Rende fell back to the stairwell.
Something was happening. Something wrong.
He felt it down to his bones.
He fled up the stairs.
7:55 A.M.
RACHEL CLUNG to Gray as the vibration worsened. The floor under them pulsed with white light. With each beat, arcs of electricity raced outward along the lines of platinum, crackling and flaring. In seconds, the entire labyrinth shone with an inner fire.
Gray’s words echoed in her ears. The key’s a fake.
And the labyrinth responded.
A deep tone chimed beneath them, ominous and foreboding.
Pressure again built, closing and squeezing.
A new Meissner field grew, strangely skewing perception.
Overhead, the entire complex seemed to vibrate, like a flickering filament of a lightbulb.
Reality bent.
A meter away, Raoul straightened from where he crouched over the inserted key, unsure of what was happening. But he must have sensed it, too. An overwhelming sense of wrongness. It nauseated the senses.
Rachel clung to Gray, glad for the support.
Raoul swung toward them and brought his pistol up. He came to the truth too late. “Back at the castle. You gave us the wrong goddamn key.”
Gray stared at him. “And you lose.”
Raoul pointed his gun.
Around them, the fiery star shattered back into existence, blasting forth from all the windows simultaneously. Raoul crouched lower, fearful of being cut in half.
Overhead the stone pedestal broke free from its magnetic attachment to the lodestone arches. It plummeted back to the ground. Raoul looked up too late. The edge of the stone caught him in the shoulder and crushed him to the floor.
As the pillar struck, the glass shattered like ice under them, skittering out in all directions. From the cracks, a blinding brilliance erupted.
Gray and Rachel remained standing.
“Hold tight,” Gray whispered.
Rachel sensed it, too. A rising vibration of power, under them, around them, through them. She needed to be closer. He responded, turning her to face him, arms crushing her to his chest, leaving no space. She pulled hard to him, feeling his heart beat through his rib cage.
Something was rushing up from below.
A bubble of black energy. It was about to strike.
She closed her eyes as the world exploded with light.
ON THE FLOOR, Raoul’s shoulder flamed with white-hot agony. Crushed bones ground together. He fought to escape, panicked.
Then a supernova exploded under and through him, so bright it penetrated to the back of his skull. It spread through his brain. He fought its penetration, knowing it would undo him.
He felt violated, splayed open, every thought, action, desire bared.
No…
He could not shut it out. It was larger than him, more than him, undeniable. All his being was drawn out along a shining white thread. Stretched to the point of breaking, agonized, but it left no room for anger, self-hatred, shame, loathing, fear, or recrimination. Only a purity. An unadulterated essence of being. This is who he could be, who he was born to be.
No…
He didn’t want to see this. But he could not turn away. Time stretched toward the infinite. He was trapped, aflame in a cleansing light, far more painful than any Hell.
He faced himself, his life, his possibility, his ruin, his salvation…
He saw the truth—and it burned.
No more…
But the worst was still to come.
SEICHAN CLUTCHED the old man to her chest. Both kept their heads bowed from the blinding eruption of light, but Seichan caught glimpses from the corner of her eyes.
The fiery star blasted skyward on a fountain of light, rising from the center of the labyrinth and spinning upward into the dark cathedral above. Other glass mirrors, embedded in the vast library, caught the starshine and reflected it back a hundredfold, feeding the rising maelstrom. A cascade reaction spread through the entire complex. In a heartbeat, the two-dimensional star unfolded into a giant three-dimensional sphere of laser light, spinning within and around the subterranean cathedral.
Energy scintillated and crackled out from it, sweeping the tiers.
Screams bellowed and rang.
Over her head, one soldier leapt from the tier above, trying to get to the floor below. But there was no sanctuary for him. Bolts struck him before he ever hit the ground, burning him to bone by the time he crashed to the labyrinth floor.
But most disturbing of all, something had happened to the arched cathedral itself. The view seemed to flatten, losing all sense of depth. And even this image shimmered, as if what hung above her was merely a reflection in water, not real, a mirage.
Seichan closed her eyes, afraid to watch, terrified to the core.
GRAY HELD Rachel. The world was pure light. He sensed the chaos beyond, but here it was just the two of them. The droning hum again rose around them, coming from within the light, a threshold he could not cross or comprehend.
He remembered Vigor’s words.
Primordial light.
Rachel lifted her face. Her eyes were so bright in the reflected light that he could almost sense her thoughts. She seemed to read him, too.
Something in the character of the light, a permanence that could not be denied, an agelessness that made everything small.
Except for one thing.
Gray leaned down, lips brushing hers, breaths shared.
It wasn’t love. Not yet. Just a promise.
The light flared brighter as Gray deepened his kiss, tasting her. What once droned, now sang. His eyes closed, but he still saw her. Her smile, her flash of eye, the angle of her neck, the curve of her breast. He felt that permanence again, that ageless presence.
Was it the light? Was it the two of them?
Only time would tell.
GENERAL RENDE fled with the first screams. He didn’t need to investigate further. As he clambered out of the stairwell into the kitchen, he had seen the sheen of energies reflected up from below.
He had not gotten this far in the Court from being foolhardy.
That he left to lieutenants like Raoul.
Flanked by two soldiers, he retreated out of the palace, winding toward the main courtyard. He would commandeer the truck, return to the warehouse, regroup there, and strategize a new plan.
He needed to be back in Rome before noon.
As he exited the door, he noted that the exterior guard, still in police uniforms, maintained the gate. He also noted the rain had slowed to a drizzling mist.
Good.
It would hasten his retreat.
Near the truck, the driver and another four uniformed guards noticed his approach and came forward to meet him.
“We must leave immediately,” Rende ordered in Italian.
“Somehow I don’t see that happening,” the driver said in English, pulling back his cap.