Even in the dim light of the cell, his expression tightened and his eyes glowed with eager threat. She’d fed him charms over the course of the last three weeks, so many that he should have enough tricks up his sleeve to make it from his cell to the doorway. Everything was ready.

When Rue had put her in charge of keeping Thomas alive, she’d answered him with properly downcast eyes…but in her mind, she’d begun planning this.

They’d never broken her, the bastards.

She tapped her magick, drawing it straight up from Eudae herself, and the chains binding him snapped. Thomas couldn’t touch those chains…but she could.

Thomas straightened his long, broad frame just as the guards threw the door open. His show of magick would not have gone unnoticed. The two hulking daaemon stopped short just inside the doorway and Thomas struck like a lightning bolt, raising power and directing it at them. It pulsed along her skin, tasting of a place she couldn’t remember but missed with all her heart, tasted like home, and then the guards were down. Dead, Claire had no doubt.

Losing no time, they stepped over their bodies and raced down the corridor of the prison before more guards arrived.

At the end, they turned the corner and ran straight into an entire group of daaemon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-EIGHT

ISABELLE LEANED OVER A SHEAF OF PAPERS IN THE library, squinting against the exhaustion that had overtaken her. The room was dark, but for the light illuminating her immediate area. Micah and the others helping them on this project had long since retired.

She was no scholar, didn’t even have a college education, but since Thomas’s disappearance she’d had a crash course in lots of esoteric subjects she’d never had cause to be interested in before, like the nuances of Aramaic and the delicate intricacies of earth magick.

Until now the Coven had had no reason to delve into historical documents kept by non-magickals, but since their witchy origins had been revealed, Micah had been procuring them and scouring them for any information that might fit in with what they’d received from the Duskoff. In the process, knowledge that needed to be closely guarded from the warlocks had been discovered. If Thomas hadn’t been trapped over there, they would’ve let it stay buried forever. It was quite practical and some of it very dangerous.

Mumbling to herself, she read the line giving her trouble for the fiftieth time and then double-checked the three translations she had, trying to figure out which one fit with rest of the text.

She sat back, rubbing the bridge of her nose and closing her bloodshot eyes. “I really need to let Micah handle this,” she mumbled to herself.