“Ryder will be fine. He’s the King, and for all we know, they already know we’re here. If he leaves, who’s to say they won’t just kill Ristan?” I asked; and yes, my heart was in my throat, and I knew they could see the anxiousness in my face.
“We’ll be fine,” Ryder said as he finally agreed to fall back and let his men go before him. “Synthia,” his mental voice flashed across my mind as we fell in behind Aodhan, Savlian, and Zahruk. “I need you to stay back, so that my focus is on Ristan and what is happening when we get there.”
“Don’t do that,” I said not bothering to meet his eyes. “You didn’t leave so your men could focus, so don’t even think of asking me to stand back and wait this shit out. Maybe I should be asking you to stand back, so that I don’t worry?”
“Yes please,” Zahruk growled from the front of our line.
“Shut it,” I snapped at Zahruk’s back, hopping on Ryder’s mental path to his men and watched with an angry glare as his shoulders moved with his silent laughter. “We are facing a God, and neither of us knows how to handle that, but if we get him, Ryder, if we can take away their advantage, we have a huge chance of ending this war before it even begins.”
“Then I want you beside Danu, and we go with her plan,” Ryder said. “I’ll stay with Zahruk and my men, and we both win.”
“I’ll agree to that.” I slipped my hand into his and twisted my fingers around his larger ones. “I just hope we’re not too late.”
We stopped in front of an old tapestry and Zahruk shot me a questioning look. “That’s not it,” I noted, and moved closer to it, as I pointed out one of the other tapestries further down the hall. “The steps at the bottom of that one are in shambles, but we can get to the catacombs faster that way. They also wouldn’t think we’d use these ones. From the bottom it looks like it’s completely destroyed.”
I passed the one we’d been standing at and headed to the secondary one which was never used because of the mishap of a young Warlock who’d accidently blown most of the bottom steps into pieces. I slid the Plexiglas out of the way, and slipped through before holding it open for the rest to make it through.
The staircase was rounded, and the upper half wasn’t as damaged as the bottom. I made sure to overstep the large pieces of stone that would alert anyone with clear hearing of our arrival. At the bottom, I paused and listened. It was eerily silent, and that worried me. The rest of the men followed my lead, and then I fell back to Ryder’s side, and continued to listen.
Ristan was a fighter, and a damn good one at that. He was powerful, and the only thing that I knew of that was strong enough to slow the Demon down, would be God bolts. Luckily Zahruk had the foresight to make weapons out of those things that we could use when they couldn’t figure out how they worked.
As we grew closer to the large open room that served as one of the reception rooms for the library and archives, I stopped and paused. So too, did everyone else. Not far away from us, we could hear soft crying that sounded like a female. I couldn’t tell who it was, but I figured it was a start at finding where they’d placed Ristan.
I didn’t make a foot before Ryder grabbed me and pulled me back to him. “Wait,” he whispered against my ear.
“Stop crying. Stupid girl, what are you crying for? Huh?” An angry male’s voice sounded from less than a few steps away from us.
“You killed innocent people. You didn’t have to kill them. They wouldn’t have told anybody!” the woman cried, and my spine straightened. My hands itched, and I moved forward. I had to get closer, and Ryder knew it.
He and his men followed me as I snuck up and ducked beneath one of the massive shelves that housed part of the Guild’s history. I couldn’t make out who was crying, and who the men were, but I could feel the hatred pouring off of them. My guess was at least the male was a Mage, and the woman was from the Guild.
Mages.
I felt them in the space now; felt their anxiety and their cocky self-assurance that they’d be successful today. Joke was on them. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, which they’d learn as well. You never got cocky when you hadn’t been dealt your hand yet.
“Shut her up, the Elder is gone. The Fae are in the building,” another male’s voice ground out and I stopped breathing.
I felt the others go still around me as well. We all watched as one of the Mages walked over to where we were, his eyes searching up and down the aisle, and missing us completely. I released the breath I was holding, and thanked the stars that he couldn’t actually see us while we were cloaked by Ryder’s invisibility veil.
Danu looked down at me and shook her head. “I can’t feel Bilé; not yet anyway, which means he can’t feel us, either.”
“That’s good,” I replied and watched as the Mage moved around, heading back in the direction he’d come from.