Page 120 of Alchemy of Souls

“Unwrap me, Adrien,” I say like the threat it is.

“You didn’t think that would actually work, did you?” Adrien asks. “That you’d tell me to unwrap you and I’d just… do it?”

“Eloise is inthatroom,” I say, jutting my chin at the training room door and losing my patience. “And she’s in danger. You remember her—the girl you’ve been making a sad attempt to flirt with?”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Eloise—”

“That’s exactly what I think,” I interject.

He sneers. “Eloise was taken by the Lawless.”

“Yeah, well, she’s back,” I say.

Adrien stiffens slightly, but shakes his head. “I can’t help you.”

“Cut the damn vines, Adrien,” I say slowly.

“It’s not my call,” he replies tightly, which is when the full weight of the situation hits me.

“You’re joking,” I say. “My uncle has you in his pocket?”

His jaw tics, but he doesn’t respond.

Suddenly it dawns on me. “You’re the one who kept reporting my movements to the Chancellor, weren’t you? When I went to the lounge and left Eloise alone. When we called the Key at your house.”

Adrien doesn’t answer but I can scent his smugness.

“If you think this is going to win you favor, you’re wrong—” But I don’t get the rest of my sentence out before there’s a cracking noise and Adrien’s head whips to the side as though someone landed a knockout punch.

He drops to the ground like a bag of rocks.

In the space Adrien once occupied, Maggie becomes visible. And now I’m dumbfounded. I know she has the ability to go invisible, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t know she was there, even so.

“I didn’t scent you,” I say under my breath.

Maggie yanks Adrien’s dagger from his boot and immediately starts sawing away at the vines that bind my hands.

“Invisible means invisible, prince,” she says. “And don’t ever insinuate that I stink again or I’ll do the same thing to ye that I did to Adrien.”

The vine snaps and I yank one of my hands free. I immediately cast a spell to unwind the rest, and Maggie stands, reaching for the wall for support.

I spring up, grabbing her arm to help, but she swats me away.

“I just savedyou. Don’t ye dare hover,” she says. “Tie him up and open that fecken door so we can get our girl out.”

I cast a spell to bind Adrien’s hands and feet. “Problem is, I can’t open that door.”

“Then ye better Alchemy an axe and remove it!” she demands.

“Even if I did, we wouldn’t find Eloise on the other side,” I say.

She curses. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, you two eejits found the Archive Door, didn’t you?”

“How much do you know?” I ask.

“Enough,” she says. “I went invisible to sneak out of the healers’ hut and go after Eloise.”

Of course she did.