Harris loomed closer, so close that I could smell the smoke on his breath. “You want to be locked up, too, is that it?”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said. “And see if your security can keep out the Death King himself.”
“Don’t lock her up,” said one of the other guards. “Look, she’s definitely wearing his gear. She can’t have taken it from Davies. We removed his body.”
Harris shot him a glare. “Then she stole it from the castle. The Death King is losing control of his army, the rumours say.”
“Not me.” I folded my arms. “You know, it’ll go a lot easier for all of us if you believed me. Do you want me to tell the Death King that you have no interest in accepting his offer to work with him?”
“Not as long as your friend refuses to admit to any wrongdoing,” said Harris. “As long as there’s a killer loose in here, we’re not wasting our time by sending our people to negotiate with the Court of the Dead.”
“Why don’t I talk to her myself?” I asked.
I didn’t expect him to say yes, but another guard spoke up first. “Why not? Maybe the Death King’s Fire Element can help loosen her tongue. Better than waiting for her to decide to speak to us herself. Unless she responds better to force.”
“If you hurt her,” I began heatedly, “I’ll bring a pack of liches in here with or without the Death King’s permission.”
“The Death King doesn’t give a shit about the mages,” said Harris. “He doesn’t care about your friend.”
Unfortunately, he might be right on that one, but that didn’t mean I’d let them get away with tormenting Tay. While they didn’t often use torture on their prisoners, it wasn’t illegal here in the Parallel, not when the Houses themselves had written the very laws governing the city of Elysium.
The prisoners were organised by floor, with the least dangerous on the upper floors and the highest risk prisoners on the lower levels. Tay’s danger level had her on the lowest possible floor, and during our imprisonment, we’d been in cells opposite one another on the same corridor. Ironically, behind bars was the best place I could have been the first time Zade had hauled me in here. At least until I’d been certain my so-called family weren’t going to be able to escape their own secure cells. More than five years had passed since then, yet the sight of the narrow staircase leading down into the depths of the prison brought all those old memories roaring to the surface.
It’d been pure chance that’d seen Tay and I imprisoned close together. The House’s guards might not know all the details of my past, but they knew who’d raised me, who’d been responsible for my magical talent, and they hadn’t taken any chances. What they’d overlooked was that while Tay hadn’t been raised by the Family herself, their cantrips had gifted her with magic which was volatile and hard to control, and we’d bonded over that while plotting to escape. Eventually, we’d walked free and built a life together. Now that life lay in ashes, thanks to her decision to throw her lot in with a group of rogue spirit mages in the hopes of getting her magic under control and being on the winning side in a new elemental war.
She’d paid the price for her choice. I felt it when I walked down the stairs to the lowest level—a pressure emanating from the row of cells that would have cut off my fire magic as effectively as dunking a bucket of water over my head. The cells were formed of thin bars made of an unbreakable metal, laced with the same material as the walls and ceiling of the dungeon which muted any magic that came into contact with it.
Inside her cell, Tay was doing sit-ups on the hard floor. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable, but she’d never been good at dealing with being cooped up. The higher security prisoners weren’t allowed out of their cells at all, for any reason. No privileges. No escape. Unless you were resourceful like us, that is.
Harris stood back to watch me as I approached the cell. “Tay?”
She lifted her head, then she moved into a sitting position against the wall. “They got you, too?”
“No.”
Her gaze landed on the uniform I wore, and her eyes narrowed to slits. “I see how it is.”
“Do you?” Defensiveness rose inside me. “I took the job working for the Death King because it’s that or let the Family hunt me down. The Family you helped when you turned against me.”
“I’m not the one who encouraged them to come after you,” she countered. “You’re working for a murderer. You know how many people the Death King has had killed or turned into liches to join his army?”
“Look, I was originally going to take the job to keep both of us safe,” I said. “Besides, you chose to turn your back on me. What was I supposed to do, go back to working for Striker? The authorities caught him, too.”
“I know they did,” she said. “You couldn’t have picked anyone else to work for? The Court of the Dead is going to be one of the first places to fall apart when the war kicks off.”
“I thought the war was on hold after most of the conspirators ended up jailed.” Including Shawn and the surviving spirit mages who’d betrayed the Spirit Agents. Most of the fire mages who’d tried to infiltrate the Death King’s castle had ended up dead or jailed, too.
Okay, I understood why the guards wouldn’t believe in Tay’s innocence of the jailor’s death. Considering her allies had killed people and she’d let it slide, I wasn’t sure I did, either.
“Not at all,” she said. “You haven’t seen the half of
