Movement stirred within the tunnel opening, revealing something coiled, and… shaped like a snake. A giant house-sized snake. Oh, fuck the Elements.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Miles drifted behind me. “I wish I’d brought one of those mind-control cantrips with me, but I left them at home. With my body.”
“Shit.”
To my horror, the wyrm stirred, its eyes opening to slits. Its head moved sinuously, half asleep, before its gaze fixed on me.
“Uh.” I raised my hands. “Hey, there. Don’t mind us. We’re just leaving.”
Miles was transparent, less of a target, but me? I was a tasty snack. The wyrm’s eyes opened fully and then it reared up, its head towering over the ruins. Wings sprouted from its back, while I broke into a sprint, putting on enough speed that the world turned into a dark blur. The beast snarled, its head waving around as though confused as to where I’d disappeared to. Then its huge body shifted, triggering a tremor below my feet. Even my speed couldn’t get me out of the way in time as its tail flicked up, sending me flying into the air. I landed on my feet by sheer instinct, skidding to a halt in the mud.
Miles’s hands glowed, blasting spirit magic at the wyrm before it could hit me again. The air flickered in front of me as I caught my balance, and I glimpsed the golden sheen of a cantrip at my feet. Uh-oh.
The air flickered and then resolved into an image of a smaller house standing among the ruins. An illusion spell. A good one, too. So they had rebuilt part of the house, and then hidden it behind an illusion. Yet I hadn’t seen any living people around. So who was here?
As though conjured up by my thoughts, the smell of flowery perfume caught in my nostrils, and my heart leapt into my throat.
“Miles,” I said. “Go back.”
“What?” he said. “I won’t leave you here alone.”
“Believe me, you’re better off running,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “I can catch you up. Go back to Elysium. Please.”
“No way,” said Miles. “You’re the one who’s vulnerable here.”
“I’m not.” He didn’t know what these people were capable of. “I just need to check something out, then I’ll be right behind you. Promise.”
His features twisted in indecision, but something in my expression must have convinced him, because he vanished without arguing further.
I took one more step, and the ground exploded. The beast’s tail flung me into the air, and I landed hard, breathless, on my back. The perfumed smell intensified, and I opened my eyes and looked up into a nightmare with a stunning face, a waterfall of dark hair, and pale elven features. Lex still didn’t look a day over twenty-five, though she’d been around since long before the war.
The woman who’d raised me bared her teeth in a crooked smile. “How nice of you to drop in, Bria.”
I groaned. “Why booby-trap your own house?”
“Couldn’t have anyone sniffing around, could we?” Lex’s smile widened. “Don’t worry, the beast is quite tame. For me, that is.”
“Why come back here?” I said. “Everyone knows where your estate is now. It’s not a secret any longer.”
“Everyone?” she said. “No, only the Houses of the Elements knows our location, and they aren’t long for this world.”
My blood chilled. “What did you do?”
“Why, nothing,” she said. “Yet.”
My hopes of the Houses somehow thwarting them had already been low, but not only did the Family walk free, they’d ensnared at least one House in their grip already. Maybe more.
I shifted into an upright position, silently calculating my escape route. “Is Roth around?”
At least Adair was out of the picture for now, but Lex was far worse. She hadn’t changed an inch in the five years she’d been imprisoned. Even her clothes were flawless, as though she’d raided a vampire’s wardrobe. Her lacy red dress was positively indecent for a woman who was old enough to be my grandmother, while her deceptively delicate hands belied the terrifying power at her disposal. Yet Roth put both her and Adair to shame. If both of them were here, I was doomed.
“Not at the moment,” she replied.
“What about Adair, then?” I said. “Why’d you leave him in jail? You could have rescued him at any time, right?”
“For one thing, it was his own fault for getting caught,” she said. “I thought it would be more fun if you were the one who set him free.”
“No chance.” I’d about had it with the mind games. “Where are the people you have carving cantrips for you? I know you aren’t doing it yourselves.”
I was stalling, I knew it, but if she used her magic on me, it was game over. I needed to get the hell out of here before Miles came after me in person and ended up ensnared, too.
“The cantrips?” she said. “I wouldn’t bother your mind about them. There’s nothing you can do.”
A likely story. The cantrips might be powerful, but they had to be carved by hand. By practitioners. Which meant this operation covered far more than just the three of them.
“I beg to differ,” I said. “There’s plenty I can do, if you haven’t forgotten how I stopped your schemes five years ago.”
“You put our plans on hold,” she corrected. “You never stamped them out for good. With the Parallel in chaos, it’ll be our time to shine, and the second war will be even more bounteous than the first.”
The war. I hadn’t been born back then, but after the war thirty years ago, the Family had first risen to power. Before then, the Council of the Elements had been the ruling force in the Parallel, but when they’d been all but wiped out during the fall of the spirit mages, the Houses had sprung up in their place. The Houses had done their utmost best to stamp out any trace of illegal
