head. And as easily as Lizzan might pop a grape beneath her foot, he crushed her skull.
“To be certain,” he said, and continued on.
As Lizzan would not like to have a reanimated viswan at her back, she had no argument with that.
Scorch marks blackened another shattered door, and a guard burned beyond recognition. “I know where they were headed,” Aerax said grimly as he passed through the door and on to a stairwell. “My uncle must have retreated to the chamber beneath the palace—likely fearing that if they were under long siege in another chamber, he couldn’t cast the spell each day.”
Lizzan nodded and they began to move faster, Aerax leading the way. “What defenses does that chamber have?”
“Three blackwood doors guard the stone chamber, and in the stone chamber’s heart is a crystal chamber that is keyed to royal blood. He and his guards would be safe within that, unless the demon shattered the crystal as he did the palace doors.”
A small bit of relief slipped into Lizzan’s heart. “It took him a full season to break through.”
“And in that time, perhaps he learned how to more quickly shatter the crystal. But it matters not, because unless they took a season’s worth of food into the chamber, the king would not survive that long.” Aerax paused to look past the corner of a passageway before continuing. “If the viswan cast spells as Preter and Tyzen do, always they must first speak the words, and always they must breathe. Swing your blade for their throats and be quick.”
Lizzan nodded. As they were no match for the demon’s strength, she and Aerax had already decided that they would attempt to stop the viswan while Saxen tried to kill Goranik. Caeb would help her protect Aerax, while tearing apart anyone he could get his claws into.
Aerax slowed and crouched near the end of another corridor. A foul sensation crawled over Lizzan’s skin—one she’d known before, the night at King’s Walk, when she’d chased the wraiths into the forest and saw the demon-king waiting there. She could not see Goranik now, yet still she could feel him near, as if his corrupted power was a stench that lingered.
“We are near,” Aerax said quietly, and held out one of his short knives to Saxen.
The man took the blade, and Lizzan saw how his hand trembled wildly before he gritted his teeth and made a small cut on his palm. His blood he rubbed over the wide head of his hammer, then gestured for Lizzan’s sword.
“After you kill the viswan with this blade, only a trace of my blood may be left—but if you come face to face with my father, perhaps a trace will be enough.”
To save her. Or Aerax, when Saxen slicked more blood over his knives. Then he spread more over Caeb’s saber fangs. By the time that was done, the cut had healed.
“Let us hope that this will kill a demon,” he murmured.
Pulse racing, Lizzan added quietly, “We are united . . . now give me a moment to pray to Vela. You both should, too. And Caeb.”
Aerax grinned but obediently closed his eyes. As did Saxen. Perhaps the goddess could not even hear them from the island, but no chances would Lizzan take. She prayed fiercely until Caeb licked her face, and then no more time could they waste.
Chanting came from within the stone chamber. Silently they crept down the corridor, yet none of the viswan seemed stationed as guard at any of the three blackwood doors. All were broken as if from a single hard blow.
Preter had told them what to look for regarding the spell that would capture the souls escaping Varrin’s prison in their new corrupted forms. An altar, a vessel, a conduit. The altar she could see beyond the crystal chamber, and it was just a simple slab of stone. The vessel was the material from which the wraith would take its new form, which looked to be a jumble of stones around the vase that would be the conduit. The vase was marked with runes, but the spell would not be complete without a snow-hair’s blood—and without freeing the imprisoned souls, so they might be captured again.
But the viswan and the demon seemed done with the altar. Instead they surrounded the crystal chamber in a circle that included Goranik, and the demon’s back was to the corridor as they chanted their spell to crack the crystal. Through the crystal walls, Lizzan could only see clouded