I sighed. “We all have demons, I guess. I had no idea you had anything to do with this. I just thought… when I saw you for the first time since leaving the hole, I knew something was up, but I didn’t know the extent of it.”
“How could you have known? Nobody knows. This is my burden. My curse.”
I shook my head. “Not when it affects others the way it is. People are dying Horse—no, I’m not calling you Horseman.” I turned my head to the side and sighed. “I don’t even know your name yet. Do you have a name?”
The Horseman took my hand, his warm fingers wrapping around mine. “It’s Kaimos,” he said.
I looked up at him. “Kaimos… why has it taken you so long to tell me your name?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “For the past few years I have spent most of my time building walls, or living behind them. I am not used to… intimacy.”
I moved a little closer to the bed, placing my other hand on his shoulder and inching my face closer to his. “Well, you’d better get used to it, because I’m going to help you.”
“Six, you can’t.”
“I can. I know I can. There’s an answer to this somewhere, and I’m going to find it. We’re going to find it. There are innocent people in here. You have to try to help them.” I found his lips and kissed them lightly. “Please.”
The Horseman—Kaimos—wrapped a hand around the back of my head and held my lips close to his. “You are the only person who could make me agree to accepting help.”
“Consider it an improvement.”
I kissed him again, and I continued kissing him, feeling him, and having him feel me. He had detached himself from all of this, distanced himself, locked himself away in the cold. It was time he found his way back to something warm. But before that could happen, I was going to have to deal with the monster inside of him, because he couldn’t do it by himself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Seline
We waited ‘till dark to make our move. While Ezree waited, perched upside down in the darkness, reaching telepathically to our contact on the inside, the rest of us moved in on Harrowgate prison from above. We needed to get onto the roof, and teleporting past its outer defenses was simply not an option.
The only way to get over the wall was the old-fashioned way.
“Are you all ready?” I asked.
Aaryn gave a curt, severe nod. Beside her, RJ also nodded. “Born ready,” Izzy said, her electric blue hair billowing against the wind.
“Good.” I shrugged out of my jacket. “You may want to stand back for this.”
RJ and Izzy did as I asked, taking a few steps from Aaryn and me. With a roll of my shoulders, I set my kithe loose, stretching my wings to their full extension. Aaryn did the same, her huge, swan-like wings extending out from her back in majestic fashion. I made my wings beat once, shaking off the stiffness of dormancy, then glanced over at the mages from across my shoulder.
“That supposed to impress us?” Izzy asked. She had one hand on her hip and a grin on her face. “We can flex too, you know.”
Nodding at RJ, Izzy’s hands started to glow. She turned her palms toward the floor, and a moment later she begun to levitate, floating softly up a couple of feet—just enough to look down on me a little. RJ, meanwhile, turned his head up to the sky, and in a flash of green light, he was up and gone, the muscular mage replaced by what looked like an eagle.
I watched the eagle soar into the air and heard it scream into the night, the sound sending shivers up my spine.
“Alright, that is impressive,” I said.
“I’m gonna be totally cliché and say you ain’t seen nothing yet. But it’s true. You haven’t seen me work in a while.”
“I wish I had kept more in touch, Izzy. I mean it.”
“I know. It’s not like I’m totally blameless. But anyway, enough of this sappy crap. We’ve got a prison to assault.”
“It’s an assault, now?” Aaryn asked, “Not a stealthy break in?”
“If you think we’re going to go more than a few minutes without being detected, then you’re already underestimating this place. The only reason why I don’t think we haven’t already been picked up is because everyone in there is way too tired to notice.”
Aaryn nodded, then looked at me. “Alright. In that case, let me lead the way.”
“Take point, and let’s get our Six back.”
Without another word, Aaryn dashed toward the edge of the rooftop and kicked herself up into the air. Beating her wings to gain altitude, Aaryn easily cleared the prison wall and began her descent onto the rooftop access point Izzy had shown us on her map. No sirens rang. No alarms were sounded. The guard towers, though lit, were poorly manned, and no one had noticed her approach.
Following Aaryn’s lead, I vaulted over the edge of the roof and threw myself into the night with Izzy floating at my back. The wind went whooshing past my face, through my hair, ruffling the feathers of my wings, but I also went unnoticed, easily crossing the prison’s outer perimeter.
It wasn’t long before the three of us were reunited, landing gracefully across from where we had been standing. Above us circled RJ, the eagle darting so quickly through the air he was almost invisible. He came to settle above the roof access hut, his talons gripping the edge of the structure, his eyes quickly darting around, scanning for threats.
“You’re up first, Izzy,” I said.
Izzy nodded. “Right,” and she dashed over to the dull, grey door that led into the prison.
I watched her while she worked, the famous Wardbreaker carefully examining the door for any magical protection wards that might either prevent us from entering or alert the prison of our presence. Izzy stepped off to the left, stretched her right arm around the length of the door, and then waved it up and down.
Magic sigils flared across the back of her hand, and a moment later, a shimmering forcefield appeared in front of the door. With a flick of her wrist, the magic sigils on her hand flashed with bright light, causing the forcefield in front of the door to stutter and break up like a TV screen with bad reception, and then it was gone.
Izzy lowered her arm, waited, and then carefully approached the door. When she touched it, she looked over at Aaryn and me, and cocked a thumb. “We’re good to go,” she said.
RJ dropped from his perch, reforming into a human as soon as his feet touched the ground. There was no handle with which to open the door from the outside—it could only be opened from the inside, and probably only with a swipe card. That wasn’t going to stop him from getting to where he needed to go.
With a grunt and a little run-up, RJ charged the door and smashed into it with his shoulder, knocking it clean off its hinges and sending it hurtling into the wall immediately opposite. He pulled away from the opening and patted his shoulder, shaking the dust off.
“Could you have been any louder?” Aaryn rolled her eyes.
“It was effective, wasn’t it?” he asked, shrugging.
“Maybe, but do you have any idea how many people probably heard that?”
He headed for the door and peered inside. “Nope, but I’m not gonna wait up here to find out. Let’s go.”