Page 66 of Serpent and Shadow

Unlike where I’d just left, the room was well-lit, with fire and aging sunlight.

I turned my head, and saw the front door first, then the study with its enormous desk and built-in shelving, then the tall, iron-framed windows and the kitchen with its rows of neat containers holding teas, coffee, sugar, salt, and other spices.

Even once I’d identified where I was, I nearly blacked out.

Maybe I just wanted to black out.

Relief, disbelief, and frustration crashed together, and instead of calming me down, the combination made my head pound, my hands clench around the fabric of Bones’s duvet.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

I closed my eyes, and tried to count backwards.

Mostly though, I wanted to scream.

Fuck.

I’d been in his house.

I’d made it inside the Black Tower.

I’d gotten past all the deadly chimaeras, past whatever black magic and blood spells locked down and protected Dark Cathedral’s fortress, and I’d gotten back out the same way, without a real scratch on me.

I’d finally bloody phased.

And, just like I’d expected it would, it sent me right towards Bones, even if I hadn’t quite made it to him, or even to the same part of the castle as him.

I still hadn’t done or learned a damned thing that would actually help me save him.

15

Saying Too Much

“Ithink I was somewhere in here,” I said, pointing to the place on the map. “Somewhere in that enormous storage and archive area below the main tower.”

I closed my eyes, trying again to reconstruct every detail, to recall the smallest, most insignificant things I’d noticed while I was there.

In the end, I looked at Alaric in frustration.

“Any idea where the entrance to the dungeons would be from there?” I asked. “I think I was pretty far from the public area of the crypt. I was well past where Bones would go inside that protective bubble, looking through the family’s birth records and journals.”

“You mean the forbidden part?” Nyx commented drily. “The place you told us no one could go apart from Malefic?” Nyx looked around at everyone but me. “Didn’t she say even Bones’s mother risked death by going in there? I’m not remembering that wrong, am I?”

“You’re not,” Alaric affirmed.

“Well, obviously that’s changed,” I said dismissively.

Nyx snorted, clearly disagreeing.

“Does that mean Bones still has control over the money?” Jolie asked, glancing up from where she’d been poring over the map. “If you can get in there, Leda, that must mean Malefic hasn’t yet figured out how to take it all back. Not legally, anyway, whatever he’s managed to coerce out of Bones.”

I glanced at Alaric, who met my gaze just long enough to nod to Jolie’s words.

I knew I should probably care about that, if only because it had repercussions for Bones’s safety and mine, but it was difficult right then. I could tell Alaric, Luc, and Nyx felt the same. Whatever they thought about Bones’s leverage as the family patriarch, they obviously didn’t find that to be the most fascinating part of the story I’d told them.

Luc, Alaric, and I sat on the couch in Bones’s tower, knees pressed to the edge of the low coffee table. Jolie and Nyx sat on the floor on the table’s other side, their backs to the fire, cross-legged on the rug. We all had wine glasses or mugs in our hands, having finished with dinner about an hour earlier.

The tension lines around Alaric’s eyes worsened when he looked over at me from the other side of Luc. “You phased into a corner behind… something… a wardrobe, you said?”