“The Family escaped jail, right?” Miles said. “You think they went back to their home?”
“Couldn’t have,” I said. “I burnt it down. Razed the whole property when I escaped and left them for dead, destroying all their cantrips for good measure.”
My chest tightened with each word, as though part of me expected a bad reaction. Miles had accepted what I’d told him so far, but he hadn’t seen the Family’s depravity with his own eyes. Not yet.
“They must have found somewhere new to hide out, then,” he said. “How’d the jailor die? What did the cantrip do to him?”
“His body shut down, they said,” I said. “His face was covered in these odd blisters. That’s all I saw. The guards might not necessarily have known it was a cantrip that did it if they hadn’t found one next to the body.”
“Yeah, doesn’t sound familiar to me,” he said. “I can check with the others, if that’ll help. Maybe someone knows.”
“I was going to take it to the Death King,” I said. “Not that cantrips are his area of expertise either, but he tends to be in the know about everything going on in the Parallel.”
Judging by the way he’d known half the contenders competing to become the next Fire Element had turned out to be working against him, the guy played a long game. But he didn’t know the Family, not the way I did. Adair might be back in custody, but the others weren’t, and even I didn’t know their current whereabouts. The House of Fire had avoided making the information about their escape public, which perhaps wasn’t a surprise. Telling the population of Elysium that there was a group of magically gifted mass murderers on the loose went against their policy of pretending to be completely in control of the city.
As for the Death King? He had little to do with the Houses. In fact, I was supposed to be the person who ferried information between the Houses and him, but I hadn’t reckoned on them being so hostile to the notion of allying with him purely based on their hatred of me. I might have been a notorious criminal, but I’d also handed the Family to them in the first place. It’d taken all four of the Houses’ combined strength to get the three of them behind bars, and only because I’d significantly weakened them. The odds of me pulling off the same stunt again were low, but it’d be nice if the House of Fire’s guards wouldn’t automatically jump to the conclusion that I was the one in the wrong. If they’d told me where the Family had fled to after their escape, I might even be able to track them down. With or without Tay’s help.
“Yeah, the Death King will know,” Miles said. “Why’d he send you to the House of Fire, anyway?”
“To see if they’d be willing to work with him.” I shook my head. “He refused to listen when I told him they hate my guts, but I didn’t expect to find them dealing with a murder. They won’t even consider speaking to him until that’s cleared up, but if he offers to take a certain prisoner off their hands, they might change their minds.”
His eyes widened a little. “Your brother?”
“Not my brother, but yes.” I grimaced. “Honestly, he’d probably be more secure with the Death King, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to make an escape while they were moving him to the castle. He already gave them the slip once.”
“Yeah, they need to be careful,” he said. “I’m surprised they didn’t lock him up in one of their more secure facilities, like the one at the north of the city.”
“I think that’s where the whole Family was locked up until a month ago,” I said. “The guards wouldn’t tell me the details, but it’s the most secure of their prisons and the Family still managed to break out of there. I reckon that’s why the House of Fire took Adair in instead, so the others wouldn’t have the same knowledge of the layout. Once they’ve broken out of a place once, they’d be able to do the same again.”
I was kind of surprised they hadn’t tried to come and get him anyway, but it was beyond me to figure out the motives of the two people who’d raised me. For all we knew, they’d left Adair there as a punishment for getting himself caught.
“Yeah, the House of Fire likes to keep everything quiet,” Miles said. “They barely acknowledge we exist, which works in our favour.”
“Shawn thought they were going to take all the city’s mages under their control,” I said. “Including spirit mages.”
His jaw tightened. “Shawn thought that turning on the rest of us would be justified if it meant he could get revenge on behalf of the spirit mages who died in the war.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I hadn’t brought up the subject. Shawn had been one of Miles’s friends as well as a fellow Spirit Agent, and his betrayal hadn’t helped their distrusting attitude towards me—or mine towards them.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “The others are having a hard time dealing with the fallout, but I’m just glad we found out before we started working closer with the Death King again.”
“Be glad he revealed his true colours. He’s an arsehole.” I looked up at the sound of footsteps around the corner and saw the silhouette of someone outside the gate. “I think you have a visitor.”
“Maybe they’re here to pick up the vampire chickens,” he commented.
“I thought you were keeping them.”
“Nah, sooner or later someone will notice and tell tales on us to the authorities.” He walked around to the front of the house and halted dead in his tracks.
Harris,
