.

Whirling around, she sprinted away from the house and into the darkness of Asphodel, counting each passing minute in her head, knowing Lyre had far too few left.

* * *

Asphodel was a maze, but there was one landmark she knew—a tall tower she could see from the inn balcony, that she had viewed up close on the carriage ride to the Hades palace. It rose above the other buildings, and using it as her guide, she ran through the empty streets.

She’d never been alone in the town before, and the eclipse’s deep darkness sucked away the lights of the buildings. Shadows pressed close, shifting and eddying like living things. She ran down a short alley and into a wider street, orienting herself toward the tower again. If she could reach the tower, she could navigate from there. At the gate of the housing complex where Lyre lived, she had cleared her head enough to realize she would never find her way back, so she’d woven a simple tracking beacon into a rock, a spell to guide her return.

A stitch cut into her side but she didn’t slow. She had no idea how much time Lyre had left. The blood magic weave would keep killing him every ten or twenty minutes until he died for good. Who knew how long that would take?

Dulcet, that sick freak. She’d recognized him as a psycho right off, but she would never have imagined such a vile spell. Making your enemy suffer death over and over before actually dying …

“Hey, you!”

At the sudden shout, she stumbled and almost fell. Whirling around, she discovered two daemons standing a dozen feet away from her, dressed in black fatigues with short-cropped hair and reddish-black eyes. Reaper soldiers, though unlike the ones outside Asphodel, these daemons were in glamour. How had they gotten so close?

“A girl?” one muttered as he studied her.

“At least it’s not that damn draconian. The sound of running made me think he’d come back this way.”

The soldier snorted. “You wouldn’t hear him on the move. Besides, he took off clear across the estate toward the nobles’ district.” He focused on Clio. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I—I’m an envoy. I got lost after the party at the palace—”

“That ended hours ago. You’re the envoy of what territory, exactly?”

“Of—of Irida.”

“That’s not a territory.” He glanced questioningly at his comrade, who shook his head.

“It’s …” She gulped. “It’s an … an Overworld … territory.”

They exchanged sharp grins. “I heard we had an Overworlder visiting. So it’s you.”

“I—I need to return to my inn—”

“No, I think we’ll take you back to the Hades residence. Can’t have Overworlders running around in the dark.”

She inched backward. She’d hoped that revealing she was a supposedly important envoy would convince them not to mess with her. Obviously not. She spun on her heel and bolted.

Darkness flashed across her path and she slammed into something hard that hadn’t been there a moment before. Bouncing off, she landed on her backside in the middle of the road.

The guard stood directly in front of her, smirking.

She scrambled to her feet and looked back. The second guard was right behind her. But they’d been a dozen paces away just seconds ago. That guard had appeared in her path out of thin air, materializing as though he’d—

—teleported. Reapers’ caste ability. Teleportation.

Outrunning the soldiers was not going to happen. She lifted her chin with determination.

“Don’t get any ideas,” a soldier said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

“We don’t want to seriously hurt her,” the other corrected.

A spark of red magic flashed across his fingers, and Clio had a mere heartbeat to make the most difficult choice of her life: her half-brother or the incubus who’d saved her.

If she let the soldiers capture her and take her back to the Hades palace, Lyre would die. But if she fought back, she would be sacrificing any chance of accomplishing the mission Bastian had given her. Assuming she survived attacking these soldiers, Hades would eject her from Asphodel and the Underworld. Or they’d imprison, punish, or kill her. Either way, she would fail to get a spell of any kind for Bastian.

As magic spiraled over the soldier’s hand and she blinked her asper into focus, she couldn’t move, torn with indecision. She had to decide now, before that binding spell was ready.

The red light blazed toward her, and she flung her hands up and cast.

The fancy shield spell she’d mimicked from Viol snapped around her, and the soldier’s binding hit it in a sizzle of sparks. Magic twirled around her fingers and she thrust her hand out. With a flash of green light, an identical copy of the soldier’s red binding hit him in the torso. The threads spun around him and he toppled over backward with a surprised yelp.

“The hell—”

She whirled on the second reaper. He sprang back a step, then darkness flashed over him. He disappeared and reappeared again a dozen yards down the street, already casting.

Clio imitated his gestures, following half a second behind and mimicking each thread as it formed. Magic burst from his hands in a swirling discharge, and hers erupted immediately after. The two spells collided in the space between them and exploded. The boom rocked the surrounding buildings.

Shouts echoed from nearby. Daemons were coming to investigate.

She needed to get away. She needed to move fast—and that reaper had just shown her the fastest possible way to travel.

She slapped her palms to her chest and focused on the reaper across from her as he began another spell. But she wasn’t watching that. She fixed her attention on the shimmer of red magic over his body, the essence of his energy invisible to everyone but a nymph.

Digging her fingers into her sternum, she gathered the look and feel of that energy. And she mimicked it.

Her aura flashed from green to red, and cold shivered across her skin as her energy shifted, becoming that of the reaper’s. Unaware of what she’d done, the soldier lifted his hands to bring them down in an explosive cast that would inflict serious damage.

She stepped forward. Icy magic plunged over her body, and the world vanished. Airless black oblivion closed around her, then the world returned in a pop of light and sound. The guard’s broad back filled her vision, his arms still raised, ready to cast—except his target had disappeared.

She slammed both hands into his back and cast the same binding spell she’d learned from the other soldier. Bands of magic whipped over him and he fell on his face with a muffled curse.

Holding tight to the cold energy of her new aura, she teleported again. It was ridiculously simple, at least when she could see where she wanted to go. She just picked the spot, stepped forward into that nothingness, and appeared where she wanted to be.

She teleported fifty yards at a time, flashing down the streets until she reached the base of the tower. Stopping there, she gasped for air, trembling as exhaustion dragged at her limbs. Her aura shivered back to green as she lost her hold on the mimicked energy. Mimicking a caste ability wasn’t something she could memorize and use again like a spell, because a caste ability wasn’t a spell at all, but inherent magic. If she couldn’t see and sense the other daemon’s aura, she couldn’t match her energy to his.

She braced an arm on a wall, breathing heavily. Damn. Teleporting was even more tiring than sprinting the same distance. A fuzzy ache in her head warned she’d depleted much of her magic reserves.

Pushing away from the wall, she jogged along the canal’s edge. Somewhere behind her, the fallen soldiers had probably been discovered. Would the second guard understand what she had done?

Reaching an intersection of streets, she looked around. A few blocks away on her left was the inn. On her right was the bridge to the business district of Asphodel—to Chrysalis.

She didn’t have time to go back to the inn to look for Kassia and Eryx. Her bodyguards could be anywhere. She was on her own—but no sooner did she turn toward the bridge than someone shouted, “Clio! Clio!”

Kassia came charging down the street, Eryx on her heels. Her friend’s eyes were black and her expression was a mixture of fury and relief.

“Clio!” Kassia skidded to a stop in front of her. “We saw you from the balcony. Where were you? Where did you go? What happened?”

“We can talk about that later. Come on!” Gesturing for them to follow, Clio ran across the bridge and into the business district.

Increasing his pace, Eryx jogged alongside her. “Where are we going?”

“We’re breaking into Chrysalis.”

Kassia gasped.

“To steal magic?” Eryx demanded eagerly. “Yes! It’s about damn time!”

“No!” Kassia grabbed Clio’s arm and stopped her in the middle of the street. “Are you insane? You can’t break into Chrysalis!”

Eryx slid to a halt and sprang back to Clio’s side. “She obviously has a plan, and I’m all for lifting their best magic instead of waiting for one measly death spell.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Kassia snarled. “We’re trapped in the Underworld. If we break into Chrysalis—”

Clio was about to drag them both back into motion when Eryx held up his hand, the gesture startling Kassia into silence.

“We aren’t trapped here, Kass.” He fixed somber crimson eyes on his cousin. “I wasn’t supposed to reveal this short of an emergency, but I know of a ley line in the valley. Not the one we came through, but a different one.”

Clio’s jaw dropped. “How do you know that?”

He pointed toward the unseen mountains. “The ley line we came through is small and heavily guarded, but there’s another ley line at the opposite end of the valley. So we can break into Chrysalis, get some spells, then head straight out of Asphodel.”

“That’s perfect,” Clio said before Kassia could fire questions at Eryx. “Let’s go!”

She launched back into a sprint, urgency pounding in her head. How long had it been since she’d left Lyre?

Kassia fell into stride beside Clio, Eryx a step behind her. “What exactly is your plan?”

“I’m stealing a spell, but it isn’t for Bastian. It’s for Lyre.”

“What?” they both yelled.

“Keep your voices down!” Clio glared at them over her shoulder, slowing to a jog as Chrysalis came into sight. In a hurried whisper, she told them about Dulcet abducting her, Lyre rescuing her, and the spell that was killing him. “He has a special weave in his workroom that can save his life. I’m getting it for him.”

“This is all to save that worthless incubus?” Eryx growled, fury darkening his irises. “What about your mission? If we break in now, we can’t do it again later.”

“I know, but he saved my life. He fought his own brother for me.”

“Bastian’s mission doesn’t matter anymore,” Kassia cut in before Eryx could respond. “A Chrysalis weaver kidnapped Clio. It’s obviously not safe here.”

He bared his teeth but Clio hushed them both as she led them through the shadows. The front entrance of Chrysalis was dark and only a few windows glowed with lights. The building was closed. Good.

She led them to a side door and reached for the metal.

“Clio,” Kassia whispered. “Are you sure about this? He’s an Underworlder. An enemy.”

“He was never an enemy. He’s just another victim of this evil place.” She pressed her hand to the door and dissolved the ward with a single shot of magic. She was getting better at parsing Chrysalis’s weaves as her instincts tuned to the common patterns and constructs they used.

They slipped into the dim corridor, and Clio cast a cloaking spell over herself. Kassia and Eryx copied her, following in silence. She was kind of surprised Eryx was still accompanying her. She half expected him to storm off.

Slinking through the halls as swiftly as she dared, Clio headed in the general direction of the lobby. They found it empty and silent, the reception desk abandoned. A sleepy quiet filled the building, lulling her into a false sense of security, but she didn’t relax. She had seen lights in the windows. Some weavers were still working tonight.

They hastened toward the stairs and up to the second level, then down another hall. With her asper, Clio could see any spells that might stop them. Chrysalis was too reliant on their magic. They didn’t even have security guards.

After three wrong turns, Clio found the right corridor. She remembered it well—mainly, hitting the floor on her butt after Lyre had activated his wards. He’d been so furious. She hoped he would forgive her for breaking into his spell cache a second time.

The door to his workroom glowed bright gold, layered with weavings. Eryx and Kassia spread out to stand guard while Clio worked. Two she disarmed, but the third one was blood magic—keyed to his blood to prevent anyone else from disarming it. She had no choice but to destroy it instead, pulling apart the weak spots in the weave that only she could see. Lyre really didn’t want anyone in his workroom while he was gone.

As she pushed the door open, Eryx and Kassia rejoined her. They exchanged a few quick words, then Kassia turned and went back down the hall.

“Where’s she going?” Clio asked distractedly as she stepped into the dark room and felt along the wall for the light switch.

“She’s standing guard for us. The other direction is a dead end, so I’m staying with you.”

She found the switch and smacked it. Light bloomed. She almost asked Eryx why Kassia was acting as a sentry and not him, then she realized Kassia was probably equally worried about Eryx taking off on his own.

“Don’t touch anything,” she told him. “There are defensive wards everywhere.”

Leaving him in the middle of the room, she rushed to the bookshelf and pulled the books out. The panel was visible, devoid of any wards just as she’d left it. She popped it off and shoved her hand inside.

It was empty.

No! She’d assumed the lack of spells meant Lyre hadn’t noticed she’d broken them. But he had. And instead of respelling the hiding place, he’d moved the clock.

She lurched backward, head whipping side to side as she fought to keep her panic under control. Where had he moved it? Where would he have put it? She raced to the desk, crawled under it, and disarmed the spell on the tile, but the clock wasn’t among his cache of emergency magic either.

She almost backed out, leaving the tile open, when she realized Eryx was crouched a few steps behind her, watching. She pushed the tile back into place and rearmed it, then scrambled out.

“What’s in there?”

“Just some basic defensive magic,” she lied as she circled the room. “The spell I need eats magic—destroys weavings.”

“Is that different from dissolving a spell?”

“It’s the difference between dousing a fire and making the fire vanish like it was never there.”

“Why didn’t you mention a spell like that before now?”

She stiffened at his accusatory tone. “It’s not a weapon, let alone a war spell. It would hardly scare Ra into leaving Irida alone.” She pressed her hands to her forehead, unable to think through the burning urgency in her head. “I can’t find it. He moved it. I can’t see any weavings where he might have hidden something.”

“Well, if you can’t see it, then the magic isn’t here.”

Eryx was right. She wasn’t missing the magic—there was no magic. Lyre knew she could see any ward he created, so he must have hidden the clock in a way that wouldn’t tip her off. Something that didn’t require a protective ward.

She stared around the room again. Where could he have hidden it? She scanned the table, the bookshelves, the sofa and coffee table, the heaps of junk in the corners—

Her attention hooked on a pile of books. It looked different from what she remembered. Rushing over, she shoved books aside, tossing them carelessly to the floor until she reached the bottom of the pile where a metal box was buried.

Grinning—that sneaky incubus wasn’t sneaky enough to foil her—she gave the box a quick examination. Seeing no magic, not even a lock, she popped the lid open. A puff of white powder erupted from the interior.

She gasped in surprise—then Eryx grabbed her by the hair and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose. The box tumbled to the floor, spilling more powder as he dragged her to the center of the room.

He removed his hand, letting her breathe. Dizziness rolled through her and she felt like her head was stuffed with cotton.

“Clio, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

She nodded woozily. “What was that?”

“Some kind of drug in the box—probably intended to knock you unconscious. You should be fine in a minute.”

“Holy crap,” she muttered, rubbing her palms on her skirt in case they had powder on them. “Lyre is serious about keeping that spell locked up.”

Eryx grunted. Holding an arm over his face, he plucked out the cloth bag. He shook it off, wiped it on his pants a few times, then handed it to her. She opened it and peeked inside. The altered clock lay within, its gemstones gleaming.

“This is it.” She rose to her feet, wobbled, then steadied. The powder’s effects were already wearing off, though she hated to imagine what would have happened if Eryx hadn’t been so quick. “Let’s go.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “Yes, I—”

He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face the door. Stepping close behind her, he gripped her upper arms, squeezing painfully, and lowered his face close to hers.

“Good. Now that we have the spell you want, you’re going to find magic for Prince Bastian.”

“W-what? No, we—”

His fingers bit into her arms. “We came here for Chrysalis’s best warfare spells, and we aren’t leaving without them.”

“We don’t have time to—”

“Look at it this way, Clio. If you find good weavings for Bastian fast enough, we can save your boy-toy. Otherwise, I’ll make sure you never get this spell to him.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“We aren’t leaving Asphodel empty-handed.”

She jerked her arms and he let her go. Jamming the clock spell into her wide fabric belt, she faced Eryx. “You are my bodyguard, Eryx, and I will not be bullied by—”

His crimson eyes were like bloodstained ice. “My loyalty belongs to Prince Bastian, not the king’s bastard daughter of a whore.”

She stumbled back as though he’d physically hit her, pain ricocheting through her chest.

Light exploded from the doorway—a fiery line that blazed across the floor straight for Eryx. The spell hit him square on and solidified into glowing ropes that sizzled with electric power. They rushed over him and he hit the floor, unconscious and bound in magic.

“I almost wish I’d heard more,” a deep voice purred. “That sounded like a fascinating conversation.”

Clio took an alarmed step back as Madrigal strolled into the room, his hands tucked in the pockets of his lab coat, a smile playing on his perfect lips. Shadows slid across his amber irises.

“Bastard daughter of a whore,” he repeated in a croon, “fathered by an indiscreet king. So that would make you … a little nymph princess.”