About half an hour later, Zane brought us to the meranium box. It looked weird from the outside, lodged inside the obsidian wall in an adjacent chamber. We were hidden behind a large pit wolf statue, waiting for the guards to change.

I leaned forward, just enough to get a better look inside the chamber. It was an empty space, except for the meranium box and the four soldiers armed with rapiers and red lenses, which they hadn’t put on yet. Zane walked in just as four more daemons left, splitting into pairs and going in opposite directions down the hallway.

My True Sight didn’t work on the meranium box, not even from thirty feet away. But deep down I knew that Caia and Blaze were in there. My instinct was screaming at me.

“How’s it going?” Zane asked in a casual tone, walking over to one of the guards, and setting our attack plan in motion.

“My lord.” The daemon nodded respectfully. “All good. No signs of the outsiders.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” he replied. “I get the feeling that you won’t see any… signs.”

“We are ready for them,” another guard said, keeping his chin up in defiance. “Besides, all the guards outside are actively patrolling. We will get them, sooner or later.”

“What can I say?” Zane shrugged nonchalantly, feigning disinterest as he threw me a glance over his shoulder. “I appreciate your confidence, but, like I said, I doubt that you will see them coming…”

He chuckled. That was the signal phrase that Caspian and I had been waiting for. We’d already agreed on it, fifteen minutes earlier, with Zane. We both hurried out, quietly taking up positions in front of the first two guards, while Zane was already facing the third, with the fourth to his right.

I didn’t look straight at mine, to avoid him catching a glimpse of my eyes, given the faulty invisibility spell. We’d moved so fast that they hadn’t even noticed the air rippling around us.

But all four of them looked somewhat confused, frowning at Zane.

“What do you mean, my lord?” the daemon in front of me asked.

“I’m just saying, you guys need to pay more attention. I thought the king ordered you all to wear your red lenses at all times.” Zane shook his head in disappointment.

The daemon to his right cursed under his breath and fumbled with his lens, mounting it over his eye. He stilled, staring right at us, as the others prepared to put theirs on, as well. With lightning speed, I drove my twin swords through my daemon’s throat, while Caspian beheaded his with one swift move.

The one facing Zane didn’t stand a chance, either. He dropped to his knees, gurgling blood, as Zane pulled his long knife from his chest. Before the fourth guard could make a move, I dashed over and brought my swords down.

He was fast enough to block one of them with his cuffed forearm, but he couldn’t stop the other from digging into his left shoulder. He growled from the pain, but I didn’t give him the chance to counterattack. In the rage of the moment, I sank my fangs into his throat and tore it out, and he fell backward.

Arterial spray shot out, and he desperately tried to stop the enormous amount of blood gushing out of him, but ten seconds later, he gave his last breath. I licked my lips and tasted daemon blood.

“Well, that was harsh!” Zane exclaimed, staring at me in disbelief.

“It seemed easier from that angle.” I shrugged, then wiped the rest of the blood from my chin with my sleeve. I couldn’t afford to be spotted because of a blood smear. “Can you see it? Is there any left on me?”

Zane squinted, one eye narrowed through a red lens, then shook his head. “I have to say, I like your style.”

“You and me both,” Caspian replied, blinking rapidly, his eyebrows arched with surprise. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” I gave them both a faint smirk, then shifted my focus to the meranium box in front of us.

Its surface was perfectly polished, a smooth and reflective gloss that showed only one figure—Zane, as Caspian and I were still very much invisible. And beyond that layer of metal, impervious to my True Sight, were my friends.

At the center of the cube facing us, at approximately my height, was a square hatch. It looked barely big enough for me to go through. I reached out to touch it, but Zane slapped my hand away.

“There’s swamp witch magic at work here,” he said, and my scowl faded quickly. “You’re of no use right now. Let me take care of this, then you can hug and kiss your friends, or whatever.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Deactivating the magic keeping your friends’ fires at bay.”

He leaned forward toward the metal surface and whispered something under his breath. Hundreds of swamp witch symbols lit up, incandescent charms embedded into the meranium. Zane was right—I wouldn’t have been able to break the spell. I recognized most of the pictograms from my earlier studies of the swamp witches’ tome, back on Calliope, but I didn’t have the knowledge necessary to stop it.

It was time to let the prince of daemons do his thing, and rid us of the last obstacle standing between me and my friends.

Blaze, Caia, hang in there… I’m coming.