I took my time with each wing of the palace. I memorized every hall, every set of stairs, and every corridor, down to the last detail. I made mental notes of the guards’ movements, noticing their patterns and routes throughout the palace. Most importantly, I identified two areas of roughly fifty square yards that I could not see through, even with my True Sight.

Shaytan and a couple of his advisers were in the east wing, in his throne room—a superb, enormous space with gilded panels and soft, red velvet curtains covered in gold embroidery and delicate gemstones. Farther down from his throne room, five of the seven princes were chatting around a long, rectangular dinner table, as daemon servants loaded their plates with strips of raw meat. At the end of the table, four Imen were bound to their chairs, watching in horror as their captors talked and laughed over dinner. I had a feeling that the Imen’s souls were meant for dessert.

A shudder ran through me, and chills traveled down my spine. I couldn’t wait to run the princes’ throats through with my swords.

I shifted my focus back to the areas that I couldn’t see through. They were basically two large metallic boxes—I assumed they’d been cast from meranium, judging by their polished finish and peculiar shade of gray. Whether it was a charm or something else, I couldn’t get past them.

“I think I know where they are,” I muttered, then fumbled through my backpack for some chalk. I always kept some with me, in case Patrik needed it for an impromptu spell. “There are two small sections in the palace that I can’t see through. I spotted them before, when we were running away from the crowd, but I didn’t get a chance to study them properly.”

“Could they be charmed in any way? Swamp witch magic, maybe?” Hansa replied.

“Could be,” I answered, then got down on my knees and started drawing a rough schematic of the palace, marking all the key areas and possible access routes to the meranium boxes. “This is the main entrance into the palace.”

I drew a tiny X on the stylized map, then drew dotted lines to mark two ways in, reaching through both the east and the west wings, before they met in the middle of the south wing.

“I’m guessing you want us to split up?” Jax asked.

“Yes,” I replied, circling the locations of the meranium boxes on both sides, along with a number of X’s, representing the guards’ positions throughout the palace. “They could either be here… or here. Our best bet is to cover both sides simultaneously. One of us will come out with Caia and Blaze. The king is here, talking to… counselors, I guess. The princes, or at least five of them, are in here, enjoying dinner. They are also about to feast on the souls of four Imen. I would love nothing more than to chop their horned heads off, but Caia and Blaze are our priority.”

“I agree,” Caspian said, and I heard him moving closer to me. “Harper and I will take the west side, and Jax, you and Hansa should take the east wing.”

“There are approximately three hundred yards from the nearest set of stairs to the meranium boxes on both sides,” I added, drawing slim lines as I further explained the best routes through Shaytan’s palace. “From what I could see, there are plenty of archways, massive sculptures, large decorative objects, and curtains mounted throughout the hallways and corridors, giving us a plethora of hiding places along the way. We can check both meranium boxes simultaneously.”

“Which floor? Because that palace is huge,” Hansa muttered.

“The second floor. They’re both on the second floor, so at least we have that working for us.” I sighed. “There was no sign of Blaze and Caia anywhere else. My instinct tells me they are where I cannot see them.”

“And what’s that thick dot you drilled in the middle of the south wing?” Jax asked.

“Well, since we have no means of communicating with each other,” I explained, “I figured we could use this as our meeting spot. It’s a huge, floor-to-ceiling totem, made entirely out of gold. Its figures have large, gemstone eyes. You cannot miss it.”

“How long do you think this will take us?” Caspian replied.

A couple of moments went by as I waited for Jax or Hansa to give us some estimates, simply wondering if their figures matched mine. I wanted to keep it under an hour, a basic in-and-out operation.

“It could be anything between thirty minutes and four hours,” Jax said. “It depends on how smoothly it all goes in there. If we get in with no hurdles, and we get to the meranium boxes, we have to assume that there will be guards inside, along with some sturdy swamp witch magic to deal with, before we can get Blaze and Caia out.”

“To be honest,” Hansa chimed in, “I would like for us to take some time, at least half an hour to forty-five minutes, to survey the interior of that palace and make some mental notes as to what goes on in there. The more information we can gather on our enemies, while we are in there, the better and easier it will be for us to organize future strikes against Shaytan and his people.”

“You make a fair point,” I conceded. “As eager as I am to rescue Blaze and Caia, I agree that we should move slowly. Not just for the purpose of observation, but also to be cautious. There are plenty of red lenses in that palace, waiting to nab us.”

“Speaking of which,” Jax said, “we should definitely get our hands on some of those lenses going forward. We’ll have better opportunities for that. We are invisible, and perfectly capable of lifting them off the daemons without physically engaging them.”

“Sure thing, Jax. Just don’t tell the others that you turned us into pickpockets,” I quipped.

Some of the tension around us had already started to dissipate. We had a plan, and we had a clear map of the palace interior. There were plenty of enemies to avoid along the way, but we had what felt like an accurate idea of where our friends were being kept.

It was part of our nature, as GASP agents, to not let any situation bring us down to the point where we couldn’t make light of it. As long as we could joke about it, our mindset was positively calibrated for success. The moment I allowed darkness to eat away at me and my resolve was the moment of absolute failure.

And there is no room for failure in this wretched city.