On the sofa in Lyre’s workroom, Clio hugged her knees to her chest, his last words repeating over and over in her head. Do you really think I can just leave?

He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant. He wasn’t allowed to leave? But hadn’t she seen him alone in the spell shop on Earth? Why couldn’t he walk away if that’s what he wanted?

She passed a hand over her eyes. Complex magic shimmered everywhere she looked. If Chrysalis—and Hades—didn’t want him to leave, did they have the magic to prevent it? What if leaving Asphodel wasn’t enough to escape their reach?

He had started his education so young. Had he already been here, in Chrysalis, training to become a master weaver as a child? Was it the same for his brothers? There was so much foul, violent magic in this building. How could being surrounded by it and creating it for most of your life not twist you?

Dulcet’s terrifying smile flashed in her memory. It had twisted one of the brothers, that was for sure.

This place was evil. Chrysalis and Asphodel both. She couldn’t wait to go back to Earth—or, even better, back to Irida—and never set foot here again.

But what about Lyre?

Shaking her head, she pushed to her feet. Lyre wasn’t her responsibility. She couldn’t fix his problems. He knew his situation far better than she did, and she couldn’t change his fate.

Her gaze wandered past the beautiful tangles of magic he’d woven. Beautiful creations for a terrible purpose. Though most were shields or other passive spells, a handful fell in the “offensive” category.

A glimmer of light underneath the desk caught her attention. Frowning, she crossed the room and crouched, expecting to find a lodestone that had fallen off the table. Instead, a spiraling weave covered a floor tile near the back wall.

To anyone else, the ward would have been invisible short of practically stepping on it. The spell was multilayered, and she spent a full minute picking out all the sneaky traps that would seriously hurt anyone who tampered with it—a ward meant to stop other master weavers like Lyre.

Her fingers hovered above it. Deep in its center, hidden from anyone without her ability, she could see the trigger. One touch of magic and she could unkey it—and see what he had hidden underneath.

But it was obviously private. Knowing her abilities, he had shown her real trust by bringing her into his workroom. She started to scoot backward when a thought popped into her head: Could this where he’d hidden one of the deadly prototypes he’d mentioned?

All she needed was one look to find out for sure.

Hopping to her feet, she rushed to the door and opened it, thankful he hadn’t rekeyed his locks. She stuck her head out, glanced up and down the empty hall, then trotted to one end and set a quick tripwire ward into the floor—a simple spell that would alert her if someone passed over it. She set a second tripwire at the other end, then raced back into the workroom and crawled under the table again.

A tap of magic into the tile and the weave went dark, harmless and sleeping. She pried the tile off and set it aside to find a hole in the floor. A loaded quiver of arrows filled most of the space. A few chains of spelled gems hung on the quiver, and a cloth bag held an assortment of charged lodestones—a source of power to supplement his natural reserves.

She lifted a chain laden with defensive weavings along the same lines as the ones around his neck. The second chain held offensive spells—some very nasty ones. She dropped it back in the hole and picked up the third chain, frowning. These weren’t offensive or defensive. They looked like … illusions? Illusions of what?

She grimaced. She’d invaded his hidden spell stash for nothing. These were just his backup self-defense spells. There was nothing here remotely suited for war. She sat back on her heels, disappointed but also somehow relieved. She didn’t understand her relief. She was happy she hadn’t found anything? What was the matter with her?

As her gaze passed over the room one more time, her breath caught. Another shimmer of magic where there should be none.

She scooched out from under the table, still holding the chain of mysterious illusions, and knelt at the base of the bookshelf. Light leaked from between heavy encyclopedias. She pulled them out of the way and leaned down, squinting at the base of the shelf. Another ward. An even scarier ward.

Nerves twisted in her belly. She studied the weave, hands pressed hard to the floor. There was no trigger on this ward—no way to turn it on or off. It was designed to be cast once and left in place, never to be removed. After another minute of analysis, she was certain she could unravel it without activating any of its lethal defenses. But if she broke the ward, she couldn’t replace it. He would know.

But would he notice? How often did he check the hidden spells in his workroom?

Spells to save Irida. That’s what she’d come here for. That was her priority. Not an incubus. Not a Chrysalis weaver.

She sent a flare of magic into the heart of the weave. The threads dissolved to nothing and the latent power released, whooshing over her like a hot breeze. Seams appeared in the solid wood shelf. She pried the cover up and found a second, much smaller compartment holding a single cloth bag with tied drawstrings.

She cautiously lifted it out, weighing it in her hand, then slid the object from the bag.

It was a clock—sort of. The flat timepiece was slightly larger than her palm, its casing removed and the gears exposed. Only its second hand remained, the minute and hour hands absent. Tiny gemstones were embedded in the gears, with a miniature ruby attached to the tip of the second hand and a matching one glittering where the twelve should have been.

Her skin crawled.

The weave in the clock was the most bizarre thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t recognize half the constructs. But what made her want to drop the thing and wipe her hands on her pants were the strange black shadows clinging to the golden threads of the weave. She’d seen the red stain of blood magic, but she had no idea what a black tinge meant.

What did the spell do? Why was it embedded in a clock of all things? Simple metal shapes were so much easier to work with. Why bother with something so complex?

She held it in both hands, searching it, but she couldn’t make sense of the shapes. Attempting to relax, she focused not on the specific constructs but on the feel of the magic. Her gift for seeing and mimicking worked whether she understood how the spell was made.

Seconds ticked by as she turned the weaving over and over in her mind. The spell was dark … hungry … thirsting for … magic. It wanted more magic. It wanted to devour it.

A spell that ate magic? A spell that could devour other spells?

Impossible. Magic could be used up, unraveled, shredded, deflected, or diffused. But it couldn’t be … undone. It couldn’t be unmade. There was no power in the three worlds that could uncreate a spell without the magical energy in it going somewhere. Magic couldn’t disappear.

But unless her instincts were wildly off-base, that’s exactly what this weaving did. She lifted the misshapen clock up to her nose, peering more closely to see exactly how it worked, how it “ate” other magic.

A ping went off in her head. Her trip ward.

Someone was coming.

She shoved the clock back in its bag, dropped it in the compartment, and jammed the books back on the shelves. She sprang to her feet—and realized she hadn’t put the compartment under the desk back together.

Grabbing the chain beside her, she bolted across the room, skidded on her knees, and dropped the chain back inside. A gem caught on the edge and popped off, skittering across the floor. Shoving the tile into place, she rekeyed the wards, grabbed the loose gem, and scrambled out from under the table.

Lyre stood in the center of the room.

She cringed, still crouched in front of the table. His face was blank, his eyes black—but not with lust. With fury.

He took a slow, precise step away from her. “Get out.”

“Lyre, I—”

“Get out.”

With trembling hands, she pushed to her feet and walked to the door. In the threshold, she turned back, wanting to say something, but her mind was blank.

He flicked his fingers. Light flashed on either side of her, and she threw herself backward. Magic burst across the doorway, filling it with three different spells—two lethal defensive wards and an illusion that blacked out the room beyond.

She picked herself up off the floor and blinked away the tears gathering in her eyes. Squeezing the loose gem in her hand, she stumbled down the corridor, at a complete loss for how to find the lobby. She didn’t dare go back to ask Lyre to show her the way.

She couldn’t ask him for anything ever again.

Clenching her hands until her fingernails dug into her palms, she broke into a run, fleeing the corridor, desperate to escape the building. To escape this place. To escape this world.