I was the last to go through the hatch, right after I threw more flaming balls at the daemons below. I then pushed the hatch door closed and sealed it with my fire. It would take considerable effort for them to break through.

“This gives us a couple of minutes, at least,” I said, following my team through the ascending tunnel. It was narrow, cool, and dark, providing me with much-needed freshness after hours spent simmering in Draconis.

“There’s the cloaking spell.” Vesta pointed at a shimmering wall ahead. “We can go through, but we won’t be able to get back in without daemon blood.”

“That’s cool. There will be plenty of them looking for us on the surface,” Jax breathed.

“The upside is that we now have a cloaking spell of our own, thanks to Laughlan,” Hansa added.

Harper was the first to disappear through the wall, and the rest of us followed. There were two guards stationed outside, but, by the time I made it through, they were already dead—courtesy of Pheng-Pheng, who pulled her sword out of the second daemon and kept running by my side.

Vesta moved ahead, leaving Laughlan with Blaze. “I’ll take us back to the library. We can put the cloaking spell up there, and have a space to ourselves,” she said. “The daemons won’t think to look for us there, at this point.”

“Yeah, they’ll expect us to get the hell out of dodge, not go back,” Harper replied.

“Do we have what we need for the cloaking spell?” Hansa asked, pulling one of the scrolls out and handing it over to Vesta.

“Yeah, minus a couple of herbs, but I can get those from anywhere here,” Vesta said, briefly glancing at the list. “The city is riddled with plants.”

We ran through the abandoned city of Kerentrith, invisible under the moonlight, until we reached the palace once more. We darted up the stairs and found the library, gathering in the farthest corner, close to the secret tunnel we’d used to get into Draconis in the first place.

Harper scanned the area with her True Sight, while the rest of us took a moment to catch our breaths. We’d made it.

“Yeah, daemons are coming out from all over the city, but I don’t see them coming around here just yet,” Harper murmured, then leaned into Caspian, who put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight.

I sat next to Laughlan on a small wooden bench, looking at Blaze through my red lens. He looked exhausted, but still very much on edge. This wasn’t over. Not yet. Dammit, not by a longshot.

“I’ll be right back. I know where to get the rest of the plants we need for the cloaking spell,” Vesta whispered. “You guys decide the perimeter while I’m out. We need a clear path to the tunnel, but we also need to be out of the way, in case daemons start patrolling this area.”

I could hear daemons barking orders in the distance, beyond the palace walls. They were frantic, scrambling to get us before we left Kerentrith. Nevertheless, Cayn had already surprised us once. Nothing stopped me from thinking he might do it again.

“What if they know we’re still here, and with no intention to leave?” I asked, looking at Jax and Hansa.

“Right now, it’s fifty-fifty for all of us,” Jax replied. “We need a plan before we get out, and, most importantly, we need the rest of the Druid delegation.”

“Hence the cloaking spell. It’s like a gift from the Daughters,” Hansa muttered, checking the entire library area with a soft frown. “I say we stick to this corner. It’s secluded and out of the way, with the tunnel just over there.” She pointed at the hidden door in the corner.

Vesta returned with a handful of leaves and green stems, smirking with satisfaction. “They’re going nuts out there, but they’re headed for the edges of the city. My guess is they think we’re trying to run as far away as we can,” she said.

“They might still track us here,” I said, voicing a thought I’d been carrying with me since Cayn had first shown himself in Laughlan’s cell.

“I doubt it,” Vesta replied, handing the herbs over to Jax and Hansa, who were already getting all the ingredients together in a pile on the floor. “I used some bellaris to throw the pit wolves off our scent. It grows heavily around here, so I squeezed as many leaves and blossoms as I could, while moving around to get those herbs. Once touched, the bellaris lets out a faint smell. We can barely catch it, but for those with sensitive noses, like the pit wolves, it’s extremely powerful and confusing. We’ll be okay. Nobody will track us here.”

“Smart fae.” Fiona chuckled.

Jax used one of my lighters to set the entire mixture on fire. It burned fast and hot, leaving behind a mound of dark blue ashes—and still wasn’t the strangest thing I’d seen all day. He then scooped the ashes into his hands and traced a line around the perimeter, which covered an area of roughly fifty square feet. It was enough for all of us to sit and sleep comfortably, flanked also by the tall wooden bookshelves.

“It needs blood from all of us,” Hansa said, then took out a small knife and punctured her thumb, dripping silvery blood into the remaining pile of dark blue ashes on the floor.

We all repeated the move, dropping our own blood on top. Jax was the last, following up with the chant from the spell—the power of the word needed to seal the space and activate the swamp witch magic. The air glimmered blue around us, as the faux white marble wall rose up to the ceiling.

“Now, let’s see if it works,” I said, then walked over to the wall and touched it. It felt hard and cold, and very much real.

I nicked my thumb again and pressed it against the white marble. The entire surface rippled, and I walked through it. From the outside, it looked as though the library ended there, fifty feet before the original corners on the west side of the hall.

Perfect. At least we have a safe space.