CHAPTER 23

  Ninety seconds left.

  Mask was close to fading as we sprinted through Nerida’s halls. Breath training turned our bodies into machines; my lungs were smooth, my muscles were extra springy, my endurance lasted ten times longer than before. Everything flowed. Coupled with all three of us having a blood infusion built into our bodies, we were stronger, faster, and more agile than we ever were. Yet somehow, Leace was still quicker.

  We’d abandoned the three-foot rule, and moved as a tight pack, gambling that speed mattered more than perfect stealth.

  Fortunately, there were no guards and no puddles. Just endless mirrored corridors, the same mosaics, the same paired torches. It was like running through the same hallway on repeat, and as I felt the cold of Mask slipping frost on my lips, I began to worry.

  Does she really know where to go? Fern asked as Leace cut down a side passage.

  She has been here before, I thought. Scouted it with the other Head Criers and Guru Rasa.

  Leace skidded to a stop at a fork, forcing us to nearly collide into her. As I drew up behind her, I saw what had made her faster than us despite not having a blood infusion: She had two Breath techniques activate. The Mask Breath around her neck, and a cross of white cloud over torso.

  The same mark the Criers wore before Nerida killed them.

  Pulse, Fern said. I heard them mention it as a Breath Technique.

  Seems useful, I thought.

  Leace glanced down one hallway, then the other, made her choice, and took off again.

  My lips were going numb. Cold mist puffed from my nose with every exhale. My heart rate, which I had forced low for Mask, crept higher. The timer in my head kept counting down.

  Thirty seconds. Twenty-nine.

  We burst out into a wider hallway fronted by two tall double doors carved with twin fish twisting up around their handles. Leace smiled.

  “Finally,” she whispered. Leace threw her shoulder into one door, and it swung inward.

  Leace motioned us in, and we slipped through. The moment she pulled the door shut behind us, I felt the chill around my neck fade. The scarf of mist vanished, and my body became clear again.

  They dropped Mask too.

  The cross on Leace’s chest faded, and she dropped to one knee, gasping.

  “Are you—” I started.

  She cut me off with one raised finger, eyes squeezed shut as she dragged in slow, deliberate breaths.

  “Ch-check… surroundings,” she ordered.

  Raine and Nanda moved around the small platform we stood on and scanned the room. Nanda slid up to the door and pressed his ear against it. I caught my own breath and turned to look—and forgot how to breathe for a second.

  Treasure.

  It wasn’t just piles of coin. It was a mountain range.

  Gold, silver, and copper artifacts poured across the floor in mounds taller than people. Crates overflowed with jewels. Clusters of raw crystals in every color imaginable jutted up like miniature forests along the pillars in the room. Everything gleamed in the soft crystal light from the chandeliers hanging above. The room was so bright and rich with warm, treasured color that it almost felt like a cartoon treasure hoard.

  “Room is clear,” Raine said quietly.

  Nanda offered Leace his arm. She gripped it and forced herself up. Her face was chalk white, but with each breath, color returned to her cheeks.

  “Are you alright, Crier Leace?” he asked.

  Leace nodded and closed her eyes again, inhaling deeply, then exhaling for twice as long. She repeated it until she felt strong enough to let go of Nanda.

  “I am… fine,” she whispered. “Keep your voices down.”

  I studied her. “That cross… the mist. What technique was that? The one you used. The one the other Criers used too.”

  She opened her eyes. Pain flickered in them at the mention of her dead subordinates, but she pushed it down. “Pulse,” she said. “Huge boost for a brief time. Long, miserable cooldown.”

  Knew it, Fern said.

  Nanda and I exchanged a look.

  “Let us hope nothing happens during your cooldown,” I said.

  Leace nodded and finally let her gaze roam the room.

  “So,” Mel nodded toward the piles. “Why does that demonic fish queen need all this gold? Paradize is her playground; nobody’s charging her rent. What’s the point of hoarding wealth when you run the place with fear?”

  “Nerida likes beautiful things,” Leace said, stepping off the platform and down some steps toward the edge of the treasure floor. “Shiny, stuff she loves, but the more symmetrical, the better.”

  Raine crouched near a set of matching silver plates, and looked around at the pieces before her. “All of them come in pairs,” she said, picking up one of them.

  “Exactly,” Leace said. “She has no practical use for any of this. But her brothers send her tribute for the fish she provides.”

  “Do the Siblings even need to eat?” Raine asked.

  “They want the taste. But I do not think they need to eat,” Leace said. “The food is mostly for the citizens. As long as the people are fed, they do not rebel. That, plus the rampages these Siblings go on, keeps our numbers thin. No one wants to fight back when they see how quickly the Siblings will kill.” She knelt at the bottom step, eyes scanning the floor. “That thread is breaking, though. Sooner or later, the people will fight back with no care if they live or die. We will take advantage of that one day.”

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  Mel whistled under her breath. “I could buy a town with a handful of treasure from here,” she said. “I could pay off every Royal Mage and noble in Stylos to leave me alone.”

  She started down the steps toward the nearest mound of treasure.

  Leace’s hand shot out and clamped around Mel’s arm before she stepped off the last step.

  “Did you learn nothing from their deaths?” Leace hissed. “Observe.”

  Mel froze, shame flickering across her face. For once, she swallowed the retort and just nodded.

  Leace let go and pulled a thin dagger from the small of her back. She crouched at the edge of the treasure room floor and lowered the blade onto one of the tiles on the floor.

  “Something is wrong with this room,” she murmured.

  The tip of her dagger pressed the edge of a square golden tile.

  There was no grout holding them together. The tile shifted, see-sawing on some unseen pivot underneath. In the dead center of the tile sat a tiny droplet of water, smaller than a coin. When Leace nudged the metal, the droplet slid toward the lip where her blade made the tile tilt.

  “Look,” she said. “Smaller than a coin. The one in there was just as small.”

  Raine leaned down beside her. “They’re balanced on pins,” she said. “Any extra weight makes them tilt. Every tile is its own trap to summon her.” Her voice was steady, but I saw her throat flex.

  I expanded my vision with a nudge of the Chimera blood. The floor was covered in thousands of individual tiles, each one free-floating on a tiny point, each one holding its own little coin of water.

  The whole floor was a network of potential alarms. One bad step, and Nerida could come pouring out, grabbing you instantly.

  She stood, scanning the room. “We cannot go back empty-handed. That Soul Glass is the only thing we know can hurt them. We never needed to get it, and then you came in with an actual Ashsteel sword.” Leace looked over her shoulder at me. “We get the Soul Glass now, or this whole plan was for nothing. Their deaths were for nothing.”

  Raine straightened. “How can we risk walking into an obvious death trap?” she asked. “There has to be another option. There is always a Plan B.”

  “There is no Plan B,” Leace snapped. “Unless you think you can pass Nerida without a fight, and into Mammon’s Entertainment District without running into him by all means just forget about getting the one thing that can kill them. You have no idea what kind of games the Third Tier Sibling can play.”

  Raine didn’t flinch. “We should at least talk about other ways to get Soul Glass.”

  Leace’s temper slipped out.

  “Dammit,” she said. “I am in charge. I am Head Crier. This is our fight, and you just tagged along. I do not care what the prophecy says you are. I do not care if you are stronger than us. We have more heart, we care more. We have been fighting for hundreds of years to crawl out of our prison. My mother, her mother, and her mother before her died in these tiers. We barely remember what freedom is supposed to feel like. How can we when the lies tell us we are free?” Her fingers tightened on her daggers until blood welled out her palm and dripped onto the stone.

  Nanda touched Raine’s elbow. “Sister Raine,” he said softly. “Let us give the Head Crier some sapce. We can think about other ways to find it without triggering the traps.”

  Raine let herself be pulled up the steps, but her gaze never left Leace.

  The death of the Crier’s subordinates ate at her.

  They died horribly, Fern said.

  I cleared my throat gently. “What does the Soul Glass even look like?” I asked. “If I know what to look for, I can use the Chimera’s eyes. Maybe we do not need to step on anything.”

  Leace went still for a moment, forcing her breathing back into control and sheathing her dagger. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its edge.

  “Small,” she said. “Green, like pine trees. Covered in tiny spikes, like a hedgehog. Nerida would keep it somewhere she can always find it. She knows how important it is.”

  “Why does she have one?” I asked.

  “They lock up anything that is a potential threat to their godhood,” Leace said, devoid of emotion. “We use it to infuse Ashsteel. They hold on to it to keep it away from us and to consume it for a power boost. Nerida demanded one from her brother long ago, and when it was brought down here, several hundred of Mammon’s golden guard guarded the courier carrying it. The only other location we know of for other Soul Glass is on the Fourth Tier.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Green, spiky, on display. Don’t let her eat it.”

  I let the Chimera’s focus spread, sweeping the room like a zoom lens. Every glint of green in the piles drew my attention, but most revealed themselves to be emeralds or peridot chips in crowns and necklaces. I kept scanning.

  Up the stairs on the entrance platform, Raine and Nanda spoke in low voices while Mel remained on the lower stair, eyes around the treasure. She too was using her infusions eyesight. But, after a while, Mel broke the silence and turned to face Leace, who had stayed sulking at the bottom of the steps.

  “You know,” she said, “they fought with bravery.”

  Leace didn’t look at her. “They were careless,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Mel said. “But they still fought like warriors. They would not let their friend die alone. That counts for something.”

  “They should not have thrown their lives away,” Leace muttered.

  “I would have done the same,” Mel said. “For Erik, Silas, Tevin and even for Miss Pissy Pants Sora. If my friends were in danger, I would not let them die alone. And if I saw them die infront of me?” Mel slammed her fist into her hand. “I’d burn the mother fucker who did it.”

  Leace stayed silent. She took a deep breath and her shoulders relaxed.

  “Sorry if I—” Mel started.

  “No,” Leace said, voice cracking. “It is fine.” She coughed.

  I went back to scanning.

  Two tall mounds near the back had a gap between them. In that narrow space, something straight and gold caught my eye. A slim rod, maybe shoulder-height, topped with a small square plate. On the plate sat a red cushion.

  And nestled in that cushion, something glinted.

  “Wait,” I said. I climbed up a few steps to get a better angle and zoomed in.

  A teardrop of green crystal lay on the pillow, encased in a corona of tiny spikes. It looked like a tiny emerald sun frozen mid-explosion.

  “Did you find it?” Mel asked, stepping up beside me.

  I nodded, pointing. “There. On that rod. Red pillow, green spike-ball on top.”

  Mel channeled her own infusion; her eyes sharpened. “Got it,” she said, grinning. “Hell, moss-head, nice catch.”

  “Only problem now,” Raine said from the platform, “is how we get it without turning, knocking over everything in here, and bringing all the guards to us?”

  Leace joined us at the top of the stairs, staring across the sea of deadly tiles.

  “Here,” she said, “is where you prove me wrong about you.” She looked between us. “Can any of your forms fly?”

  “I can,” I said.

  “I can,” Raine said.

  We both looked at each other.

  “I could fly over and grab it,” I offered, shrugging. “But, I have wings, I might knock stuff over.”

  “Terrible idea then,” Leace said. “You can’t hover in place. If you have to flap, you’ll knock something over, which would knock everything else. No.”

  “He cannot hover,” Raine said, “but I can.”

  “You can hover,” Leace said slowly. “Without making sound?”

  Raine nodded. Her face was as controlled as ever, even with all eyes on her. “I can manage it, I think.”

  “It is the only option we have,” Leace said.

  Raine exhaled through her nose. “Fine. We have already been in here too long,” she said. “Nerida is prowling, and could come in here at any moment.”

  Mel crossed her arms. “Better move fast then.”

  “This could go wrong in so many ways,” Raine said. “But, I guess we really do have no choice.”

  Are we really going to sit by and hope this works? I thought.

  If she fails… then what?

  You saw how ruthless Nerida is… Raine would be torn apart. We aren’t strong enough… again. I clenched my fists, I couldn’t believe once again I had to watch with bated breath if a companion will survive something or not.

  If only I could do something…anything.

  But— Fern panicked.

  Wait. That’s it. I have an idea.

  “Before we do this, we need to have a Plan B,” I said, stepping between Raine and Leace.

  “I told you, there is no Plan B,” Leace said.

  “There can be. I could be the back up. Just one thing, teach me.”

  Leace stared at me, eyes narrowing. “Teach you what?”

  “Teach me Pulse.”

  For a moment, the only sounds were the dull thud of my heart pumping blood through my ears. Then Leace tilted her head, and I saw her think about it.

  Mel stepped up next to me. “Teach me too.”