“Did he just...?” I asked, my fingers carefully touching my cheek, needing to be certain.
“Tell you he loved you?” Olivia said, eyes on the ceiling, foot tapping the floor.
“But he, and all the girls, and...”
Axer smiled. I could feel their bond, solidly tight.
Axer reached forward and in a mirrored gesture put his forehead to mine. “Tell him he can court you as long as I get to chaperone. For the next ten years.”
He pulled back and winked.
“That’s...what?...no!”
But he, too, was gone, laughter trailing in his wake.
Olivia was looking at the shaking, domed ceiling like she wished for a murder stick to drop from it. A large one.
Will's jaw was somewhere near the floor. Neph just looked amused.
Delia sighed, then said, “That sigh was for Mike. He would want a sigh recorded here.”
“In that case,” Olivia said. “I would like to put forth—”
Delia elbowed her hard and Olivia let out a little oof of air.
“Are you going to chaperone, too?” I asked. I felt along my chest, my arms, at the connections there, and wow, okay. Wow.
Neph laughed outright. It was a reassuring sound as the world shook.
“No, while Delia, Nephthys, and William are waiting for those two morons to clear the hallways, I'm going to take the other vortex path you open.” Olivia looked down her nose and pointed at the seal.
I quickly opened the second path.
But before she hopped inside, she grabbed me and pulled me to her. “Don't die,” she said into my hair as we clung to each other.
“You neither.”
“Be careful.”
She wrapped her arms more tightly around me and laid her cheek against mine. “You, too.” She tore herself away and dove inside the vortex. It closed behind her.
“And then there were four,” Will said.
“Tasky, I'll kill you if you just jinxed us,” Delia said. She was on edge, wanting to get to the prison. She had lobbied to go through with the boys. I heard the jar clinking in her coat as she shifted. “Also, Dagfinn said we are clear to move, and we are about to have company, Ren.”
We all jammed together into a fierce group hug full of knocked heads and entangled limbs. “Good luck.”
I tore away and threw out the first set of coordinates again. The three of them jumped inside, I shot a spell at the hunters rounding the corner of the palace, shot another set of coordinates inside the seal, then dove through the fourth vortex.
I slammed into the ground. Outside of the palace, the world was vibrating.
Guard Rock jumped down from my hood.
“It's you and me, buddy,” I murmured. He poked my boot in support and solidarity and began his preparations. We would get five flips.
I whipped out the plethora of devices we’d need as Guard Rock drew his ritual circle.
“You ready, Crown?” Dagfinn asked over the communication network that Constantine and he had constructed. The network was tethered to Constantine and a large vat of my magic, instead of to any part of the layer system.
“Thirty seconds.” I initiated all the spells, pulling up copies of Dagfinn's feeds. “You in Medical now?”
“Terrible case of the strumps. Contagious. Wildly contagious. Can't even arrest me until two days have past. Instant death to anyone who enters.”
I grinned, then looked at the feed of Delia, Neph, and Will. My smile thinned. “I should be there with them.”
“You can't be there, Ren. You know that. Hold tight. Hey! Found Givens! They are moving him through the prison,” Dagfinn said to the comms at large. “Looks like Level 4.”
In the deserted hallway at Spartine, Delia drooped in relief—it was the news we'd all been waiting to hear.
“They dumped him in the less restricted cell block. Look, he's got a pillow.”
I stared at the cell through the surveillance feed Dagfinn had hijacked. Mike looked terrible. My hand started to shake. Guard Rock poked me hard. I swallowed and nodded.
I called up the magic of the layers and the puzzle pieces that Stavros had given me. I shifted them into position.
“What about Patrick?” Delia demanded.
“Negative.”
In the multitude of feeds, different transportation spells activated around the prison, making one cell open into a lobby, another into a mess hall, another into a laboratory.
“Labs are on level one, four, five—” Dagfinn was listing what each person saw along with what the surveillance feeds showed.
The surveillance discs looked just like they did in the Second Layer Depot—blinking on the wall with a thousand eyes shifting in a thousand directions. But now, we were using those sinister-looking surveillance feeds for our own purpose.
In the feed showing Will, Neph, and Delia, two prison guards turned the corner and startled abruptly at seeing the three of them. Neph raised a hand, but before she could do anything, the guards' eyes went strangely blank.
“Something's not right,” Axer said, turning the corner and walking past the guards, paying no attention to their inert forms as he quickly cataloged Delia, Neph, and Will—making sure they were who they appeared to be even though he had seen them five minutes before. Satisfied, he looked at the hall's wards.
I called up a second set of strings that held the world together and attached them to the seal I was building.
Constantine rounded the corner behind Axer, and motioned offhandedly at the guards. Both guards blinked, then blankly looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, this part doesn’t involve enough stab, stab, spin, thrust for you.”
“I’m going to get rusty,” Axer said. He crouched and put his finger on a ward along the floor, then stood and, battle focused, motioned for the others to follow along the path. They passed another eight women and men peering strangely at the ceiling.
“Lies,” Constantine said blandly, good mood threatening to overtake his usually excellent game face.
Axer smiled. He looked at the others and pointed in two directions. “The first of the Awakening canisters are to the left. And the main guard tower is to the right.”
Quick, solid hugs were again exchanged, then Delia turned right, and Neph and Will went left.
“And then there were three,” I murmured, slipping a ward underneath the one Stavros was laying.
“Darling, no,” Constantine said.
“Love admit-and-runners don't get to have a say.”
He smiled slowly. “I'll remember that.”
My ward was yanked and burned. “Shoot.” Stavros had finally figured out what I was doing, and I could feel him start to fight—feel him send out magic to pinpoint my position. “Here we go.”
In the feeds, guards poured into hallways and through portals, and so did people I recognized. Fighting erupted, and it became hard to discern who was whom across the changing surveillance landscapes.
In one, a man I semi-recognized was fighting Axer.