A City of Lies Read online

  “How many wives does your father have?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Zane shrugged. “I lost track.”

  “What do they do all day? Does he visit them every day? Do they take turns? How does this work? Do you know how many sons he has, how many brothers you have?”

  “Is she always this curious, Lord Kifo?” Zane muttered.

  “What, you two know each other?” I shot back. Caspian and I used the red lenses we’d snagged earlier from the guards to look at each other. He gave me a brief scowl, before looking ahead.

  “I didn’t say that,” Zane replied. “I just make a habit of knowing everyone who sets foot into my kingdom.”

  “Your kingdom?”

  “I am a prince, after all. I may not be entitled to the crown, once the king passes away, but this is still my land; these are still my people. This is, for all intents and purposes, my kingdom.”

  I tried to use my reading skills on him. Even as a sentry, I didn’t seem to have access to his emotions—that had already been made clear, repeatedly, from our previous encounters with daemons. Nevertheless, I focused a little harder, just to see if I could get a feel for what he was experiencing in that moment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get anything from him. Either he was very well guarded by nature, emotionally speaking, or there was no way at all for a sentry to tap into a daemon’s heart.

  However, it didn’t take a scientist or a super sentry to figure out the basics: Zane, though a prince, didn’t have a good relationship with his father; his mother, on the other hand, meant the world to him. In fact, Zane was much more appreciated around the castle than any of his brothers. The females—the king’s wives, to be precise—adored him. On top of that, he was helping us get our friends back.

  I had a feeling that we had a much stronger ally in Zane than I’d originally thought. And after all the losses and painful twists and turns, we really needed a win.

  Harper

  (Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)

  About half an hour later, Zane brought us to the meranium box. It looked weird from the outside, lodged inside the obsidian wall in an adjacent chamber. We were hidden behind a large pit wolf statue, waiting for the guards to change.

  I leaned forward, just enough to get a better look inside the chamber. It was an empty space, except for the meranium box and the four soldiers armed with rapiers and red lenses, which they hadn’t put on yet. Zane walked in just as four more daemons left, splitting into pairs and going in opposite directions down the hallway.

  My True Sight didn’t work on the meranium box, not even from thirty feet away. But deep down I knew that Caia and Blaze were in there. My instinct was screaming at me.

  “How’s it going?” Zane asked in a casual tone, walking over to one of the guards, and setting our attack plan in motion.

  “My lord.” The daemon nodded respectfully. “All good. No signs of the outsiders.”

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised,” he replied. “I get the feeling that you won’t see any… signs.”

  “We are ready for them,” another guard said, keeping his chin up in defiance. “Besides, all the guards outside are actively patrolling. We will get them, sooner or later.”

  “What can I say?” Zane shrugged nonchalantly, feigning disinterest as he threw me a glance over his shoulder. “I appreciate your confidence, but, like I said, I doubt that you will see them coming…”

  He chuckled. That was the signal phrase that Caspian and I had been waiting for. We’d already agreed on it, fifteen minutes earlier, with Zane. We both hurried out, quietly taking up positions in front of the first two guards, while Zane was already facing the third, with the fourth to his right.

  I didn’t look straight at mine, to avoid him catching a glimpse of my eyes, given the faulty invisibility spell. We’d moved so fast that they hadn’t even noticed the air rippling around us.

  But all four of them looked somewhat confused, frowning at Zane.

  “What do you mean, my lord?” the daemon in front of me asked.

  “I’m just saying, you guys need to pay more attention. I thought the king ordered you all to wear your red lenses at all times.” Zane shook his head in disappointment.

  The daemon to his right cursed under his breath and fumbled with his lens, mounting it over his eye. He stilled, staring right at us, as the others prepared to put theirs on, as well. With lightning speed, I drove my twin swords through my daemon’s throat, while Caspian beheaded his with one swift move.

  The one facing Zane didn’t stand a chance, either. He dropped to his knees, gurgling blood, as Zane pulled his long knife from his chest. Before the fourth guard could make a move, I dashed over and brought my swords down.

  He was fast enough to block one of them with his cuffed forearm, but he couldn’t stop the other from digging into his left shoulder. He growled from the pain, but I didn’t give him the chance to counterattack. In the rage of the moment, I sank my fangs into his throat and tore it out, and he fell backward.

  Arterial spray shot out, and he desperately tried to stop the enormous amount of blood gushing out of him, but ten seconds later, he gave his last breath. I licked my lips and tasted daemon blood.

  “Well, that was harsh!” Zane exclaimed, staring at me in disbelief.

  “It seemed easier from that angle.” I shrugged, then wiped the rest of the blood from my chin with my sleeve. I couldn’t afford to be spotted because of a blood smear. “Can you see it? Is there any left on me?”

  Zane squinted, one eye narrowed through a red lens, then shook his head. “I have to say, I like your style.”

  “You and me both,” Caspian replied, blinking rapidly, his eyebrows arched with surprise. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” I gave them both a faint smirk, then shifted my focus to the meranium box in front of us.

  Its surface was perfectly polished, a smooth and reflective gloss that showed only one figure—Zane, as Caspian and I were still very much invisible. And beyond that layer of metal, impervious to my True Sight, were my friends.

  At the center of the cube facing us, at approximately my height, was a square hatch. It looked barely big enough for me to go through. I reached out to touch it, but Zane slapped my hand away.

  “There’s swamp witch magic at work here,” he said, and my scowl faded quickly. “You’re of no use right now. Let me take care of this, then you can hug and kiss your friends, or whatever.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Deactivating the magic keeping your friends’ fires at bay.”

  He leaned forward toward the metal surface and whispered something under his breath. Hundreds of swamp witch symbols lit up, incandescent charms embedded into the meranium. Zane was right—I wouldn’t have been able to break the spell. I recognized most of the pictograms from my earlier studies of the swamp witches’ tome, back on Calliope, but I didn’t have the knowledge necessary to stop it.

  It was time to let the prince of daemons do his thing, and rid us of the last obstacle standing between me and my friends.

  Blaze, Caia, hang in there… I’m coming.

  Blaze

  I lost track of time.

  Caia and I had tried everything in this box. I’d punched at the walls. Even with her lighters taken away, I’d used my own to set a piece of fabric on fire, so she could use it on localized areas, to try to melt the meranium away. But nothing worked. We were stuck here.

  I sat in a corner, while Caia rested in the opposite one, occasionally glancing at me.

  “Where do you think the others are?” she asked, her voice weak. It hurt me on the inside to hear the hopelessness in her tone.

  “They’re probably out there somewhere, trying to find a way in, so they can get to us,” I replied, unwilling to let her sink into despair.

  I moved closer to her, resting my hands on her knees, and she looked up at me with glassy teal eyes.

  “You’re right,” she breathed,
her lower lip trembling slightly. “They’ll be here soon…”

  “It’s too early to give up, Caia.”

  She nodded, swallowing back tears. I reached out and pulled her into my arms, holding her tight, and she rested her head against my shoulder. I kissed her hair and hummed slowly, not knowing what else to do to ease her mind.

  I wasn’t doing any better, either. We were both well aware that it wasn’t going to be easy for Harper and the others to get to us. Not only were we trapped in a charmed meranium box, but we were surrounded by daemons, all of them eager to kill us and the rest of our team. Things didn’t really look good for us, especially since I couldn’t turn into a dragon without crushing Caia in this small space.

  After what felt like hours, I’d gone through several emotional stages, from rage and frustration, to resignation, to an eerie sense of calm—something that felt like the quiet before a devastating storm.

  She shuddered in my arms, and I realized that she was crying.

  “It’ll be okay, beautiful,” I murmured, cupping her face with my left hand. “We’ll get out of here one way or another, I promise you.”

  “Your optimism isn’t as infectious as I’d hoped,” she breathed.

  I pressed my thumb under her chin, prompting her to tilt her head up and look at me. Our eyes met, and, for a brief but wonderful moment, it felt as though the world around us disappeared. For a split second in the endless fabric of time, the walls around us were gone, and all we had was each other.

  Her lips parted slowly, as her gaze softened. I wondered what would happen if I kissed her. My vow of celibacy seemed fickle and useless, an obsolete nuisance. What if we weren’t going to get out of here? What if the worst came to happen, and we were living out the last few days or hours of our lives?

  Would I leave this world without knowing what it felt like to taste her lips?

  I inched closer, ready to throw everything aside, just to feel her. My heart wrestled against my ribcage, my fire raging through me, desperate for any kind of release. Her breath hitched as I lowered my head, ready to do what I had been dreaming of for weeks.

  This is it. There’s no turning back from here.

  A sharp and loud clang startled us. We both shot to our feet, flushed and breathing heavily, as if we’d just been lifting weights. I looked through the small tunnel, and the hatch door at the end opened. Zane’s head popped into view. He grinned.

  “Ah, I see you’re still here,” he quipped, adding fuel to my fire.

  “Did you come here to taunt us or to help us?” I shot back. Caia came to my side. Her face lit up with hope, and I found myself praying that Zane wouldn’t knock her down.

  “I have very little time and no patience for silly games,” Zane replied. “Your friends are here.”

  “Wait, what?” I yelped.

  I could see the world in color again when Harper and Caspian appeared by his side. Whatever invisibility spell they had been wearing, it expired just then.

  “Harper! Lord Kifo!” Caia gasped.

  They both frowned, then glanced at each other.

  “Okay, so that’s, what… three, four hours?” Harper asked Caspian.

  “Looks like it.” He nodded.

  “And I only had half a satchel,” Harper said. She then beamed at Caia and me. “We got our hands on some invisibility spell paste from the daemons.”

  “You have no idea how good it is to see you!” Caia cried out, wiping more tears.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Harper chuckled, giving us a wink.

  “Okay, you can hug and kiss later. I need to get rid of this.” Zane rolled his eyes and used his claws to scratch away at the edge of the small tunnel. He muttered something, and the entire passage lit up with familiar symbols, bright orange against the meranium surface.

  The charm that Shaytan had put on the box vanished.

  “Now hurry, send the fae through first,” Zane said.

  I helped Caia up, lifting her so she could get into the tunnel. She crawled through, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Harper and Caspian got her out.

  “Okay, now do your thing, dragon.” The daemon prince smirked.

  They all pulled themselves back, and I used my fire breath on the meranium. I had been longing to do this for hours, and I was thrilled to watch the metal turn into an incandescent yellow blob as it melted away. In less than a minute, the front side of the meranium box was gone, and a wide path had been cleared for me to pass through. I understood then how they’d gotten me in, in the first place—they’d literally taken down one wall, then sealed it and added swamp witch charms to stop me from melting it all away.

  I reunited with Harper and Caia, hugging them both and laughing with sheer joy, as if I hadn’t seen them in ages. Freedom was an incredible thing to experience after being deprived of it.

  “How did you make it all the way here?” Caia asked.

  “We had to split into pairs, because there’s another meranium box in the east wing and I can’t see through the damn thing,” Harper replied. “We got lucky and ran into Zane.”

  “He was kind enough to help us reach you,” Caspian added, giving Zane an appreciative nod. “Hansa and Jax are on the other side. We’re supposed to meet over in the south wing.”

  “Wait, if they’re on the other side, checking that other meranium box, how will they know they’re in the wrong place?” I asked.

  “They’d open the latch and see that the box is empty. Anyway, you can catch up once you’re out of here,” Zane said, reminding us that our escape was nowhere near over at this point.

  Harper handed us a couple of satchels. Caia and I swallowed their contents, while Harper and Caspian did the same, then gave us two red lenses, and we watched each other disappear.

  “This stuff is weaker than the original spell, but it will do,” Harper replied. “We need to be careful, and not look any of the daemons in the eye. Use the lenses so we can keep track of each other as we move.”

  “Where are you meeting the others?” Zane asked.

  “There’s a totem in the south wing. I think it’s the only one,” Harper said.

  “It is. It was a gift from the king of Imen, from thousands of years ago, long before his kind came around.” The daemon prince nodded at Caspian. “It was a short-lived attempt at peace. I’ll take you there. Just stick to the sides and use the statues for cover, if you need to.”

  One by one, we followed Zane as he guided us out of the chamber. We stepped over the dead daemon guards, careful not to step into any of the blood pools that had formed around them. It took me a while to adjust to the titanic size of the palace and everything in it—the entire place had been designed to come across as grandiose and brimming with luxury. And it did just that.

  In this impressive, expansive enemy territory, I couldn’t help but feel a little small. But then I quickly remembered what they had done, and how they’d managed to cage me, and my chest swelled with the eagerness to go full dragon and torch them all to hell.

  Soon enough, I’d get my chance. This wasn’t my last incursion into a daemon city.

  I could feel it in my bones.

  Harper

  (Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)

  It took us another half hour or so to reach the totem in the south wing, mainly because of the frequent hiding breaks we had to take on the way there. The daemon guards were wearing their lenses, making it more difficult for us to sneak through the hallway in a straight line and forcing us to seek shelter behind statues and curtains.

  “Lucky for us that Shaytan likes his fine art, huh?” Caia whispered.

  We were on our own again, with Zane leading the way.

  “Yes, my father loves these statues,” he muttered, his discontent quite obvious. “Personally, I think they’re a ghastly waste of space, but hey, I’m not in charge. Besides, he’s found a new use for them. Anyway, here we are.”

  We gathered around the totem. It was a beautiful piece, reaching all the way t
o the ceiling, with a dozen, beautifully sculpted heads stacked one on top of the other. Their gemstone eyes seemed to look down at us, amber flames reflected on their many sharp facets.

  “Are these Imen? Or daemons? I’m a bit confused,” I muttered, staring at the golden heads. There were sinuous lines and horns protruding from six of them, while the other six seemed normal… if normal could be defined as “not being a daemon”.

  “They’re both. Six of our former kings, and six of theirs. They were always at war, and the totem was intended to bring them together, to symbolize peace,” Zane explained. “Then my grandfather went ahead and ruined it. The truce lasted for exactly six months.”

  A couple of minutes passed as we kept a lookout. Then Hansa and Jax emerged from the west wing, and stilled at the sight of Zane.

  “We’re good,” I said, noticing they had red lenses on, as well. “Zane’s here to help us.”

  “Ah, so you’re the infamous Zane.” Hansa pursed her lips.

  “I take it my name’s come up in your conversations?” Zane raised an eyebrow, taking off his red lens to clean it.

  “You could say that,” I shot back. “Not sure you remember, but you kidnapped my friend?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He chuckled, one hand resting on his long knife handle, which was mounted on his leather belt. “Good times.”

  “I guess we should thank you?” Jax replied with a slight frown. Hansa lit up when she saw Caia and Blaze behind us.

  “Oh, my darlings!” she croaked, and rushed to hug them both, then glanced at Caspian and me. “Let’s get out of here. We have so much news!”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” I snorted. “We just paid a visit to the king’s harem.”

  “We saw Darius. Alive,” Jax replied bluntly, and I froze, unable to process that snippet of information.

  “Um, what now?” I managed, feeling as if my brain were glitching.