Page 73 of Reap & Sow

Then he was reaching for her, holding her through the bars. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Stupid girl.” There was no wrath in it. Ben’s voice wobbled in a way she’d not heard for years. “What have you done?”

“There’s no time. We have to go.”

“The fuck is going on over…”

Ben trailed off, and Eda knew without looking that Kit had appeared behind her.

“Who are you?” Lawrie demanded.

“Your dreams come true, I’d wager. I am Kit’rath.” The demon swung a ring of keys about his finger. There was blood on his hands and chin.

Ben saw it. “What are you?” He stood motionless, even as their door screeched open.

“I think you know.”

Ben’s lips thinned.

“There’s no time,” Eda repeated. She hugged Lawrie, allowing herself a moment to luxuriate in his familiar smell beneath stale sweat—ink and parchment and wood varnish. “Just hurry. Please.”

Her urgent tone was enough. Kit dragged the two guards through the warped prison door and set about stripping them. With great distaste, her brothers pulled on the wrinkled uniforms; ill-fitting, but they would do. Ben blanched at the sight of the broken figure in the corner, crushed and bitten to death, but took the poor man’s sword without comment. Lawrie was just pulling on a boot when Tripp materialized out of thin air.

“Merciful shit!”

“It’s all right, he’s with me. Us. He’s helping.”

Ben glared. “Eda, what is going on?”

“No time for human yapping!” Tripp cried. “Too many Blades now. They would catch me, m’lord.” The imp bowed in apology. One of his pointed ears was bleeding, as though caught by a stray bolt. Tripp had told her he could materialize only between Infernus and wherever his patron was. For now, he was stuck with them.

“You did well,” Kit said. “Stay here and warn us when they come.”

Eda knew the layout of the cell block. She led them around a corner to a storage room cluttered with crates and confiscated items. Only a single sconce was lit. She ran her fingers over the far wall, breathless with mounting fear. “It’s supposed to be here!”

“What is?”

She found a sunken groove in the stone. “A passage—a very old one. There used to be an exterior door here when the keep was built, before the Great Templehouse was added alongside it. Now it serves as a door connecting the two, but…”

But there was no door. Only depressed stone filling the boundaries of what was once a rectangular frame. A crease was all that was left.

Ben’s voice rang thin. “It’s been filled in.”

“There was no mention of this, not in any of the plans. It’s supposed to still be here!”

Kit’s eyes gleamed like candles in the dark. “Maybe it is.”

“What?”

He swept past her, ran his hands along the seam. “This is the door. You said the man who built this place was a wily old bastard, no?”

“Supposedly…”

“A disguised passage,” Lawrie jumped in suddenly, excited. He quailed when Kit looked at him. “L-Lord Merein. He was the first Commander of the Blades, and he proclaimed that Fell Keep would never be overrun. That’s why he called it that—Fell. Irony, I suppose? He was rumored to have built secret ways for people to get in or out.”

“You must be the clever one,” Kit remarked.

Eda scowled. “Open it, then, if you know so much.”

Tripp appeared in the gloom. “They come, m’lord!”