Page 93 of Daemon Master

With a snarl, Elana wrenched her other hand toward Leda, a knife from dinner clutched in her fingers. Leda screamed and danced out of reach. The clumsy strike went wide, and Elana’s grip slackened, the knife clattering free as the last of her strength fled.

Sobs racked her, making what she said next almost unintelligible. “Didn’t you hear what he said?Freyahas a true bond, you spirit-cursed fool!”

Leda stared at her crying sister, her eyes widening. In that moment, she reminded Adrian of a lost child who’d made a mistake she didn’t know how to set right.

Her expression hardened as she spun toward Kali’s partner. “You have your fugitives. Go, and leave the rest of us in peace.”

The man finished his odd survey of the villagers before quirking an eyebrow at Leda. “A deal’s a deal. I intend to arrest anyone here with this ‘true bond’—allthreeof them.”

“But surely…surely you can make an exception,” Leda sputtered. “My niece has done nothing wrong. Spirits above, she’s only a child!”

Kali’s partner clucked his tongue. “I’m afraid my hands are tied.” He motioned to the watchers, and their collective daemons crackled with aether. “Though really, you should thank me. After all, it means your niece will be spared. Wouldn’t you prefer that over the alternative?”

Bile filled Adrian’s throat. It took a moment for Leda to realize what the man meant. When she did, her face paled. She took a trembling step back.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “You said you would leave us alone.”

Kali’s partner sighed with the mild exasperation of a teacher explaining something to a dull student for the hundredth time. “I told you I would take anyone with the true bond into custody. And I shall. I didn’t specify what would happen to everyone else.”

“But…but…” Leda fell to her knees in the dirt.“Why?”

A look of genuine sympathy flickered across the man’s face, and he averted his eyes. “If it’s any consolation, I take no pleasure in wanton slaughter. But I cannot risk knowledge of what happened here spreading. You are simply too great a liability to leave behind.”

Howling a feral cry, Leda snatched the knife Elana had dropped and charged Kali’s partner. She barely made it three steps before a bolt of lightning struck her down with a sickening sizzle of scorched flesh. Adrian stared in shock as Kali’s partner calmly lowered his hand. The lightning had come fromhim.Did he possess more aetherforged relics like Kali’s?

The seeker turned away with a brusque gesture toward the watchers. “Spare the fugitives and the girl with the red hair. Kill the rest, as quickly and as painlessly as you can.”

Aether erupted in the man’s wake. Panic gripping him, Adrian struggled in vain to throw off the daemonsbane’s effects. By the time he staggered to his feet, a watcher was there to clamp iron shackles around his wrists and shove him into another watcher’s waiting arms. Nearby, he witnessed Seymour and Freya suffer identical fates.

When a watcher stabbed his sword into Elana’s back, Adrian squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear any more. But that did little to stifle the hot, bitter tears trailing down his cheeks…nor to muffle Freya’s agonized wail.

twenty-two

Prisoner

Adrian awoke in astone cell. A wave of déjà vu washed over him even though he could pick out clear differences from his imprisonment at the Enclave. For one, the spirit-cursed daemonsbane had already faded from his system, leaving his head and aether clear. He checked on both his bonds to be sure, relieved when he sensed his daemons still ensconced within him.

Heartrender sent him a sleepy pulse of concern while Lockrod thrashed in his eagerness to be let out. Adrian obliged, manifesting both his daemons in the bare room. Though glad to see them, their presence raised a host of unsettling questions. Why toss him in a cell but not strip him of his daemons? Surely, Kali’s partner would have—

Reality came crashing back, memories of the feast racking him with shudders. Elana and Xander and the rest of the village, all butchered while they lay helpless… He gasped and doubled overas if punched, trembling uncontrollably while tears leaked from his eyes.

He hadn’t known any of them that well after only a month, not even Xander or Elana. But he’d hoped to. Now, he’d never get the chance. The Enclave was gone. Exterminated.

And it was all his fault.

Bands of regret constricted his chest. Spirits below, what had he been thinking? If he’d listened to Seymour and fled when they had the chance, everyone there would still be alive. Instead, he’d lingered. He’d been selfish. And the Enclave had paid the price.

The only thing that brought him any relief was knowing that Freya and Seymour had also survived. Though, peering again at the nondescript stone walls and bolted metal door, that seemed a cold comfort. Facing down Kali had been one thing. But now that Serenity Corp had them firmly in its clutches, he didn’t see how they’d possibly escape.

In retrospect, his entire plan seemed ludicrous. Recreating a new method of aetherforging? Infiltrating a watcher stronghold to steal an airship? Reaching Haven and fighting in a major tournament without discovery?

When it occurred to him that he might now be trapped in the very watcher fortress they’d intended to enter, he bit back a hysterical laugh that morphed into a sob. He buried his head in his hands. Heartrender sent a pulse of comfort through their bond that failed to penetrate the pervading despair taking root.

Crastley’s journal and Kali’s relics weren’t in his cell. Either they’d been left behind at the empty husk of the village or else Kali’s partner had claimed them. Adrian assumed the latter. Would the man be able to make any sense of the journal, or would it confound him like it had Elana? It didn’t matter. Journal or no, all Adrian’s hopes and dreams lay in ashes. There was nothing left for him to do now but wait.

He wasn’t sure how long he huddled there—long enough, at least, for both Heartrender and Lockrod to grow bored of their futile attempts to cheer him up and perform their own sweeps of the room. Nothing. No weaknesses—no hidden ways out. He’d figured as much.

Lost to his anguish, it took Heartrender’s flare of alarm for him to notice the locks on the door clinking open. He looked up listlessly and found his daemons growling at the man currently haunting his thoughts. The Enclave’s destroyer appeared entirely at ease, his hands stuffed into deep pockets on his white coat despite the furious daemons staring him down.