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I kept my eyes low, choosing not to engage with her. I couldn’t. She was fishing for an excuse, trying to justify killing me. It was probably because I had knocked her over, earlier, and ruined her perfect composure. But more likely because of the bruise she now had on her cheek.
You deserved that, and more.
Hurried footsteps turned my attention toward the door to the study. Mason Diaboli came marching back in with his men at his back. He didn’t stop to talk to his wife, but stormed directly toward me, my heart instantly surging into my throat as he approached.
“How do you get in?” he barked.
I looked at him, but I couldn’t reply.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me roughly. “Tell me how to get into the vault. Now.”
“I don’t know how to get into the vault,” I said. “I don’t even know where it is.”
He leaned in close and, through his teeth, hissed “Liar.”
As much as I didn’t want to admit not knowing where the vault was, or how to get in, as I was sure now that was the only reason I was being kept alive, I didn’t think lying was a good idea.
“I’m not lying. My father didn’t want us going anywhere near it, so he never told us where it was or how to get in.” I could see the rage flaring up in his face, but before he could respond, I continued, perhaps a little more smugly than I should have. “But I’m sure only Ethera magic can open it. So, you need me, alive.”
Mason Diaboli clenched his jaw, a large vein popping on his temple before the redness in his face drew back. He signaled to his man to untie me, pulled me up painfully by the arm, then shoved me toward the door ahead of him. “Start walking,” he barked.
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Walk!”
So, I walked. Despite my blood pumping hard inside my throat, despite the adrenaline coursing through me, despite everything, I somehow kept my cool and walked calmly out of the study.
Luckily, I wasn’t made to walk past the dining room. Instead, Mason pushed me toward the grand staircase, and then underneath it, toward the door to the basement. I didn’t have much of a reason to go into the basement most days, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.
Boxes, stuff in storage, pipes—maybe the building’s power system? I certainly didn’t know what I was looking for, or what the vault door even looked like.
“Over here,” Mason called out.
He had followed me into the basement, but he had gone right, where I had gone left. When I joined him, he was standing in front of a solid wall of stone with a faint marking around it. There were no lights, no eerie glow, not even a magical hum.
I must have walked past it a million times and not given it a second glance, but staring at the barely visible circle of markings, I knew exactly how to open it. I also knew that Mason was not going to like the answer.
“This is it?” I asked.
“This is it,” Mason said. “Now, open it.”
“I can’t open it.”
“You’re lying.”
“If you really think that, you’re going to have to do to me what you did to the rest of my family.”
Careful, Beatrice.
“I appreciate your show of inner strength, but that kind of rhetoric is unwarranted. Killing your parents was not part of my plan, if they had just handed over the Engine we’d have left on our merry way, no blood spilled. As long as you do what I ask, you and your brother will live.”
I had to choke down the emotions that came bubbling up after that sentence. There was no way they were letting us out of this alive. “Now, who’s lying?”
“I could be lying, but your only choice here is to open the vault and hope for the best.”
“I already told you; I can’t open this door.”
“And I think you’re trying to protect your family’s treasures, but that’s a misguided notion. What’s more important to you, Ethera trinkets, or your life?”
