Page 99 of The Sundered Realms

“Back to work, then,” she said.

With him at her side, she couldn’t wait.

Vhannor caught her up as they worked room to room, him sweeping for spells while she searched the physical contents for anything noteworthy, each keying through locks or dismantling alerts as needed.

Given Liris’ training, she knew the things she ought to be finding. Records, the minutiae of bureaucracy.

But there was notably nothing.

Like Tellianghu had known someone would come looking and had cleaned anything relevant out.

“Nothing from Shry, so she probably hasn’t found anything yet,” Vhannor said. “What did the ambassador want with you?”

“To guilt me. To trap me.” Liris frowned. “Possibly to recruit me, but that makes no sense. Serenthuar already had me, if they’d wanted me.”

Maybe someday that would stop stinging.

Vhannor squeezed her shoulder in a quick gesture of comfort. “You hadn’t proved you could stop them, then.”

Had they always known? It would almost justify their entrapment of her—except, no. She would have done anything for them, and if they didn’t know that—

“I can practically hear you thinking,” Vhannor growled at her as they crossed to another room. “Whether they knew you could stop them was still no justification for how they strung you along while extracting your labor for years.”

Liris stood stock-still for a moment, not really seeing anything.

Then as Vhannor scrawled out his spell, Liris wrote out one of her own.

She didn’t show him, and he didn’t ask. But it wasn’t one she needed to change, except for adjusting the modifier for distance.

The spell flared almost painfully before guttering out, and Liris followed the sensation toward the window.

“Vhann,” Liris said distantly as she stared.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think we need to spend any more time here.”

He crossed the room to where she stood fixated. “What do you—oh, no. They didn’t.”

Across the expanse of snow, where Liris’ demon portal detection spell had directed her, was the Gate they had passed through. The one all the guests would have intended to leave from—except out of the platform for the cable car, multiple amorphous black figures bubbled out against the mountains.

A black flash cut across them.

Vhannor sucked in a breath, and then he was hurtling for the door. “That was Shry out there.”

Dread spiking through her like ice, Liris ran.

No longer bothering with stealth, they tore down back corridors. Servers flattened themselves against walls with oaths as they passed, but Liris and Vhannor still made it to the cable car in record time.

Just in time for it to stop running. Vhannor swore, looking frantically around for a spell access. Liris stepped off onto the snow and immediately sank two feet down. That spell was down too.

And their skimmers were on the other side of the Gate.

“We can’t run through this, unless you know a spell like a snowshoe,” Liris said.

“I do, but have you ever been snowshoeing? Never mind: the point is it’s slow.”

“A spell to walk across the surface that distance—“

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