“Good. I need a volunteer to be my partner.” She held up a hand. “I need someone who’s quick. I’ll be stopping multiple opponents at once.” Zhek’s fantastic potion had given her a great deal of energy.

“Did you really need to ask?” Jaft asked with an insulted tone.

“As long as you can pace yourself.” Did he remember their race to Tamburah’s temple?

“I wasn’t the rotten velbloud egg,” he said dryly. “No worries. There’s no sand down here.”

That reminded her. “But there’s rubble and debris and holes. Prepare yourselves, it’s not pretty and there are…bodies buried. There will be unpleasant odors.”

Grim nods.

“Jaft and I will take point. Let’s go.”

They weren’t subtle or quiet and they didn’t care. There were seventy-six of them and they slammed into the twenty people defending the only entrance into the prince’s complex. Shyla almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

She reached the doors first. They were closed. But they were warped and couldn’t be locked—one good thing from the explosions. Three dozen Arch Deacons armed with long knives waited on the other side. They all wore torques. Shyla didn’t slow down. Freezing a handful, she barreled between them as Jaft flitted around, delivering precise palm-heel strikes to their temples.

However, she needed information, so she made eye contact with the next Arch Deacon that tried to stop her.

“Where is the priestess?” she asked her.

The woman said, “Surrender and I’ll take you to her.” But she thought, In the throne room.

Shyla groaned. Not the throne room. Why couldn’t that place be a pile of rubble? Shyla froze the woman and continued. She fought her way toward the throne room with single-minded determination.

When she reached it, she had the presence of mind to pause and seek the number of souls on the other side of the ornate glass doors.

“Fifteen people are inside,” she said to Jaft.

He inclined his head to the corridor behind them. The two of them had outpaced the rest. A clump of her people fought with the deacons at the end of the corridor. “Better wait for backup.”

“Good idea.”

Except the doors to the throne room suddenly opened. Two Arch Deacons grabbed Shyla’s arms and yanked her into the room. She flew forward and fell onto the floor. The doors slammed shut, blocking Jaft.

Shyla gathered her magic as a ring of people surrounded her. She was about to freeze them when magic grabbed her, forcing her to be still.

They were all wielders. All focused on her.

She was trapped.

Twenty