Aric’s chest tightened as he watched them go. The spell had worked perfectly, but the ease with which he’d manipulated demonic magic left him cold. For a fleeting moment, he entertained the wild notion of using this newfound power to escape.
But reality crashed down upon him like a physical weight. His gaze drifted upward, where bat-winged sentries circled overhead, their keen eyes scanning the ground below. Even if he could muster enough magic to slip away unseen, his absence would be noted, and they would hunt him down without mercy—and without any trouble, given the signatures woven into his bracelets.
With a pang of bitter resignation, Aric turned back to the now-unguarded entrance. He had a job to do, and lives to save. Everything else would have to wait.
The prisoners were huddled in the corner, their hands bound and mouths gagged, but their eyes widened with hope as Aric approached. Aric stepped forward, his hands moving in a quick, precise pattern to melt the locks on the makeshift cells. Aric worked clumsily, allowing a thin tendril of shadow magic to flow through him, but after so long without his powers, it was like a wobbling foal trying to take its first steps.
Yet he’d missed this magic so. It was a heady rush, like being plunged into icy water, and Aric had to fight to keep himself from being overwhelmed by it. Aric focused on that as he wove his way through unlatching the prisoners from their bonds.
Aric’s heart was in his throat as he worked, scanning all around him for any sign of danger. He moved from one ward to the next, each one more complex than the last, but with Aric’s knowledge of human spellcraft, he was able to dismantle them with relative ease.
Finally, the last ward fell away, and the bindings on the prisoners’ hands dissipated. Aric placed a finger to his lips, and the prisoners nodded, their eyes shining with tears. They knew what was at stake, and they were willing to risk it all for a chance at freedom.
As silently as they could, the prisoners slipped out of their bonds and made for the door. But one of them, a young woman with a shock of white hair, paused before Aric. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she reached out a trembling hand to touch his arm.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, her voice barely a breath. And then she was gone, melting into the darkness with the others.
Aric repeated the process two more times, until all of the prisoners had been freed, and the town’s defenses were in tatters. Aric looked around, a weary smile on his face.
“Anything to help my people,” Aric said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.
Seven
The jarring grip on Aric’s arm dragged him out of a dead sleep, and he instinctively tried to lash out with a surge of magic. Only the familiar twinge behind his eyes and dulled thud as he hit the barrier answered him, though, and he blinked hard into the darkness until the two figures before him resolved into faces.
Neither of them were Malekith.
“Wait.” The darkness shrouding their faces gave way to moonlight glinting off Vizra’s onyx skin and Karthax’s curling horns as they loomed over him. “Stay your magic, human,” Vizra purred, her grip like iron on his bicep. “We have a few questions for you, and it would be a shame to singe off your eyebrows before we’ve had answers.”
Aric’s heart pounded in his ears as he scanned his chambers, but there was no sign of the other guards. No alarm raised, no shouts of warning. He forced himself to consider the situation calmly, racking his brain for any plausible excuse. He’d gone to bed in separate chambers adjoining Malekith’s makeshift quarters in what had likely been a very luxurious resort in the town center, hoping against hope that sleep would calm his nightmares. But if the prisoners he’d freed had been discovered, if their absence had been noted, then it was all over.
He tried to keep his voice steady, but he could hear the raw edges of panic tearing through. “What’s happened? Is it Malekith?”
“Oh, don’t concern yourself with the prince,” Vizra said, her molten gaze cutting into him. “He is otherwise engaged. No, we have some questions for you, little mage, and we thought now was as good a time as any to discuss them.”
Aric’s heart lurched. She knew. Somehow, she knew about the escape, and the demon prince’s complicity in it. He forced himself to meet Vizra’s gaze, scrambling to keep his expression neutral. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been quite the busy little worm, wriggling your way through the heart of my operation,” Vizra said. “But I have to wonder, for all your trouble, what exactly you hope to gain.”
“I don’t want anything—”
Vizra’s nails dug into the tender flesh of his bicep, and he bit back a cry.
“Get up.” Vizra’s nails bit into his shoulder, and Aric winced. “I don’t have time for your human weakness.”
Karthax’s meaty hand closed around the front of Aric’s tunic, and with a growl, he hauled Aric to his feet. Aric’s head spun from the sudden movement, his limbs still heavy with sleep, and he stumbled over his own feet as they dragged him from his room. “I . . . I didn’t do anything,” Aric said, his voice sounding thin and reedy in the pre-dawn stillness.
A wave of panic threatened to overtake him. Had they found out about the prisoners? Did they know he’d helped them escape? The town plaza was eerily quiet as they hauled him across the wreckage from the feast, the only sounds the crunch of their boots on the packed earth and the distant howls of the winged demons making their patrols. No alarms had been raised, no shouts of warning echoing through the streets. If they knew about the escape, surely the whole camp would be in an uproar.
Aric’s mind raced as he tried to think of what could have gone wrong. Had one of the prisoners given him up? Or had he been too careless, too eager to absolve himself that he failed to take the necessary precautions? He’d been so focused on the escape that he’d let his guard down, had all but dared the demon lords to catch him. Had they been watching him the whole time?
The command tent loomed before them, the black silk billowing in the cool night air. Karthax wrenched open the tent flap, and a wave of spiced incense and smoky shadows washed over Aric. Malekith was nowhere to be seen, and a fresh bolt of panic shot through him. If the demon prince was here, he could at least try to reason with him, to explain why he’d done what he did, and Malekith would come up with some clever cover story to persuade Vizra that it was all a terrible misunderstanding. But with Malekith absent, Aric was at Vizra’s mercy, and he had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t feeling particularly merciful.
“Inside,” Vizra said, her voice a low, dangerous hiss. “We have much to discuss, you and I.”
Aric blinked in the sudden lamplight as he ducked inside the tent, his eyes struggling to adjust after the darkness of night. A tattered map was spread out on the table before him, along with a jumble of notes and sketches in a language he couldn’t begin to decipher. Vizra’s molten gold eyes gleamed with a predatory intensity as she loomed over him, her long hair spilling around her like a cloak.
“Tell me what these are,” Vizra said, her voice a low, dangerous hiss. “And how the humans plan to use them.” She shoved the schematics before him, and his vision swam in a useless blur of lines and curves of ink.
With a grunt, he scrunched his eyes up, then eased them once more. Aric’s mind was still fuzzy from sleep, but as his thoughts slowly began to coalesce, a cold trickle of dread ran down his spine. “I . . . I don’t know. I’ve never seen those before.”
It was the truth. He blearily recognized it as some sort of magical engineering schematic, the kind that the Arcanocrafters in the Silver Tower designed—magical devices, advanced self-sustaining spells, and more. But it would take him more than a half-awake scan to make sense of them, and likely more access to magic than he currently had—which Malekith had seen to was once again none.
Vizra’s nails dug into his shoulder, and he bit back a cry. “Don’t lie to me, little mage. We found these in the garrison at the Silver Tower. They were using them to guide their strikes, and now you will tell me how.”
Aric’s panic subsided slightly, replaced by confusion and a glimmer of hope. They didn’t know about the prisoners. They only wanted him to make sense of the magical schematics.
She released him with a shove, and Aric stumbled forward, catching himself on the table. His heart was still racing, but a thread of relief unspooled in his chest. The other captives were safe, for now. He just had to figure out a way to get out of this.
He scanned the jumble of papers on the table, his mind racing as he tried to come up with a plan. The schematics were like nothing he’d ever seen before, but he was a quick study. If he could just buy himself some time . . .
Aric leaned over the table, studying the schematics intently. They were written in a mix of arcane symbols and a cipher he didn’t recognize, but the diagrams themselves were fairly straightforward. Some kind of offensive weapon, if he had to guess, with a series of lenses and mirrors that looked designed to focus and amplify magical energy. The basic concept was elegant in its simplicity, but as he traced the lines with his fingertips, he couldn’t help but notice the glaring flaws, the missing pieces that would keep it from ever working as intended.
But he wasn’t an arcanocrafter. He could be mistaken.
But an answering voice in his mind told him—if he didn’t know, then these demons knew even less.
“Well?” Vizra’s voice cut through the silence, and Aric forced himself to straighten up, his mind racing. “What are they?”
