Jason stood off to the side, magic still crackling faintly around his fingers. Annabeth stared at the two dead men, then pushed herself upright, rubbing her throat where the colr had almost snapped shut before stepping to his side.

  The two girls didn’t move. They knelt where they’d fallen, hands raised, frozen in terror.

  Jason slipped into their masters’ nguage without thinking, his voice sharp as a bde. “Expin. Now.”

  Both sves flinched as if struck. The older one, mid-twenties, maybe, pressed her forehead to the floor.

  “Master, as you know, we had no choice,” she begged.

  Annabeth scoffed. “Master? Oh, that’s just great.”

  Jason didn’t look at her. His eyes stayed locked on the two women. “Start talking.”

  The younger one swallowed hard. “As you know, we Chained Summons cannot defy our masters.”

  The older girl nodded quickly. “Yes. We’re sves. We have to do what we’re told.”

  Annabeth’s jaw tightened. “And you just went along with it?”

  The younger girl’s voice cracked. “If we didn’t, they punished us through the colrs. Or worse. They could order us to stand still and let a monster kill us.”

  Annabeth kicked the discarded colr away with a grimace. “What’s the deal with these things?”

  The older girl looked between them. “Once they’re locked, you can’t disobey. You can’t even think about disobeying. They were going to put one on your friend. And one on you.”

  Annabeth shot Jason a look, half fury, half fear. “Yeah. I noticed.”

  The girls kept their eyes down, but they kept sneaking gnces at Jason, the woman who had just killed their masters with magic. And not just that: her strange clothes, her hair, the way she carried herself.

  “Begging your pardon, but who are you?” the younger girl whispered, then immediately bowed again. “Your Ladyship.”

  Jason blinked, startled.

  Annabeth snorted. “Ladyship?”

  The older girl nodded, trembling. “Magi are nobility. You’re dressed like the old ones on the temple murals, the ones who came before, blessed by the gods.”

  Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “Gods?”

  Jason frowned, offering no answer.

  The older girl risked lifting her head. “Please, we didn’t want to hurt you. If we could have warned you, we would have. But we didn’t want to die.”

  Jason exhaled slowly, the st of his anger bleeding away. “Fine. Then you’re going to tell us everything. From the beginning.”

  Both girls nodded frantically.

  At first, their words came in halting, but as Jason and Annabeth’s posture changed, the story spilled out faster.

  They spoke of their lives in Japan, and the two others who arrived with them. A feast in their honor. Drugged wine. Waking up colred. The hard training, the even harsher punishments. Their friend’s death.

  The long chain of events that led to their masters dying on this floor.

  “So, the chains are to control you?” Jason asked.

  “More than that,” Marian said. “The Great Families use Chained Summons to empower themselves.”

  Annabeth raised a hand. “Wait, what does that mean? Do they gain skills? Experience?”

  Hina nodded. “We think so. Other sves said their masters grew stronger the longer they were chained to them.”

  Jason frowned. “They steal your skills.”

  Marian shook her head. “Not exactly. They get a portion of our power. Bianca, another sve, said she was told only the summons gains true power in the Maran Shahr.”

  Jason went quiet. Maran Shahr. City of the Dead.

  He and Annabeth had been down here long enough to feel the difference in their own bodies. If unchained summons grew stronger on their own, the powers that ruled this world had every reason to fear them.

  Annabeth let out a slow breath. “God. They were monsters.”

  Jason finally stepped back, the st of the magic fading from his fingers. “You’re not in trouble. At least, not with us.”

  Both girls sagged in relief.

  Annabeth turned toward the bodies. “We need to see what they were carrying.”

  Jason nodded, and together they rummaged through the men’s packs. The weapons were crude, heavy iron bdes, poorly banced, nicked from overuse.

  Annabeth held one up, tested the weight, and grimaced. “These things are garbage. Mine’s better.”

  Jason snorted. “Everything we own is better.”

  They found a good bit of dried rations, a bag full of gold coins, a beautifully drawn map, and a handful of strange metal tokens they didn’t recognize. The rest they set aside, mostly personal items to sort through ter.

  Jason sat back on his heels. “We need to figure out our next move.”

  Annabeth nodded to the parchment on the floor. “With that map, we could just leave the girls here. They can make their way home or whatever. They know the area better than we do.”

  The reaction was immediate.

  Both girls panicked, scrambling forward on their knees.

  “No! Please, please don’t leave us!”

  Jason blinked. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “That’s not it,” Hina pleaded, voice breaking. “The armbands, our masters are still wearing them.”

  Annabeth frowned. “And?”

  Marian swallowed. “If a master dies in a dungeon, the sve soon follows. Once the bond colpses, it will pull us apart from the inside.”

  Annabeth’s face went pale. “You’re linked to those things?”

  “Yes. Even in death,” Marian whispered. “We can’t leave until the armbands are removed. If we try, we’ll die.”

  Jason stared at the corpses, then at the metal bands around their wrists. “So we’re stuck together for now.”

  The girls nodded, terrified but hopeful.

  Annabeth sighed. “Fuck, they really are monsters.”

  Jason rubbed the bridge of his nose. “All right. Then we deal with the armbands first.”

  Hina hesitated, then turned toward Annabeth. “You should wear a colr.”

  Annabeth froze. “Excuse me?”

  Hina switched nguages, one Annabeth didn’t understand. Respectfully, she began, “I see that you are angry, Warrior, but do you understand what I am saying?”

  Annabeth blinked, confused.

  Jason sighed. “The magic of the colrs isn’t one way.”

  Marian nodded. “It’s more than nguage. You can always tell who’s a new summons. But you, My Lady…” She looked directly at Jason. “You move and speak as if you were born here.”

  Jason stiffened, unsure how to respond.

  Marian continued, “Your posture, your hair, your clothes, everything about you is like the old magi. The ones in the murals. The ones blessed by the gods.”

  Annabeth stared at Jason, stunned. “They think you’re, what, royalty?”

  Jason didn’t answer. The girls weren’t exactly wrong. He didn't know about royalty, but all of these nguages came too easily. The magic was different from what it had been when they were first summoned. And the memory of the dying sorceress still haunted his dreams.

  He then knelt by the two dead men and reached over, releasing the cmps that held the armbands together.

  “There’s no reason why you need to keep your colrs on.” He approached to remove them.

  Marian looked at her friend, then back to Jason. “No, I think we should continue to wear them. You don’t trust us yet, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Annabeth frowned. “So you’re going to wear two of those things?”

  “No,” Jason shook his head. “I’ve actually been studying the other armband we found. I can see the magic of how it’s interwoven into the colrs.”

  “Magi,” Marian whispered.

  Jason frowned. “I don’t think, anyway. Have you heard of a Magi named Arzbea?”

  “From the House of Zazira?” Marian smiled. “He’s famous for being a schor-mystic, but he is no Magi.”

  Annabeth asked, “Do summons cast magic?”

  Hina nodded. “Yes, although it’s fairly rare.”

  Jason headed toward the colr on the floor. “Just to let you know, I’m a summons just like you. My name is…”

  “My name is Richard,” Annabeth called out cheerfully, giving the two girls a smile. “And that’s my girlfriend Jace.”

  Jason felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

  “Ex,” Jace growled. “Ex, remember Richard, you cheated on me for four years.”

  She said the name with quite a bit of heat, feeling the pain and anger of old betrayal as if it were new.

  The room suddenly became uncomfortably quiet.

  “Anyway, Richard,” Jace repeated the name with a sneer. “As much as I want to colr that big mouth of yours, you can wear this without me enabling the link.”

  “Really?” he said, excited.

  “Might I make a suggestion?” Marian said. “You won’t learn the nguage without it.”

  Richard frowned. “Can it be taken off ter?”

  “Yes.” Jace walked up and colred him before he could object.

  “Ouch.”

  “Don’t be a baby,” she replied, then looked at the two women. “As long as you wear those, you need to be linked to me.”

  She had seen the bond between the colr and the armband begin to break down. The magical backsh would have been fatal to the two of them.

  “Yes, master, I’m aware,” Hina bowed.

  Jace frowned, then shook her head. “Richard, since you’re so talkative, why don’t you tell them how we got here. Then we’ll look at all the maps and make pns on what we’re going to do going forward.”