“Does Liv know?” I asked.
“She knows,” she said. “She isn’t happy about me risking my neck by staying in their employment, but I figured we could use an inside source on the Order. If you haven’t heard, a group of renegade spirit mages took over the upper management from within, and most of the other Order members don’t have a clue.”
“How’d you find out, then?” I said.
“Because the people who nearly killed me with that inferno cantrip were working with someone inside the Order,” she said. “They caused a diversion and then staged a coup.”
“Damn.” The Order was known for punishing mages harshly, but that didn’t mean I could ever have pictured them being taken over by spirit mages from the inside. “Are they still working with the Houses of the Elements, even now?”
“The Order is no longer handing prisoners over to the Houses,” she said. “Obvious reasons. I don’t know if their ambassadors have met in person since the incident, but if it’s true what you say and at least one of the Houses is working with the enemy as well, I can imagine they’re more closely involved.”
“Great,” I said. “Problem is, the House of Fire won’t listen to a word I say whenever I try to warn them. What’re the odds that they’ve already been taken over as well?”
Was that why they hadn’t executed Tay yet? For all I knew, they’d been the ones to set the Family free in the first place. On the other hand, that inferno cantrip the House of Earth had thrown at me had damn near struck the House of Fire’s base as well. Not exactly what I’d expect from their ally.
“No idea, but I’m done with this cantrip,” said Devon. “Let me know if you need me to look at anything else.”
“I don’t yet,” I said, “but… how tricky is that virus cantrip to make?”
“Very,” she said. “It’s also highly illegal on both sides of the nodes because it’s so damn contagious. If this cantrip was active in any way, I’d have dropped dead the instant I touched it.”
“Damn.” I looked at the deceptively innocuous golden coin. “Lucky it was inactive when I picked it up, then.”
“I can think of a dozen possible uses for a spell of that nature, none of them pleasant,” she said.
Yeah. “They wouldn’t be much use against the Death King.”
Then again, according to Miles, the enemy already had a potential way of killing a lich… or rather, bringing them back to life.
“Don’t speak too soon,” said Devon. “You want this back?”
“Nah, keep it,” I said. “I’m no practitioner. Thanks for the help.”
After walking out of the dorm, I left the castle via the back door. I hadn’t visited my brother since his temper tantrum the other day, and while he was a manipulative bastard, his power was limited while he was in jail. Since the Death King seemed to have no intention of interrogating him and he’d given me enough clues to guess that he’d manipulated Tay into killing the jailor, maybe I could coax some more information out of him on how much he knew about the virus-laced cantrips—and where they were being manufactured.
I approached the two liches guarding the jail. “May I see Adair?”
“No,” responded the lich on the left-hand side, in the same cold echoing voice all the liches possessed.
Worth a try.
“I think I’m the only person he’ll speak to,” I went on. “He definitely has information the Death King will want to know, but he’s too stubborn to talk to anyone else. I won’t look him in the eyes or give him the chance to use his powers on me.”
“If you insist on going inside,” said the lich on the right, “we’ll be watching you.”
“Fine, but that might cause him to clam up.” I’d lose nothing for trying, though, so I entered the prison via the door and let the two liches trail in behind me.
“You again,” Adair said. “I knew you’d come crawling back.”
“Who let you out of your cell?” I said. “The first time around?”
He laughed. “The Death King.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I thought it was pretty fucking funny.” He sat back on the bench inside his cell. “Lighten up, sister.”
“Not your sister.” By designating us as siblings, our guardians had hoped we’d mirror each other’s behaviour, but he’d always been crueller, sharper than I was, and had stamped out what little conscience he’d possessed when we were kids in an effort to emulate Lex and Roth.
“You are,” he said. “You’re just like me, deep down. You locked me up here because you couldn’t face the truth.”
I shook my head at him. “How many people in the House of Fire are allied with the lich named Hawker and the spirit mages who took over the Order of the Elements?”
He was silent for an instant. “Huh?”
I risked a glance at him and saw puzzlement on his face. I’d wanted to catch him off guard, and it’d worked. Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly planned where to go from there.
“You heard me,” I said. “How many members of the House of Fire have joined his side? Is it an open secret like in the House of Earth?”
“Makes no difference whether you know or not,” he said. “It’s already too late.”
His words wormed beneath my skin. So the enemy is already there. “I beg to differ. I’m assuming not everyone in the Houses is working for the enemy, or else they wouldn’t have seen to it that you stayed behind bars.”
His face flushed. “Watch it.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I said. “Even our guardians just left you locked up in there. Anyone would think they didn’t care.”
I averted my gaze, but I felt his sharp eyes on me all the same. “You need to watch your mouth.”
“Tough talk from a
