“What?” No. He had to be lying. “You mean Zade?”
“The one and only.” His leer twisted into an expression that contained more anger than humour. “Your friend is doomed, Bria.”
Shit. His tone was dead serious. The former jailor of the House of Fire, who’d tormented me throughout my imprisonment, was dead.
2
I passed the sneering guard and walked into the hallway. Every inch of the place was seared into my memory from my inprisonment here, and it was easy for me to navigate my way through the whitewashed corridors to the source of the murmuring voices coming from behind a wooden door.
The jailor’s body had been laid out on a low wooden table inside the room, and several other guards glanced at each other and muttered when I walked in. Ignoring their stares, I looked down at the body, at the face I’d seen from the other side of a barred door more times than I’d could count. He’d taken great pleasure in pushing the boundaries as to what the House was allowed to get away with in how they treated their prisoners, be it taunting me through the bars or ‘forgetting’ to feed me for days at a time. Yet lying there on the table, he looked unexpectedly pathetic, from the dishevelment of his usually neatly combed grey hair to the reddened blisters fanning across his papery skin which made him look like he’d been stung by a flock of angry hornets. The red-and-black uniform all the guards wore did not help that impression.
I wrenched my gaze away from Zade’s face. “How did he die?”
“His body shut down, seemingly of its own accord,” Harris said dispassionately. “We found a cantrip at the scene, but it was blank. Convenient.”
“Where—” I broke off, seeing a blank cantrip lying on the edge of the table, face-down. Even blank, I recognised the signature on the back of the golden coin.
The Family. The Family had created the cantrip. I wouldn’t lie, part of me had always wondered if someone in here hadn’t contributed to their escape. They were supposed to be incarcerated in the Houses’ most secure prison, not walking free.
Not using their cantrips to kill people.
“What’s she doing in here?” said one of the other guards. “Isn’t she… wait, isn’t that the Death King’s symbol?”
“Got it in one.” I flashed the scarlet interior of my cloak at them. “Where did this cantrip come from?”
“As if you don’t know,” said Harris.
I frowned at him. “I had nothing to do with this. I’ve been in the Court of the Dead ever since the trials for the next Fire Element came to an end. Ask the Death King to back me up if you don’t believe me.”
“Bold claim, that,” said one of the other guards.
“Sure you want to risk pissing him off?” I said. “He sent me to negotiate with you about a new agreement between the Court of the Dead and the Houses of the Elements.”
“A likely story,” said Harris. “You’re a former inmate. Why would the King of the Dead give a job to the likes of you?”
“It’s true,” I told the guards. “Turns out I have the skills he wanted for his personal Fire Element, so he gave me the position. I take it you’re declining the Death King’s offer?”
I hadn’t exactly expected the House to fall over themselves to team up with the Court of the Dead, but the fact that they outright refused to believe I worked for the Death King pissed me off to no end.
“Tell your boss,” said Harris, “that we have our own business to deal with at this moment in time. Feel free to also tell him his new Fire Element’s best friend is a murdering liar.”
“You mean you really think Tay’s the one who killed Zade?” I said. “Where would she have got hold of a cantrip? I assume you had the sense to confiscate everything she brought in with her.”
I’d thought his comment about Tay was a taunt, but had she really been out of her cell when Zade had died? She wasn’t good at following orders at the best of times, but she must have known better than to murder the chief jailor and get herself caught at the scene of the crime. Besides, she couldn’t have got hold of a cantrip from behind bars. Right?
“You tell me,” said Harris. “Your friend Tay was out of her cell when he died. Facts are facts.”
“She couldn’t have got her hands on anything,” I said. “Not if she never left the place and was under constant guard. If there is a chance she might’ve got hold of a cantrip and sneaked out of her cell, then blame your own security for not keeping a close enough eye on her.”
Harris scowled. “She’s a sneaky bitch. She has magic.”
“She can’t walk through walls,” I said. “If someone managed to break in here and spoke to her, you might want to have another look at that, not focus all your attention on Tay.”
Like me, Tay’s magic was different than the norm. Her ability to control and channel electric energy was previously unheard of, in fact, but the very walls of the dungeon cell would have muted her power. Not even spirit mages could use their astral projecting abilities to get into the lower levels of the building. So if someone had given her the means of killing a guard, they’d have had to walk in through the doors in person. Either the guards were admitting their security held more holes than my old shoes did, or they were too convinced that both Tay and I were lying to consider there might be issues with their assumptions.
Harris walked up to me and waved the cantrip in my face. “You know where this cantrip came from?”
“No.” It wasn’t a lie. The Family didn’t have the same resources as they had before. Or I thought they didn’t. “Don’t look at me like that. I have nothing to do
