Daire and I took turns carrying Etain. We went through five floors, ten mirrors, and three twisting hallways. There had to be hundreds of guest bedrooms. The ones hanging open were bland and dark. Some places stored rows of embossed armor, round shields, and pointy helmets. Others had piles of all things sharp, anything from swords as long as my arm to spears taller than Daire. One area was about the size of a high school gym with a faded chalky circle in the middle and bleachers around it. What I didn’t find was other people. No family, no guards, not even a servant. Dracula’s haunted castle had more life than Bodb’s abandoned maze of a home.

Daire stopped at a thick door with big brass latches. Most of the walls we passed had different figures and scenes chiseled into them: hoity-toity elites in slinky gowns, gruff fighters marching into a battle, huge hunting dogs chasing even bigger wolves. The walls on either side of that room were empty. The air around it stank like too crispy bacon in one of Abuela’s cast iron pans, juicy but burnt.

It was my turn to hold Etain. I kept my distance as Daire inspected the door. He tested the handle and pushed. It swung open easy and the old hinges squealed. The overcooked meat smell slammed into me, and I had to hold my breath to keep my eyes from watering.

Inside was a circular pit and more naked walls. An open concept grill with glowing coals gave off dim illumination. Metal pokers and tongs stuck out of it. The tips of the tools were still red hot, and something recent sizzled on them. I made out a wood table nearby with handcuffs nailed into its corners. The grill’s light shined off dark splatters all around it, most of them staining that table.

Daire pinched his nose and went further in.

“What is this?” I followed him, coughing as the awful smell filled my mouth.

“A torture chamber.” Daire tapped one of the splatters and squinted at it. His pale finger tip came away red. “And this blood is still fresh. I think we found my sister.”

“Rio!” I shouted. My voice bounced to the ceiling. Etain groaned in my arms and rubbed her nose.

No one answered.

“These places are usually kept above the prison.” Daire scuffed different spots on the floor with his heel. The noise came back solid against the packed dirt. Then he hit something with a hollow thud. He kicked a layer of soil away and found a wood panel. A trap door. “Here, a hidden hatch.”

I itched to throw that panel up, but Etain started waking up right then. She shifted and blinked at the world around her with a groggy confusion.

Daire held out his arms for his mom, and I passed her over. I got to digging through the dust. When I found the crack between the board and the floor, I crammed my fingers into it and flung it open. A staircase spiraled down. The steps disappeared into a black hole.

We followed the stairs, me in front and Daire shining behind me. When I reached the bottom, he brightened up the place. The prison wasn’t like anything I knew that had guards patrolling barred cells with black batons. It was more like a cavern with wide arches to support its low ceiling. The dirt floor and dank clay walls made it so primitive. More shackles hung around us, and everything was smeared with moldy brown smudges. But the air had a coppery tang where every breath tasted like a battery.

There was Rio, slumped in the darkest corner where Daire’s glow didn’t penetrate. Her electrified field surrounded her, the thickest I’d ever seen it. It hovered over her like a sleepy storm cloud. I rushed into it and knelt in front of her. As soon as I entered the particles, they came to life, all excited and clustering around me.

Rio hung from a pair of cuffs nailed into the wall. Both thumbs on her limp hands were broken out of joint, and one of her index fingers was twisted in the wrong direction. Every part of her looked like a rotted peach. Where her skin wasn’t blue and green with new bruises, she had bloody black sear marks. They covered the soles of her feet, the undersides of her thighs, her arm pits, even the tender places where her elbows bent. The only part of her that monster hadn’t touched was her heart-shaped face. Her sickly white cheeks were streaked with muck and dried tears.

“Oh Rio.” I cupped her head and tried stirring her awake. She stayed limp, dull, and cold. I checked under her chin. A faint pulse fluttered along her artery. Thank God. “She needs a doctor. If she’s this messed up on the outside, her insides won’t look much better.”

“She’s an Aos Si. Given time she will recover.” Daire pulled away from Rio’s mist as it whipped out at Etain. “However, her body will heal itself better if we take her to where her power is strongest.”

“Little swan, where are we?” Etain clung to Daire’s neck and flinched at the buzzing particles that had tried snatching her. “Who is Tainy with?”

“The dungeon underneath Tara. And she’s freeing Riona, Fuamnach’s daughter. Do you remember?” Daire lowered Etain to stand on her own, but he kept her close with an arm around her waist. To me, he said, “You have to pry open her bonds. My sister’s magic will make them brittle enough for you to manage. I can’t enter her aura, not without seriously hurting myself.”

I gritted my teeth and yanked at the rusted chain holding Rio’s arm to the wall. The hard clay around it cracked. Another hard tug and it tore out. The other chain gave on my first try.

Rio fell to the side without the shackles holding her up. I wiped my sweaty palms off on my pants and heaved the woman upright. Squatting in front of her made it easier to haul her on my back and support her under her knees, piggyback style. My neck was thick with sweat. I had to wipe off a misty patch threatening to drip in my eyes. That deep in Rio’s energy, the space around me got thicker. Moving through it was like struggling against molasses. I’d moved in it before and it hadn’t been so heavy. It made carrying her dead weight harder, but my knees stayed steady.

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Daire guided Etain to the trap door and he kept both of them a decent pace ahead of me.

“Is that woman well?” Daire’s mom asked.

“No. She’s not even moving.” I panted as I tried not to jostle Rio too much. Balancing her while hiking up the curving stairwell made both of us wobble. She stayed limp and dull, not a twitch or a quiver anywhere. “Tell me there’s a court system in this place for that bastard.”

“That would be our reigning council if an offense is severe enough,” Daire said. “This incident will never reach their ears if the other members of my family have anything to say about it.”

“So they’ll punish him themselves? He’s got to pay for what he did.”

“They will most likely broker a truce, then make everyone take oaths that ensure no one mentions the matter, and be done with it,” Daire explained. “That’s the best justice she will see against Bodb, at least until the election. Even then, the Dagda’s brood will uphold his legacy for the sake of the realm’s order. Without it, they believe Tir Na Nog will collapse into civil war, and there are not enough of us left to survive that.”

“How’s that fair?”

“It isn’t. But under the circumstances, we must accept it.”

I shut up as I soldiered on the rest of the way. Sucking air kept me too busy to waste anymore of it on how Bodb needed to pay. The way back went so much slower. My throat got dryer than a night of open-mouthed snoring after the first floor. Both legs ached and agitated my shin splints. When we stopped at the top of the second floor, I had to force my feet to move. They throbbed too much to get going again without a wall to lean on. By the third floor, keeping a firm hold on Rio made my fingers stiffen into hooks. I couldn’t try to flex them if I didn’t want to drop her.

I’d done longer stints unloading new food from Nico’s van into the kitchen with a lot less sleep. It should’ve been nothing. What was wrong with me? Too sweaty. Too tired. Too much.

Daire and Etain’s shapes blurred together and swirled into one person. A thirty-something blonde lady surrounded by a halo of light led me instead. She had a pale green maxi dress and hummed a poppy beat I couldn’t place. Mom? Was she taking me home?

“Mom, wait up.” My knees buckled. I collapsed and Rio tumbled out of my slippery palms. She rolled and settled in a heap. I wheezed, coughed. My eyelids had figurative barbells stuck to them. So heavy.

I slumped over and let my eyes close, blotting out Mom and her halo. Sleep. Rest.

“Maya?”

Who was that? Mom?

“Something’s amiss. Wake up!” Someone shouted. It was too deep to be Mom. No, it was a guy, someone I knew. He had a posh accent. Not Nico or Nate.

I groaned as I opened my eyes and all the murky brown and gray color returned to the world. The maze of hallways and stairs, following Daire and his mom, getting Rio away from her ex. It all rushed back in a groggy mess.

Etain leaned in, peering through the dense fog and edging closer to it.

“Hold on.” Daire thrust his arm in her way. “Let me see first.”

She pursed her lips like he’d just sassed her. For the moment she went along with it.

Daire crept to the edges of Riona’s field. Thin wisps licked at his shirt, and smoke rose from where they touched. The densest, darkest patch still gathered around me, even though I’d lost contact with Rio. Daire grabbed the nearest torch and held it up as close as he could without Rio’s magic snuffing out the fire.

I tried to push myself up and only made it to my elbows before I ran out of gas. How was Rio doing? Maybe the fall had startled her awake. I looked over her. None of the bruises or broken fingers had faded, but her face radiated a soft, flickering light.

“She looks a little brighter.” I got my hands under me and managed to sit. A cramp in my lower back made me stop there. “How… How far is it?”

“How do you feel?” Daire asked. “You appear as sprightly as death.”

“Honestly? About that bad.” I gritted my teeth, waiting for the latest wave of pain to pass. “She weighs more than she looks.”

“She shouldn’t.” Daire knelt to my level. “Try to leave the aura.”

“We don’t have time for this.” I shook my head. “I’m just tired. It’ll pass.”

“You didn’t have this weakness before we found her. Examining you won’t take more than a moment.”

I bit my lip as I crawled away from Rio to Daire. The dense particles followed me, shifting and expanding as they clung. They hummed louder the further I went from Rio until it grew into a whine.

“She can’t die, right?” I checked over my shoulder. Rio lay in the same place she’d fallen, a broken doll some kid had thrown out. Her energy cried on. What was going on with her? “It doesn’t normally make noise, does it?”

“This is the first I’ve ever heard it. I sense something on her. Stay there.” Daire trotted closer to Rio where the particles were thinnest. Right then they seemed to like me better than the person they came from.

He skirted the edge of the mist and cupped his hands around his eyes like someone trying to see further into a tinted store window. While I couldn’t watch how his expression changed, his glow narrowed and sifted its way to his sister. He must have been feeling for something on her. What was he looking for?

Daire stayed until his skin started to broil. He broke away and rubbed the blistering burn on his nose, breathing through hisses.

“We have to hurry.” Daire snatched Etain’s hand and stared at me like he was about to say I had cancer.

“What’s wrong?” I slogged back to Rio and used the wall to get my feet under me. Next came the hard part. I sucked in a deep breath and heaved her back onto my shoulders. My knees shook, threatening to give out again.

Daire glanced down at Etain. He seemed uneasy, like he couldn’t say what he wanted in front of her. She had been staring with new interest into Rio’s aura as soon as she saw how bad I was. When I’d visited, Brigid had removed everything Etain could use to hurt herself. She probably had close calls with self-harm in the past. Daire confirmed my suspicions by squeezing his mom’s hand tighter and tugging her away from the field. He must’ve thought she’d fling herself in with me where he couldn’t pull her out.

“Bodb puso un hechizo en Riona. Su poder la mantiene dormida.” Bodb put a spell on Riona. His power is keeping her asleep. Daire gave me a fake smile as he explained. “La magia de Riona te está drenando. Creo que está tratando de despertarla. Si la magia continúa, te matará.” Riona’s magic is draining you. I think it is trying to wake her up. If the magic continues, it will kill you.

I stumbled to one knee, all the warmth draining out of my body. Any smart person would leave Rio there and reassure themself that they had done their best every night when guilt set in. I looked over my shoulder at Rio’s face resting listless on it. It wasn’t the face of a kidnapper anymore. She was a friend in trouble. I pushed any thoughts about pain down and forced my legs to lift me back up and carry her. Abuela once said our family survived by being too stubborn to give up when we should. I set out to prove her right.

“Vámonos.” Let’s go.