The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician Trilogy, #1)(42)

Holding Fennel tightly to her chest, Ceony reached one hand forward and pushed it open.

The church vanished around her, and with it Parliament Square. Ceony once more stood in a tall, fleshy chamber lined with blue veins and pulsing arteries, the constant PUM-Pom-poom that echoed throughout Emery’s visions drumming in her ears and vibrating through the floor, a little slower than she remembered it.

Not ten paces from her she found another shallow river of blood and a valve—a different valve than the one she had come through. It led to the third chamber of Thane’s heart. It had to.

The hairs on Ceony’s arms stood on end and she whisked around, searching for Lira’s dark hair, half expecting more severed hands to rise from the floor and seize her. Her heart beat just as loud as Emery’s, thinking of the Excisioner. How long did she have before Lira caught up to her? Unless the woman waited in the next chamber . . .

She swallowed hard. Fennel licked her chin with a dry paper tongue.

“Fold up, boy,” she whispered, trying hard not to tremble. She’d never trembled so much in life as she had in the last twenty-four hours! Curse Emery Thane for being such a difficult man to rescue!

Fennel did as told and folded up into his lopsided pentagon, and Ceony gingerly placed him between paper stacks in her bag. She eyed the valve and cursed again. She still remembered exactly how it felt to pass through those suffocating walls, unable to breathe and barely able to move. Too hot, too dark. Bitter fear on the back of her tongue tasted like unripe radishes. What if she didn’t make it through this valve? What if it caught her up between its tight walls and . . .

She swallowed the fear and it formed a noxious lump in her throat. Still, it tasted better than failure. If Ceony lost Emery now, she’d never forgive herself. She had invested in this too deeply to go back.

Grinding her teeth, Ceony approached the tight valve sideways, pushing one arm between its thick walls, clutching her bag to her hip with another. She counted to three in her head.

On count two, she shouted, “I deserve a stipend after this!” The words echoed offbeat with the pulsing walls.

On count three she sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself between the walls.

The shield chain around her torso hugged her, and the hot walls of the valve pulled a few inches away from her, allotting her space to breathe. She sighed in relief, until she realized what an open valve would do to the rest of the heart.

Blood flooded around her feet, reaching clear to her thighs. The PUM of every PUM-Pom-poom shook her, freezing her every first beat of three. Her hair looped around her neck like a noose. Her own blood danced on her tongue from where she had bitten it.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

She forced her feet forward, her guiding hand searching for something to grasp. She squeezed her eyes shut as sweat from her forehead trickled into them.

Ceony felt empty space on the other side of the valve just as her lungs threatened to burst. She clutched the edge of the valve and pulled herself into a dark chamber, sputtering and gasping for air. Wiping her face on her dirty sleeve, she lifted her head and looked around. She stood in some sort of dark office. The only light came through a two-paned square window about three feet across, without blinds or curtains. Outside, a few stars glimmered in a deep-blue night. Was this the same office where Emery had finished his book? Wondering, Ceony pulled Fennel, still folded, from her bag.

Shuffling feet drew her attention away from the window. She scoured the room, searching for its source, but the shadows hid the perpetrator.

She clutched the folded Fennel to her breast. “Who’s there?” she asked.

The shadows moved, and someone flew at her, ramming into her like a train. Ceony sailed backward into a wall, her head slamming against the boards, her newly found air expelling from her lungs. Her attacker pinned her with a forearm across her collar. For a second the dark room spun. Lira!

But as Ceony’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she realized it wasn’t Lira who had thrown her back. It wasn’t Lira who scowled at her with bright emerald eyes.

It was Emery Thane.





CHAPTER 11



EVEN IN THE DARKNESS she could see the anger blazing in those eyes, feel them pierce her like two jagged shards of glass. Emery’s forearm pressed even harder into her collar with an almost painful strength. Black hair like shadows drooped over his forehead. The shield chain must not have recognized the pressure, for it did nothing to help her.

And suddenly Ceony stood on the other side of the office, Emery’s arm gone from her chest. She gripped the side of a long desk for support. She had moved, but Emery remained where he had been, only instead of Ceony pinned against the wall, it was Lira—a younger Lira, her dark hair in loose ringlets over her shoulders, but her face still held a touch of familiar hardness.

“How dare you!” Emery seethed, almost shouting. The venom in his words hit Ceony’s ears like hammers and shook her bones. It jarred her to hear such harshness from the paper magician’s lips. “Do you even understand what all this means?”

“Get off of me!” Lira shouted back.

Emery conceded only a few inches of space. Still clutching the folded Fennel in her hands, Ceony edged toward them.

“Three days with no word. No word!” Emery hissed, his hands flying through the air like striking cobras. His shoulders tensed and made his neck look shorter. “And now you’re a suspect in the Fr?ulein’s disappearance!”