“I think it was part of the kitchen. I’m not sure.”
“Although magic cannot grow on its own, it can latch itself onto something it feels has power. Perhaps the caster originally laid the spell into a wall that one of your ancestors knocked down. The hidden room probably floated around for years, like an unmoored ship, before lashing itself to the boiler.”
“Truly, I don’t know why I’m trying to understand this. You could tell me anything, and I wouldn’t know the difference between fact and fiction,” Mouse said, shaking herself. “But dismantling the magic from the inside out sounds much easier than working the other way.”
“Hmmm—you may have a point.”
He lifted his hands, and Mouse squinted in anticipation of Thornwood’s magic. But, instead, an orb materialized, about the size of his palm, before it popped into a hundred tiny shards. Thornwood blinked at his hands.
“I imagine that was not supposed to happen,” Mouse said.
He tried again, and the orb was even smaller when it shattered. He thumbed the cracked jewel on his ring.
“Someone is playing with us,” he hissed, summoning a third orb.
“Stop before you exhaust yourself for nothing,” she said. “Our way out isn’t through your spells.”
He threw his hands down in disgust and strode toward the walls.
“Pull down these curtains and look for a door. We need to know our way out,” he growled. Mouse obeyed, taking on the other side of the room. She took a strip of the golden fabric, burying her hands in it as far up as she could. The silk was soft in her palms. Half-moons were embroidered into the material in a white thread, climbing upward and overlapping one another like waves.
With a sharp jerk, the fabric lay crumpled at her feet. Nothing but white stone covered the wall behind. She moved on to the next one, deep red and marked with the same white crescents. It came down as easily as the first had, and soon Mouse had pulled down the fabric from half the room, leaving a trail of silk puddles behind her. Thornwood met her from the other side. No doors or windows marred the expanse of white brick.
“Damn,” Thornwood swore. His hands flexed, sending off magic shards into the floor.
She stared at the waning fire in the hearth, watching as a trail of smoke plumed upward. Floating embers danced around the edges of its metal grate.
“The chimney,” she said. “There has to be a way out through the chimney.”
“Of course!” he said. “The flames are small enough now to stomp out. We can fashion the fabric into a rope, then use it to climb up the shaft.”
They both stepped up to the fire. The flames went from warm to stifling as Mouse stooped under the edge of the mantel and looked up into the chimney’s throat. Thornwood pulled her back.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You are a mortal. I will be the one climbing into lit fireplaces.”
He bent, twisting to look up beyond the smoke. The crackle and shifting of the fire blared in Mouse’s ears. She pulled back, then froze.
The shifting noise was not only coming from the fire. Something was moving behind them, a soft brush against the stone, edging closer. She grabbed hold of Thornwood’s elbow.
“Just wait a moment, and I’ll tell you what I can see,” he said, shaking her off.
Mouse did not dare to look back. She dug her fingers into him again, and he spun on her.
“What is it—” He cut off abruptly, the color bleeding out of his face between soot streaks. Slowly, she turned to look at what he saw behind her.
The puddles of silk were gone, folding and wrapping together into a massive silken dragon. It crouched in the center of the room, glowing red, gold, and orange in the firelight.
“That’s a dragon,” Mouse hissed. “That’s a bloody silk dragon!”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Do you know how to fight a dragon?”
“Never had the occasion to before,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think that, together, we don’t know much of anything,” she whispered.
“To be fair, dragon slaying is hardly part of a classical education, even when I was last in the mortal world.”