“Can we go back to campus?” I asked desperately, gathering my connections close, wanting last moments, wanting to experience that last hug. “Now that he's been exposed?”
“No. We are still expelled, and Excelsine needs to keep it that way for its own protection. We must believe that we will win. Losing is not an option. The Baileys, Marsgrove, Julian, and everyone else who viewed the Basement will spread the view and evidence, and it will put a dent in Stavros's reputation and public role, but it won't be enough, not in the time we need. At least half the people already after us will still be after us. I can feel bounty hunters heading this way right now—they are tripping wards along five different tracks Julian set up. We don't have time to flip public perception or to get rid of the bounties or hunters after us before going after Stavros. And though when trying to rouse you I was hoping you'd take us to an Origin Circuit spot, we can't stay in this one.”
I looked up sharply, finally taking in our surroundings fully.
Soaring columns of gold formed a crown around the atrium, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The ceiling of the atrium showed a moving view of the Milky Way galaxy and the galaxies beyond. Black holes and dark matter. Supernovas, nebulas, and stardust. The magic constantly shifted and rotated the view as if I was viewing it in four dimensions.
The more I looked, the more things strengthened and expanded into view.
I sat back on my heels and stared. “Wow.”
“You are finally appreciating good design, darling, if not adequate construction,” Constantine said casually, over all the intense emotions simmering inside.
“It’s beautiful.” I reached up, as if I could touch one of the celestial bodies. I thought of Makali reaching toward the cosmos, and pulled my finger slowly down. She was still alive, I thought fiercely.
“I suppose I can see how after the turret, a half-caved in gold ceiling might be breathtaking,” Constantine replied.
I tilted my head, seeing nothing but wonder. “I see space. Comets and solar events. And matter forming the strangest patterns.”
I started to rise and Axer grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t move.”
I noticed that Constantine was carefully staying in one place as well.
“There are traps everywhere. The Broken Palace,” Axer said, gaze canvassing the space and the magic all around, blue magic fluttering across his eyes. “Flavel Valeris’ home. This is not a place we want to remain.”
My breath caught. I looked around with new eyes. “Golden turrets, Con.”
“I stand corrected,” he said with a bit of reluctant amusement, though his gaze was still dark.
“The more obvious the traps,” Axer said. “The worse that will be hidden beneath.”
“Ren already contributed magic.” Constantine waved a hand at the floor that had eaten my mist, posture tense. “I don’t think we are going to remain anonymous.”
“We could use the portal pad we got from the O’Learys on the way to Crelussa,” I offered, staring longingly upward. How had Valeris done the spellwork? Were those real astronomical events taking place lightyears away, or like the falsely enchanted ceiling I had tempted Olivia with in our room?
“Not here.” Axer’s voice was grim. “We can’t trust what is here.”
“Because Valeris built it?” I mean, granted, he had killed millions of people—
“No, because this site, while a well-guarded secret, isn’t unknown. Unlike Kinsky’s lair, which was never found, Valeris’s palace was well known in its day. It constantly shifts actual location, even now in the broken world through which it ripples, but he never made it hard to track. Valeris was very open with his magic in a society that welcomed his gifts.”
“A bubble,” I murmured. “He made a bubble that floats between.”
Something flitted at the edge of my vision, and I looked sharply to the right.
“Something has been watching us since we arrived,” Axer said in response. “But I cannot see what it is.”
“Nor I,” Constantine said grimly.
“It doesn’t feel…harmful,” I said.
The watching just felt—watchful. Not the paranoid type born from being watched for months. No, this type of watching, it spoke of Neph and how we had first met—watching each other surreptitiously from afar. A type of watchfulness that preceded good intentions, not bad.
I let a sliver of searching magic escape...and saw a shape duck back from far up the wall. Far up.
“What’s the Third Layer situation on flying beasts?” I asked.
“Mixed.” Clear magic encircled Axer’s arm like a watery gauntlet.
Another little poke had my shoulders sagging. A papered claw wrapped around the edge of the wall and the tip of its spine poked around.
“It’s a book.”
Neither of them lost their tension. “Where?”
“Right there.” I motioned to the book. “Come on out.”
It ducked back in. But then just as quickly peeked back out.
“Ren… I see nothing.” Axer was looking at the exact spot I was motioning to, as was Constantine.
“You don’t see it, really?”
“No.”
“Right over—”
“Even drained and half-dead, I do not doubt that you can see something that we cannot, especially in a place such as this,” he said, on full alert.
Guard Rock dropped from my hood and started padding across the floor in a strange shuffle, dancing around the traps and snares crisscrossing the floor.
“Ren!” Constantine hissed.
I shrugged helplessly. Guard Rock was his own man.
Guard Rock got to the edge of the seal in the center of the floor, stared down at it without stepping closer, then looked at the book. He waved his pencil toward us. The book tentatively hopped out, and oddly, its cover was completely blank. It flew over, also making a wide circle around the seal in the center of the floor.
“What's the rock doing now?” Constantine asked resignedly. “Going to take us to Felrut Tears where we will all be swallowed by the Bog of Despair? Or maybe—”
The book landed carefully next to Guard Rock and they proceeded to have an incomprehensible conversation.
Constantine sighed, only being able to see Guard Rock’s side. “Do I even dare ask?”
“Maybe the book knows something,” I said. Guard Rock had been the one to bring us here. “Give them a moment.”
I looked back at the ceiling and its glorious cosmos. Something distant exploded with color and blackness and sent shockwaves around the other bodies.