Page 24 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams
Hyllus nods. “There’s an aesteri alarm too.”
“Hyllus, can you nullify the alarm?” I ask.
“I can try,” he says.
“And the lock?” I turn to Phaia and Alastor. My geostri magic won’t be much use in this scenario.
“My sand probably won’t weigh enough to turn the mechanism,” Alastor says, turning to the silver-haired soldier.
Phaia pulls a small stone from her pocket, no bigger than a piece of gravel. “It won’t be neat,” she warns. “But it’ll get the job done.”
“Go ahead. We probably don’t have much time left,” I order.
Phaia wedges the small stone into the keyhole, turning to Hyllus. He holds up his hand, magic fizzing around the door.
“That should do it,” he says a few seconds later.
“Should?” Alastor asks.
“I might have done nothing,” Hyllus says mildly. “In that case, just prepare for a very loud noise.”
Phaia lays her fingers over the keyhole for a moment, then steps back.
“Watch your faces,” she warns.
There’s a groan as the stone rapidly expands, and the metal of the lock buckles, pulling the internal bolt loose.
We all freeze, but there’s no sudden alarm, just the sound of the door clicking open. Phaia’s stone is still wedged inside the mangled lock.
“One look at that, and the new shift will know something’s up,” Alastor points out.
“That’s why we’re not going to wait around for them to turn up,” I say. “Now, let’s go get Ana.”
“And what do we do when we finally run into some clerics?” Tira asks skeptically.
“We kill them before they can raise the alarm,” I reply. “Got it?”
Tira reaches beneath her cloak and pulls out the bow and quiver of arrows she had strapped to her back, slinging the quiver over her shoulder.
“Absolutely,” she replies.
They follow me inside, and I follow the sound of Ana’s heartbeat, thundering louder and louder in my ears.
Chapter 8
Morgana
“You mean you’re not allowed to see your familyeveragain?” I ask incredulously.
“No. You have to act like they’re dead or something,” Lafia’s voice floats up through the grate. “They try to avoid posting clerics anywhere close to where they grew up. And if you ever run into someone from your family, you’re both supposed to pretend you don’t know each other.”
Her voice is flat, ground down by reliving some of the worst things the Temple puts acolytes through. In the last few days, our whispered conversations between the cells have kept me sane, and I suspect the same is true for Lafia. Still, I may have pushed too hard with my questions.
“I’m so sorry, Lafia,” I say.
Being shut away from a family I couldn’t remember was bad enough, but being taken from a family you love and being expected to forget them seems unbearable.
“It’s not your fault,” she replies.
