Its dull eyes flickered a few times and then lit with the same blue glow as its heart. “That was unpleasant.”
A sound that was half-shriek, half-sob escaped a second before I clapped both hands tightly over my mouth. Nix righted itself, extra repair arms folding away. Buzzing its wings experimentally, it made a click of satisfaction. Then it looked at me, the blue eyes unblinking and so familiar. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” My smile forced its way through despite my hands pressed to my mouth. “Nothing.” I tore my eyes away from Nix to look at my brother, who was watching, bemused, as the pixie began to groom itself furiously, as though it had been rolled in the mud since the last time it tidied up.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
Basil looked up at me, startled. Beads of sweat dotted his brow, his face weary. Still, hesitantly, the corners of his mouth twitched up in a smile. He nodded. It was only fleeting, gone again in moments, replaced by that same desperate sadness. He folded away his tools and shoved them back under his belt, then got to his feet and offered me a hand. “Let’s go find your friends,” he said quietly.
Nix zipped up onto my shoulder after Basil pulled me to my feet. As my brother led the way down the corridor, Nix flicked its wings in irritation. “Not another one,” it murmured in my ear. “And we only just got rid of the other ones.”
I hid my smile as best I could and followed my brother.
CHAPTER 26
Basil led me down a dizzying maze of corridors and staircases. He avoided the elevators for fear of running into somebody who might ask who we were or what we were doing. We were taking the roundabout way down, he said. Longer, but safer.
I had no option but to trust him. And although my mind knew he was Prometheus, knew he’d done horrible, monstrous things to get to where he was, it was growing harder and harder to keep him away. I wanted to forget everything and just let him be my brother again. He was helping me, after all. He would help me rescue Oren and Wesley. He’d brought Nix back to me.
And he was no better than the architects at the Institute, with their secret, dying Renewable.
We paused at the bottom of a stairwell while Basil fiddled with the lock on the door. “What are you going to do when we get there?” I stood behind him, speaking in a low voice. Basil’s hands paused for a few seconds, then resumed their work until the lock opened with a soft click. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
“You’d better figure it out.”
We slipped through the door. Moving more quietly now, Basil led me past patrols and through side corridors to avoid more guards. Nix rode on my shoulder, its weight so familiar, comforting in a way I hadn’t noticed before it was gone. Eventually we reached a hall that ended in a thick iron door flanked by guards. We paused around a corner, peeking out at them.
“They’ll let me through,” Basil said tightly. “I’m their god.”
“But you left your costume behind,” I pointed out.
“I believe I can be of assistance,” Nix said, rustling its wings.
“Oh no you don’t.” I craned my neck to the side so I could eyeball the pixie. “Last time you made a diversion you were captured, brainwashed, and then killed.”
“Brainwashed is perhaps not the right word.”
“Let me handle this.”
I closed my eyes and started searching for the hungry void inside me, but Basil reached out and touched my arm, interrupting me. “These are loyal men,” Basil hissed. “They’ve done nothing wrong.”
Except be complicit in slavery and torture. But I just took a deep breath. “I’m not going to hurt them. Just trust me.”
He hesitated, then let his arm fall. I breathed deeply, in through my nose, then blew the air out through my pursed lips, letting it focus me. The reservoir for magic inside me was overfull already. Still, I reached out with my thoughts until I could sense the tiny currents of magic running through the guards’ systems.
I’d never tried to harvest magic from two people at once, not since I’d leveled the army sent from my city to enslave the Iron Wood. Then, it had nearly killed me. But I didn’t have the same training then, the same awareness of what made my power work—and what made it kill. Silently thanking Wesley for his insistence on learning control, I eased open a channel between myself and the two Eagles at the end of the hall.
For a long moment, nothing happened. I dragged at whatever scraps of magic I could get, and then finally, little by little, the shadow in me stirred and woke. As much power as there was already buzzing through my veins, it still wanted more—and once it caught the scent of the men down the hall, it was all I could do to hold it back.
The guard on the left fell first, dropping so fast that my own heart stuttered as if in sympathy. Dimly, as though from half a mile away, I felt Basil grab my arm. I couldn’t pay any attention to him, though, not with the other guard stumbling forward, trying to reach his partner’s side. He fell to his knees, clutching at his chest, and then slumped to the floor.
I couldn’t move, locked in a struggle against myself. I wanted to finish the job. I wanted to feast. It wasn’t until Basil gave my arm a jerk and started hurrying me toward the door that I was jarred free, sending the beast snarling back into my subconscious. Dazed, I watched as Basil stooped to check the two men for signs of life. He said nothing, just glanced at me with his lips pressed together. I knew they were alive, though—if they’d died, I would’ve felt it. It was always those last scraps of magic that tasted sweetest. And I’d cut myself off before going that far.
Basil wasted no more time, turning his attention to the door. It was locked with one of the same turning wheels that were on some of the forgotten doors inside the walls, and he turned it with a grunt of effort and a sigh of oiled bearings.
We slipped through the door and eased it shut behind us. Then we turned.
Behind the door lay the prison complex for Prometheus’s enslaved Renewables. The corridor stretched on into what seemed like infinity, lined on either side by heavy doors. I took a few steps into the room, skin crawling at the presence of so much iron, more than I’d felt in one place since the tunnels between Lethe and the world above. Each door seemed to be made of solid iron, with only a grate maybe a foot square for the prisoners to look out of—or for the guards to look in. There were lights over the doors closest to us, barely more than dim red spots. There were only six of them. Did that mean the rest of the cells stretching onward were empty?
Basil’s jaw was tight, his eyes cold, shut down. He didn’t look at the cell doors but instead kept his eyes on the endless hallway, standing by the door. “Go look for them,” he said shortly.
Nix launched itself from my shoulder to explore as I walked forward, skin crawling with more than iron now. It was as though I could feel the eyes of the Renewables on me as I passed. No wonder Basil didn’t like to come here—guilt roiled inside me simply for being free while they were captive. What must it be like to come here when you were actually their captor?
I cleared my throat and called softly, “Wesley? Oren?”
For a moment all I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. Then, so rattly and tired that my chest tightened, came Wesley’s voice. “About time,” he called, his voice coming from the end of the row of lights.
I hurried down and peered in through the grating. He was there, waiting for me. His face didn’t show any signs of mistreatment, but I knew the damage would be deeper, harder to see. He smiled at me, though, when my face came into view.