Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,95
see her again.
“Can you deal with that?” I whispered, tilting my head discreetly in the pixie’s direction.
He nodded. “No problem.”
Behind his back, he slipped a puzzle box out of his pocket. Charging it with a press of the harp button, he hurled the entire thing at the bookshelf. The puzzle box sped through the air toward the pixie, giving the creature just enough time to screech at Nathan in disgust before he evaporated into a stream of black mist. As the puzzle box clattered to the ground, the black mist went with it, sucked inside the device until there was nothing left. The lid snapped shut and I lunged at the box, twisting the designs to make sure the pixie stayed put. He’d be free again soon, and I knew I’d get another earful for putting him there in the first place, but necessity called for it.
“He’s going to beat you to a pulp for this.” I brandished the box at Nathan.
He chuckled nervously. “Not if he gets to you first. Anyway, that’s the least of our worries.”
“Right, we need to figure out an escape route.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You were planning on taking me with you, weren’t you?”
He looked affronted as he pocketed the puzzle box. “I’d have just spoken to you through the door if I wasn’t.” His eyes surveyed said door, his fingertips reaching out to touch the smooth wood. “And we need to hurry, before anyone else goes missing… or something worse happens.”
I’d said it before myself. But in my short time at the Institute, I’d learned categorically that things could always get worse.
Twenty-Three
Persie
Nathan closed his eyes and let his hands move across the doorway and the walls, thorough and calm. His mouth moved as he did so, whispering a spell: “Ut revelare speciem adsumendum. Ostende mihi viam. Quod patet iter. Fiat lux. Ut revelare speciem adsumendum. Veritatem revelare.” My Latin had never been great, but I guessed he was trying to figure out the locations of the hexes that held us prisoner.
Sure enough, on the fifth repetition, a ripple thrummed across my bedroom. Sigils just in front of the walls lit up like the Fourth of July, spaced at sporadic intervals. Some glowed amber, pulsing steadily, and some carried a deep red. Others were a stark, bold green that reminded me of Celtic knots, the strands of the hexwork intricately folding in on themselves. Two were a juddering violet, the edges crackling and fizzing with energy, too volatile to hold a defined shape.
“I’ve never seen these hex designs before,” I marveled. “They’re sort of… beautiful.”
Nathan laughed. “That’s dangerous talk, finding imprisonment hexes pretty, though it makes it easier to unravel these things when you can actually see them.”
“Where did you learn this?” I sat on the bed and watched him work. His palms covered each hex and unraveled them on impact, almost like he was plucking them away. His fingers were elegant and fluid, and utterly mesmerizing to behold. Watching him distracted me from the fact that my best friend was out there somewhere, potentially trapped in some insane doorway that I’d accidentally opened. I had no clue what was on the other side of that door, and the not-knowing frightened me more than anything else. More than banshees, more than Leviathan, more than Victoria. I tried to think of this as a recon mission so I could fill Genie in on some Nathan details when I rescued her, because I would be rescuing her. One way or another.
Nathan set to work on the amber hexes, which fell apart at the touch of his fingertips and a further whisper from his lips. “Separabunt necessitudines. Discoperiet nodum. Quod sit potentiam perdidit. Frange est. Frange vincula. Fiat.” They must have been the weaker ones, judging by how rapidly they unraveled. The amber threads un-looped, as though invisible hands were tugging the strands free, the entire thing disappearing in a puff of golden smoke as it finished undoing itself.
“You’re good at this,” I encouraged.
He smiled and moved on to the rusty red designs. “I’ve had a long time to study.”
“You can find out how to do this in books?” I had to keep asking questions to stop myself from toppling into an abyss of fear for Genie. And I really didn’t want Nathan to see me have a panic attack.
“You can, but not these specific spells.” He continued humoring me while he dispensed with the first few reddish hexes, altering the unraveling spell ever so