CHAPTER 190

CHAPTER 190
VIREYA’S POV

The eastern corridor ambush hit us before we had taken ten steps.

And to my horror, Thonicks poured from every doorway and shadow, filling the corridor from wall to wall, cutting off everything behind us and everything ahead. Ixion pressed his back against mine, his breathing already laboured from the wound in his ribs that was still taking some time to heal. It was no ordinary wound so it'll take a while or an orgasm to close up.

"How many do you count?" I asked, trying to take his mind off the pain and hopelessness of the situation.

"Way too many," he replied with laboured breaths. "But we don't need to kill them all. We just need to get through."

I nodded and took cognisance of the Thornicks standing, their mission seemed to be to keep us in place as they weren't attacking immediately.

But something flipped in their eyes and they went on the offensive.

The first wave came at us together and I stopped thinking about numbers.

I channelled everything I had and sent it down the corridor in a single concentrated wave. It cleared a path for maybe three seconds, bodies thrown against walls, weapons clattering to the floor.

Screams filled my ears but I ignored them, I was here for someone else.

So we ran through the gap without hesitation.

They gave chase immediately, heavy footsteps thundering behind us. Ixion took a hit across his already injured ribs from a Thonick that came out of a side passage and the sound he made as he staggered nearly stopped my heart completely.

"Ixion—"

"Keep moving," he said through gritted teeth, his hand pressed hard against his side. "Claire is in here somewhere and we're not stopping."

I turned back to the Thonicks giving chase and released another wave, this one harder, fueled by the image of Claire's face in my mind, by every day she had spent in this place while I was up there living my life not knowing where she was or what was happening to her.

The corridor cleared and we ran faster, or at least tried to. Ixion was severely injured.

The cells were exactly where Ixion had said they would be, past the eastern section of the maze, the air growing colder and damper with every step. Stone walls, iron bars, a silence so heavy it felt deliberate.

We were moving fast, checking each cell when a door ahead of us opened on its own.

A woman stepped out into the corridor.

She was tall and composed, wrapped in dark fabric, her bearing carrying the particular dignity of someone who had refused to let their circumstances diminish them no matter how long those circumstances had lasted.

Then her eyes found Ixion and something cracked open in her expression.

"Ixion?" she whispered.

"Nellie." His voice dropped completely, filled with an emotion I couldn't name.

She moved toward him with quiet, measured steps, increasing the tension I felt

“I heard the commotion and I came to see what was happening. I didn't dare hope it was someone coming out." She stopped in front of him. "Please. I have been trying to leave this marriage for centuries and he will not let me go. If you are getting out of here, I am asking you to take me with you. I am begging you."

"Ixion," I said carefully. "We need to find Claire."

"I know." He didn't look away from Nellie.

"We don't have time—"

"I know, Reya." The quiet certainty in his voice told me the decision was already made. "And I am not leaving her here."

I looked at Nellie. At what centuries of being trapped look like on a person who has survived it with their dignity intact? At the exhaustion behind her eyes that no amount of composure could fully conceal.

I didn't argue.

"Fine. Stay close," I said to her. "Don't make a sound and do exactly what we tell you."

She nodded once.

We found Claire three cells down.

I had spent the entire journey preparing myself. Telling myself to stay focused, stay strong, get her out first and fall apart later when she was safe and this was over. I had rehearsed this moment in my head so many times that I thought I knew what to expect.

I was wrong.

She was curled on the floor in the far corner of the cell, her body taking up almost no space at all. Her skin had lost its warmth, pale in a way that frightened me, her breathing shallow and uneven like each breath required a conscious decision. Her hair was matted and dull and her eyes were closed and for one terrible moment before I saw her chest rise, I thought the worst thing I had ever thought in my life.

"Claire." My voice came out as almost nothing.

Her eyes opened slowly. They were glassy and unfocused at first, moving around the cell without finding anything. Then they found me and everything in them changed at once.

"Reya." Just my name. Just that one word in that barely there voice and I was completely undone.

I was on my knees in front of the bars before I had registered moving, my hands gripping the iron, my eyes moving over every inch of her looking for the full extent of what had been done to her.

"I'm here," I managed somehow. "I'm here and I've got you and you're going to be okay."

"You came." Tears slipped down her temples without her face changing at all, like her body was crying independently of everything else. "I kept telling myself you would come but there were moments when I—"

"I came," I said. "I will always come for you. Always. Do you understand me?"

She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

My journey with Claire had never been one of roses and morals. She accepted me in my worst state and didn't treat me like I was… filth.

And now, she who owned my soul was behind those bars in pain.

"The lock is warded, nothing can break it," Ixion said quietly behind me. "I'll have to go in."

“Will you be able to bring her out?” I asked, looking at his bloodied side.

“I'll have to try.”

“Can I…. Can I help?” The woman has been silent all these while asked, her eyes subdued.

“Help? Can you carry her?” I wondered out loud.

“Oh not with her, I mean I can heal him. Ixion.”

“Why didn't you say that since?” I snapped. “Get to it quickly and put the male out of his suffering!”

She was on him in a second, her fingers adeptly unclogging the clothes that sealed away the pain from the world.

And then we had to wait while she placed her hands over it and began muttering words under her breath.

“I'm fine now Nellie,” Ixion suddenly said after barely a minute, “you'll need your strength for later.”

I didn't question his decision.

He pressed his hand against his bleeding ribs and breathed through whatever it cost him and then he was gone, teleported inside the cell in an instant, crouching beside Claire with his good arm already moving to lift her.

He reappeared beside me with Claire in his arms, his face grey from the effort of teleporting in his condition, sweat breaking out across his forehead.

I took her from him immediately, pulling her against my chest, her weight heartbreakingly light in my arms.

"I didn't think anyone was coming," she whispered against my neck.

"I will always come," I said into her hair, my throat so tight I could barely get the words out. "Every single time. Without question."

We moved fast after that, Nellie silent and composed beside Ixion, Claire barely conscious against my chest.

Ixion knew this leave very well, enough to help us evade the Thornicks.

Then I saw the curtain.

A thick drape along the corridor wall, its edge not quite meeting the stone. Through the gap, I could see down into a lower section of the ballroom.

I stopped breathing when I saw her.

Celeste was on the ground, her wrists bound behind her, Thonicks pressing in from every side. Hades was standing over her with that smile still on his face like none of this had cost him a single thing.

I moved to the gap in the curtain without thinking and her eyes found mine almost immediately, dropping to Claire in my arms, moving to Ixion and Nellie beside me.

Something in her face settled when she saw Claire.

She shook her head.

I shook mine back, the word no forming on my lips without sound.

She held my gaze with those steady, certain eyes and mouthed one word.

Go.

I pressed my hand flat against the curtain, the only thing I could give her from here.

She looked at my hand for just a moment.

Then she looked away, back up at Hades, and in the set of her jaw and the stillness of her expression I saw something that broke my heart and filled it at the same time.

She had already decided.

"Reya." Ixion's voice was soft behind me.

Claire's hand found my arm, weak but deliberate. "Go," she breathed. "Please."

I looked at Celeste one last time through the gap in the curtain.

Then I turned and ran.