The staircase spiraled down the heart of the Agro Mage Tower, each step a small eternity of controlled descent.
I forced myself to match Alex's armored pace rather than sprinting ahead like every instinct demanded. A CEO who arrived at a battlefield breathless and alone was a corpse with a crown. A woman who descended with her knight, her prince, and her shadow at her back was a statement.
I needed to make statements right now. Not corpses.
The stone walls wept. Not water, something thicker, darker, seeping from between the ancient blocks like sweat from a fevered brow. The wards I'd laid into the tower's foundation were dying. I could feel them gasping in the walls around us, their death throes vibrating through the soles of my boots.
"The architecture here predates the Maden conquest," I said, my voice deliberately even, conversational even, as we rounded the first landing.
