“I’ll sneak it back to my room to search through it. We need to hurry, though. They could be in our rooms any moment.”
He released her, and she shifted off his lap, feeling a sudden chill now that he wasn’t beside her. She handed over the book.
Chanting the transformation spell, she winced as her bones condensed. She took flight, her skin burning with the remnants of red dust floating in the air, and slipped through the vents into the humid spring night.
She glided over the wildflowers and through her window just in time to hear two pairs of feet echoing on the floorboards outside her room. Landing on her bed, she burst back into her human form, hunching over the edge of her bed to retch. The doorknob turned, and the small mustached guard peaked in the door. Fiona pulled the covers over her legs, stifling a gag.
“Everything all right?” he asked, frowning.
She nodded weakly. “Just feeling sick. Woman problems.”
“Oh.” The door was shut before she could take her next breath.
She lay down and turned toward the window, pulling her covers up tight over her shoulders.
She exhaled into her pillow and closed her eyes. Please make it back to your room safely, Tobias.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Thomas
Lying on the hard floor, Thomas’s muscles throbbed. The rushes poked through his clothes, irritating his skin, and no amount of water could slake the burning in his throat. Seven points. Seven towers. Seven gods. The words circled in his mind like vultures waiting to descend on his last scraps of sanity.
They’d brought him a few bits of food—stale bread and some kind of watery corn mush that still lay congealing by his side. He hadn’t been hungry, eating only to keep himself from hallucinating. The lack of nutrients had robbed him of his physical strength.
He pushed himself up to a sitting position, grabbing the spoon for another cold mouthful of the gruel while he sat against the wall. The Throcknells had entire libraries of magical spells, for Christ’s sake. They could magic this sludge into something edible if they felt like it.
The guard had spoken to him today. The first words he’d heard since the banquet dinner. “Six days,” he’d said. Six days until Thomas’s lungs burst with liquid in a scorpion-vat in Lullaby Square.
Find me in the Gold Tower, Celia had written. How was he supposed to do that? He was even more a prisoner than she was, and he had no idea how the portals worked.
All he knew was that at least two of the towers were named for metals. The Gold Tower and the Iron Tower. Gold and iron. The patterns clamored for recognition, and try as he might, he couldn’t shut them out.
Six days, seven towers. He gave in to the patterns’ demands, turning to the zodiac wheel again. Seven points. Seven towers. Seven gods. He rubbed his face. Seven Sisters. Seven Stars. “No!” He smacked a hand against the cold wall. The last two were just mental static, a pub and a tube station in London. Where was I? “The seven points of the zodiac.”
There had to be something there. He’d seen the fire goddess’s statue. If he could remember anything about astrology, the Leo sign was associated with fire—and gold. His fingers fluttered, nervous little hummingbirds as he inspected the zodiac wheel. The Gold Tower. Leo, gold, fire. Seven points. Seven eleven. Nine eleven.
“No.” He shook his head, running his fingers over his hair. He had to separate the static from the real pattern. Some of this was real and some of it wasn’t. He sprang up, tracing a path around the room, trying to mimic the pattern of the lines. The rushes tickled his bare feet. What happened to my shoes?
A thought struck him mid-step. He hadn’t yet investigated the floor. Eirenaeus might have left him a message there. Grinning, he got down on his hands and knees, frantically scooping up the rushes with a wild urgency. He tossed them through the bars in the window and they tumbled into the wind, scattering like autumn leaves.
His breath grew ragged with the effort, and a cold sweat sprung up on his forehead. He tripped over his bowl of gruel in a frantic scramble to clear the edges of the room, spilling out its congealed contents. When most of the rushes had been liberated from the cell, he returned to his knees to scour the cold floor. There were no obvious names or drawings, but he inspected every inch of stone.
He found nothing—until he got to the stone in front of the fireplace. He trembled with excitement as he ran his fingers over a small carving of an M with an arrow, etched close to the empty hearth. The sign for Scorpio—the Iron Tower. It must be a clue—a clue telling him where the passages were.
The passages, the passenger, and I ride and I ride… He crossed to the window, the chilly air invigorating his skin. That loose bar might come in handy, now. He gripped the bar and yanked it out of its place. He had his tool.
Returning to the marked stone, he held the bar above his head and began to smash the Scorpio stone with all the force he could muster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Fiona