Clio stopped at the wide door, its steel handle gleaming in the light of the spell crystals. The corridor was empty except for her and Lyre. The booming ruckus outside—Eliya and Ezran’s distraction—had gone quiet.

She couldn’t hear anything from the level below either, and she didn’t know if that was good or bad. She wished they hadn’t left Ash to fight the wraith alone.

With Lyre standing rigidly beside her, she stretched her hand toward the door. The ward darkened under her fingers, disarmed by a single spark of her magic. All the magic in this tower—web after ward after trap after alarm—would have stopped anyone but a mimic. Even Lyre, who could probably have broken through the wards, wouldn’t have been fast enough.

No intruder should have ever made it this far. Gulping down her twisting stomach, she pushed the door open.

The change from white marble to warm granite took her by surprise. A round vestibule with carved pillars and elaborate buttresses welcomed visitors. She cautiously stepped inside and turned to the open archway.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but not this.

The spacious room was constructed entirely of speckled brown stone, and an obsidian inlay in the floor formed a symbol matching the one on Lyre’s cheekbone. The high ceilings arched into domes, and sconces in the walls held, not harsh light spells, but oil lamps that gave off a soft, flickering glow.

Cabinets and shelves lined the walls, filled with stacks of everything imaginable—papers, books, spells, weapons, weaving tools, and random trinkets that might have been souvenirs from across the Underworld. Worktables with chairs or stools were scattered around, some empty, some buried in half-finished work. On one side, the room rose several steps to a platform beside the vertical, slit-like windows. Cozy furniture was arranged around a low table where a book sat open as though waiting for someone’s return.

Under different circumstances, she would have been delighted to explore those cabinets or sit by the windows with a book and a cup of tea. The room was used, lived in, comfortably worn—far different from the stark white halls of Chrysalis. Which was the better representation of the Rysalis family? Lyre’s workroom had been similar to this—a cluttered, welcoming mess.

Opposite the windows, an archway led into another room. Lyre moved silently toward it, pausing at the threshold, but the protective ward was already dark and inactive.

The antechamber beyond was constructed of the same granite, but it was empty of furniture. On one wall, another archway offered a glimpse of an expansive library. A third doorway led into a dim hallway. And the final wall also held a door, but a very different one.

The circular vault entrance was set in a colossal stone slab, and it was so heavily spelled that it glowed even without her asper. Layers upon layers of weavings crisscrossed the stone door, and the anchor lines of the weave had been physically carved into it. She belatedly realized why the Rysalis level was all granite—it was a significantly harder stone than marble and would hold, and deflect, magic far better.

“If he’s stashed the KLOC anywhere,” Lyre whispered, “I’m betting it’s in there.”

She nodded. “Should we check the rest of the level first?”

“It’ll be all storage and living quarters. This is where the best magic and the secret records are kept.”

Stepping up to the vault, she began a careful study. “This is the most complex weaving I’ve ever seen. There are elements to this that I can’t … I’m not sure they make sense, even with asper.”

“Don’t rush,” he encouraged her. “Take your time.”

But they didn’t have a lot of time. She leaned closer, squinting as a headache built behind her eyes. So many layers full of tricks and traps and backup weaves to take over if the main ones failed. There had to be a method to disarm it, but the way it was embedded into the carved stone made it seem as permanent—and unbreakable—as the granite itself.

“Blood magic,” she whispered, finally finding the right constructs. “It’s keyed to someone’s blood, but there’s something strange about it. It’s linked to one person but not … a specific person?”

“How does that work?” Lyre muttered, shifting his grip on his bow.

A purring incubus voice that didn’t belong to Lyre responded.

“It’s probably too sophisticated for you to grasp, brother.”

At the end of the corridor, Madrigal stepped into sight—his bow already drawn. The string twanged as he released it, the deadly arrow shooting for Lyre’s chest.

Lyre snatched the arrow out of the air, flipped it onto his bow, and fired it back. Madrigal sprang aside and the arrow shattered against the wall behind him.

“To put it simply,” the incubus went on, ignoring the near-deadly interruption, “the ward is keyed to the blood of the Rysalis patriarch. Only our father can open that vault, and if he dies, the power to enter it will pass automatically to his heir—meaning Andante.”

Lyre pulled an arrow from his quiver.

“You have a lot of brothers to kill if you plan to open that door,” Madrigal concluded with a smirk as he also drew another bolt. “Not even a mimic can get through the ward.”

He flipped his arrow onto his bow, drew back, and fired in a single swift motion. Lyre snapped his string back and released. The two arrows collided in midair, shattering into splinters.

Madrigal advanced toward the antechamber, shouldering his bow as he came. Protective shields shimmered over his body and he was loaded with weavings—gemstones hanging from his neck, his wrists, his belt. He stopped in the threshold and turned darkening amber eyes to Clio.

She looked away, ignoring the heat rising through her body. He was out of glamour and she felt the irresistible pull—but Lyre was also out of glamour, and his allure was even stronger.

“I’m curious.” Madrigal’s smirk grew patronizing. “What exactly did you plan to do once you got up here? Or do you just enjoy suffering?”

“Well,” Lyre said, “for starters, I plan to kill you.”

“I’d like to see you try.” With a laugh, Madrigal pulled a handful of gemstones from his pocket and tossed them across the floor.

They burst into golden flares, but Lyre cast a ripple of magic that hit the four gems and sent them flying. Two hit the vault door and burst into dust. Two triggered harmlessly as they ricocheted off the walls. The third ruptured into spiraling wires that launched at Clio and Lyre. She flung both hands out and cut through the threads. The spell died.

As Madrigal pulled another gem, Lyre launched forward, Clio right behind him.

Madrigal activated his gem and pitched it at Lyre. A binding spell whipped out, but Clio grabbed the back of Lyre’s shirt, her magic rushing over him. He leaped through the dissipating glow and slammed into his brother. They tumbled across the floor, then Madrigal broke free, a cast flaring across his fingers.

Clio’s hands came up, mimicking him. As he cast his spell, she flung her copy over Lyre’s head. The magic collided, the explosion throwing Lyre and Madrigal back even with their defensive weaves.

Lyre rolled to his feet as golden threads spiraled through his fingers. Madrigal started a counterspell.

Conjuring a dart of magic, Clio flung it into Madrigal, interrupting his cast, and Lyre threw a sizzling binding that shackled his brother’s arms and legs. The incubus wobbled, then caught a gem hanging from his bracelet. Light flared and the binding burst apart.

No longer smirking, Madrigal whipped another gem into the floor. Power blasted from the stone, hurling Clio and Lyre in opposite directions. She slammed into the wall only a few feet from the lethal vault door and her protective weaves shuddered, threatening to fail.

In the center of the room, Madrigal whirled on Lyre, hands raised for another cast.

Still gasping on the floor, Clio mimicked him. She lobbed the spell at Madrigal’s back as he threw his in Lyre’s face. Lyre crumpled with a pained cry, and Madrigal fell too, shouting in surprise as much as pain.

Both incubi surged to their feet and began to cast again, but this time, Clio didn’t mimic Madrigal. She mimicked Lyre.

Magic coiled across his fingers, and she followed him so closely they were moving in almost perfect unison. It didn’t feel like she was copying him so much as he was guiding her hands along with his own. She didn’t think. She just wove.

Madrigal threw a desperate counter at Lyre’s weave—a moment before Clio’s copy hit him in the back. He went down a second time, tangled in a binding. As he writhed helplessly, Lyre pulled his last spelled throwing knife from the sheath on his upper arm.

A silent, shuddering vibration rippled through the vault door. A rainbow of colors shimmered across the weaves, then the threads flashed to crimson. The vault door slid outward, then rose as though drawn toward the ceiling by invisible pulleys.

Standing in the round threshold, Lyceus surveyed the antechamber with cold amber eyes.

Lyre scarcely hesitated. Arm snapping back, he flung the knife at his father.

Lyceus didn’t move. A spell circle appeared and the knife hit it—sticking in place as though it had sunk into clay instead of a glowing weave. A weave Lyceus hadn’t cast. Summoned was the only word she could think of to describe the way the magic had instantly materialized, called into existence by his thoughts alone.

The Rysalis patriarch pointed at Lyre’s feet. With a golden flash, another spell circle appeared on the floor beneath Lyre. Colors swirled across the threads, then it flared white—and bolts of lightning arched upward, forming a sizzling cage with Lyre in its center.

Madrigal squirmed and the binding around him snapped apart. He rose hastily to his feet, face contorted in embarrassed fury.

“Can you handle the nymph on your own?” Lyceus asked flatly.

Madrigal’s face flushed. “Of course I can.”

“Then get her out of my sight.” He stepped over the circular threshold into the antechamber and the vault door glided back into place, sealing shut. “And stay out of the way.”

As Madrigal turned to Clio, a spell sparking over his fingers, she raised her hand. Enough time for one last cast.

Lyceus’s magic was incomprehensible to her, but even if she didn’t understand how the weavings worked, she knew how spell circles worked.

In the same moment Madrigal flung his spell at her, she whipped her cast at the electric cage around Lyre. Her magic hit the circle and cut through the outer ring. Power burst outward, electricity arcing toward the ceiling and scorching the floor.

Then Madrigal’s cast hit her chest and everything went dark.

* * *

The electric cage exploded. Lyre skidded across the floor, limbs convulsing and vision blurring. With a gasp, he lurched half upright.

Clio had collapsed, taken down by Madrigal’s spell—a cast she could have countered, but she’d freed Lyre instead. Grabbing a handful of her long hair, Madrigal glanced back at Lyre, a triumphant leer twisting his lips. He dragged her out of the antechamber.

Madrigal didn’t plan to kill Clio—not immediately, anyway—and she would have to defeat him on her own. Lyre couldn’t help her.

He turned to his father, taking measure of the head of the family with a glance. The daemon who’d sired him was a stranger. He was the powerful family leader, the distant and unknowable god who distributed orders and determined punishments. He was the man who judged his sons’ worth and decided whether they lived or died.

In an instant, Lyre’s bow was in his hand and an arrow in the other. He nocked and fired.

A spell circle appeared in front of Lyceus, this one slightly different than the last. Instead of catching the bolt, it deflected it. The broken shaft skittered across the granite.

Jaw clenched, Lyre pulled three arrows with three variations of his best shield-piercing weaves. He shot them in rapid succession.

Two more spell circles materialized, blocking Lyre’s arrows as though they weren’t spelled at all. Wood splinters flew across the room. Lyre reached over his shoulder a third time, fingers brushing across his dwindling arrows for a spell that might break through that defense.

Lyceus finally moved—a careless flick of his hand.

Lyre didn’t even see the cast. His bow was torn out of his grip and slid into the far corner of the antechamber. Pain shot through his ring and pinky fingers—broken by the impact.

“Enough,” Lyceus said. “You have always been persistent to the point of senselessness.”

Lyre gritted his teeth and reached for his spell chain. Lyceus made another small gesture and his three shield circles doubled to six. They drifted around him, ready to snap into place no matter which direction an attack came from.

“But your stubbornness is a strength as well,” his father added unexpectedly. “Without it, you wouldn’t continually persevere long past where others have given up. What many would consider impossible, you have achieved—and you’ve done it over and over again.”

Lyre paused with a gem between his fingers, a strange tightness rising in his chest. His father had never, not even once, said something positive about his most disappointing son.

“The shadow weave is brilliant,” Lyceus murmured. “The construction of the clock is ingenious. You have surpassed my expectations.”

Lyre couldn’t move. This was all wrong. He’d mentally prepared for every variation of a confrontation with his father—except this one.

“There is a reason I’ve tolerated your petty defiance and secret rebellions.” A faint, mocking smile curved Lyceus’s perfect lips, identical to Lyre’s. “And a reason I wouldn’t allow your older brothers to kill you.”

He made a slow gesture and his spell circles spun faster. “Your weavings aren’t limited by rules and conventions. You are my only son with the capacity to master the most difficult techniques documented in that vault. With another five or ten seasons of experience, and with your rebellious phase behind you, I expected you to kill your brothers and take Andante’s place as my heir.”

Lyre slowly lowered his hand to his side. “You … did?”

“Tell me, Lyre.” Lyceus’s eyes gleamed. “What was it like to weave a spell from within the Void?”

His whole body went cold, every muscle tensing until it hurt.

“I can’t fathom how you arrived at the idea. Embedding the very essence of the Void, of nothingness, into the weave—it is a truly catastrophic magic you have created.”

“It’s not …” Lyre shook his head slightly, unable to form an intelligent response. “I made it to clear lodestones.”

Lyceus smiled indulgently. “I would like to know more about its development.” He raised a hand toward his son. “Share your invention with me, Lyre, and I will share my magic with you. A fair trade, don’t you think?”

Lyre stared blankly at his father’s offered hand, then looked into those amber eyes that, during their last encounter, had burned with devastating aphrodesia as he’d strangled Lyre’s mind into submission.

“If you want to know about the shadow weave,” Lyre said, “then you’ll have to coerce every single word from my lips before you kill me.”

Lyre flicked his wrist, casting the gem in his hand across the floor. It flared with golden light, then glowing spears launched out of it, streaking for Lyceus.

His father’s spell circles snapped in front of him and the spears bounced harmlessly off.

Lyceus sighed impatiently. “Stubborn to the last. Very well. I offered to share my magic with you—so allow me to demonstrate.”

The shield circles spun behind him as he raised his hand, fingers spread. A two-foot-wide spell circle manifested in front of his palm, geometrical lines forming an intricate shape filled with ancient runes Lyre had never seen before. The golden threads shimmered in a wave of colors, then turned to reddish orange.

Fireballs burst from the circle. Lyre cast a bubble shield as they shot across the room and into the barrier—which disintegrated under the barrage. His defensive weaves fell apart just as easily, and pain scorched his skin as he staggered back, his clothes burning.

Lyceus flicked his fingers and the circle reformed into a new arrangement of lines and runes that flashed to pale blue. An arctic wind whipped ice shards across Lyre. His back hit the wall, the fires extinguished but a hundred bleeding cuts scored across his body.

Gasping, he snapped a spell off his chain. Before Lyceus could summon another circle, Lyre activated his best dome shield and dropped the gem onto the floor. A glowing web spread across the granite, then the dome rushed over him. He sagged, sucking in air as he tried to come up with a plan.

“Fire and ice are easy enough,” Lyceus remarked. “Perhaps this will impress you.”

He tilted his head and another spell circle appeared—directly beneath Lyre’s feet inside his dome shield. The twisted, unfamiliar runes shimmered from gold to murky brown.

The granite floor turned to liquid. Lyre sank up to his knees and his gem was absorbed, the dome weave tearing apart. The fluid stone surged up his body, encasing him. Though it flowed like water, it was hard as rock against his limbs and he couldn’t shift as it compressed his chest and climbed over his shoulders. He gasped a shallow breath as the stone crawled up his throat and cold pressure slid over his jaw.

Lyceus snapped his fingers and the granite sloughed off Lyre’s body, simultaneously pushing him out of the pool before returning to its normal state. He collapsed onto his knees, panting. Terror shivered along his nerves from the sickening realization that he didn’t understand this magic at all and had no idea how to fight it.

He staggered to his feet anyway, but he didn’t know what spell to use—what weaving he would waste.

His father summoned a crackling yellow circle. A spinning ball of electricity smashed into Lyre and he slammed into the floor, convulsing again.

Lyceus summoned another one. And another. The spells lined up in front of him, crackling spheres forming in each circle.

With no time for anything else, Lyre cast a bubble shield. The first electric orb smashed it apart, and the second and third hit him in the chest one after another. He skidded across the floor and hit the wall in the antechamber’s corner.

Hacking for air as his diaphragm seized, Lyre struggled to rise. Not yet. He couldn’t give up yet. He lifted his head—and saw his bow a foot away. Grabbing it, he lurched onto his knees and reached for an arrow, ignoring the pain in his broken fingers.

Lyceus slashed his hand through the air.

Lyre’s bow shattered. The splintered wood fell from his hands and clattered to the granite in pieces. On his knees, his best weapon destroyed, he looked up into his father’s eyes and knew there was no way he could win.

But then, he had never intended to win this fight.