Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Draven
I fucked up.
Plummeting into darkness wasn’t what I had expected to happen when I’d activated the glyph. I’d known to look for it because we had an identical room in the Sovereign House with the exact same glyph. Though when I’d activated that one, it’d been like being gently picked up and placed in a different room before getting a nice pat on the head.
This had felt like the floor cracking under us and a giant reaching up and jerking our bodies down. I was pretty sure my organs were no longer in the right positions, and I was fighting the urge to hurl my guts up.
On the plus side, Samara was clinging to me tenaciously. Her arms were wrapped around me, and she tucked her head against my chest. If she’d had time to think about it, she never would have done it, but in a moment of panic, she thought I was safe. Someone she could trust to see her through this.
I wasn’t.
That fact hurt far more than the way she practically flung herself away from me when we stopped moving, hissing a bunch of words in dead languages that I had no doubt were promises of doing very nasty things to certain parts of my body. I let her get it out while I looked around, getting our bearings. Grateful the nausea had vanished almost instantly after the magic had finished transporting us.
It was foolish of me to turn my back on Samara when she was pissed. I knew from past experience that she had a fiery temper.
“Fuck!” I rubbed the back of my head, where something hard and blunt had just slammed into it. I turned at the pinging sound of something metal bouncing off the floor and I bent down to swipe up the dagger. Given that Sam had just thrown a blade at my head, and I didn’t know if she’d meant for the sharp end to hit me, I should’ve probably been pissed off at her. Instead, I wanted to pass the weapon back to her so she could hold it at my throat while I fucked her against the wall.
Something told me she wouldn’t like that though, or more accurately, she wouldn’t be willing to admit how much she would like that. I hadn’t missed all the conflicting expressions on her face over the past hour. Samara wanted me, and she hated herself for it.
Couldn’t exactly fault her for that. I hated myself a little too.
Samara stalked over to me and held her hand out demandingly as black threads wound through her purple eyes. Okay, she was a little more than pissed.
She grabbed the dagger from me and thrust it back into a sheath that was hidden up her sleeve. “Next time you disobey me,” she growled, “it’ll be the dagger end that goes through your thick fucking skull!”
Guess that answered the question of if she’d intended to hit me with the handle. Apparently, she hadn’t been bragging at the dinner table when she’d spoken about how good she was with projectile weapons .
Fuck, Samara got hotter by the minute.
Before I could stop myself, I reached out and ran my fingers down the thick braid that snaked over her shoulder, then trailed my fingers along the top of her chest.
“I can think of some better ways for you to punish me for my disobedience.” For a split second, desire lit up Samara’s eyes before she ruthlessly stamped it out. It was reckless of me to tease her like this, but I couldn’t help it. I’d felt the same about Kieran, and he’d almost died because of it. Not that he had the faintest idea. His hatred of me hurt, but all I cared about was that he was alive.
Samara and her friends had only scratched the surface of how completely fucked Lunaria was. My mother had always been a power-hungry bitch, but now she had strong allies who could make all her dark and twisted dreams come true. Sooner or later, she’d decide I wasn’t worth keeping around, and my life would be over. So I might as well flirt with Samara while I could. Thanks to her status as the Harker Heir, even my mother would hesitate to go after her. Kieran hadn’t been so lucky.
“What is this place?” Samara stepped away from me as she peered around the dimly lit room. A few Fae lanterns had lit up, but they must have been running out of magic because their blue flames were nothing more than small flickers. I strode over to one of them and sliced the back of my hand, dipped my fingertips into the blood, and then brushed them against the flame symbol at the base of the silver lantern. The flames immediately burned brighter and chased more of the darkness away.
I went to the next lantern and repeated the process, the glyph greedily absorbing the magic in my blood. Samara strode to the wall opposite me and did the same on the lanterns on that side. It didn’t take long to light up the enormous room.
“These walls are made out of the same stone as the rest of House Harker,” Samara mused as she ran her hand along the dark grey stonework. Then she slowly walked back to the center of the room, her steps echoing across the empty space. “What the fuck is this?”
“There’s a door.” I pointed to what was likely the one and only exit. So far, the layout of the place was the same as the one I’d explored before. “Maybe we’ll find some answers through there.”
Samara pursed her lips as she glared at the door like it had personally offended her. I bit back my laugh, not wanting to have another dagger thrown in my direction. On one hand, she was still pissed off over how all of this had played out—Samara liked to be in control and do things in a logical manner—but I also knew she had a bit of a wild streak and was obsessed with learning more about the Fae.
Despite her rant a few minutes ago about the Fae and their shady history, Samara would latch onto any opportunity to figure out more of the history of Lunaria, which meant diving into all the strange things the Fae had left behind, and this whole situation definitely qualified as weird, shady Fae shit.
I was a little disappointed this room was empty just like the one beneath the Sovereign House. Not because I’d expected to find anything that could help me, since my fate was already sealed, but because it would have made Samara happy to find some new piece of history.
“Let’s go look,” she said with a sigh, but she walked quickly, excitement practically dripping off her. I let myself smile now that her back was to me and I wasn’t at risk of sharp, flying objects. She swung the door open and stopped with a sharp intake of breath.
I quickly closed the distance between us, my arm slinking around her waist, ready to pull her back from any potential threat. Another room stretched out before us, significantly larger than the one we’d just been in. The Fae lanterns in this one hadn’t weakened, the entire area brightly lit, and neat rows of beds took up most of the space. Unlike the more elaborate beds that had been left behind in the fortresses, these ones were of a simple but functional make. Each one had a bottom and top mattress and blankets and pillows still tucked into place.
I released her so she could explore. This was indeed exactly like the room under the Sovereign House. And just like that one, this one only provided more questions instead of answers, it seemed.
“It’s a shelter . . .” Samara walked slowly between the rows, eyes skimming over the room. “Did they never use it? Or did they retreat here and then leave?” I kept my mouth shut since I didn’t have an answer and it was clear she was mostly talking to herself at this point.
She stopped by one of the beds and plucked at a blanket, raising it a few inches before letting it drop, a frown stretching across her beautiful face. “Something frightened the Fae enough that they built secret passages leading to a room that held some type of magical doorway to a bunker.” Her eyes raised to the ceiling. “I think we’re underground, directly below the fortress. If they planned for all this, they must have assumed that the fortress, despite all its wards, could be compromised. They wouldn’t trap themselves down here.” She looked away from the ceiling and started scanning the rest of the room. “There must be an exit somewhere that leads off the grounds.”
“What do you think happened to the Fae?” I asked as we resumed our walk around the unused beds. The stillness of the room bothered me. It was like we were walking through a graveyard that had never actually been used.
Samara glanced over her shoulder at me. “I think the theory about the Unseelie losing control of their shadow magic is the most likely. It would explain the wraiths. From the books we’ve managed to find, everything indicates the arrival of the wraiths coincided with the disappearance of the Fae. It seems highly unlikely that there isn’t a connection between the shadow monsters and the Unseelie. We know they hated the Seelie. We just don’t know why.”
She turned away and hurried down the row, something drawing her attention. I clenched my hands at my sides as I watched her go, a dull ache forming at the base of my skull. The promise of pain was a reminder of the geas. My mother had a lot of control over me, but even she couldn’t compel me not to speak of her secrets.
Erendriel could.
Which meant I couldn’t scream at Samara that she was wrong. Even just thinking about doing so was ratcheting up the pain. I paused by one of the beds and pretended to look at something as I leaned against it and pulled in several deep breaths. It’d taken me a while to figure out how to calm my thoughts and empty my mind, but it was the only way I managed to hold onto my sanity. Something that greatly disappointed my mother when she’d tried so hard to break me.
I didn’t know why she hated me so much, but there were many things I’d never understood about her. In the end, it didn’t matter. I was a weapon for her to wield until she no longer deemed me useful, and that day was coming soon.
All I cared about now was figuring out a way to keep Samara and Kieran safe. There was no saving Lunaria, but perhaps they could be protected. Not if they kept going down this path though. I knew Samara had been at that temple. When I’d returned with Erendriel and smelled her blood at the entrance, I’d felt the same terror I had the night my mother had looked at Kieran and smiled.
Erendriel had raged as we scoured the area, but there had been no sign of the wraiths we’d left behind. To my relief, Samara had already been gone, but it’d been difficult to maintain a steady heartbeat as the scent of her blood had hit me. I’d smelled the blood of at least three others as well, but I hadn’t recognized who it belonged to. Erendriel had stared at the bloodsoaked ground, but the Fae didn’t have a particularly sensitive sense of smell. He couldn’t even tell it was Moroi blood, let alone who it belonged to.
Lying to Erendriel was tricky. I wasn’t sure if all Fae could detect a lie or if he could only tell when I lied because of the geas he’d placed on me. Fortunately for me, I’d grown up in the Moroi courts and was quite skilled in misleading words and partial truths. When he’d demanded to know who the blood belonged to, I’d purposely knelt by a puddle of blood that did not belong to Samara. So I had been truthful when I’d claimed not to know who had been there.
My gambit had only bought Samara and her friends a little bit of time. The proposed marriage between Samara and me was real. Currently, my mother thought the Harker Heir could be controlled. If Samara would just agree to marry me, then the queen would be satisfied for a while. It would provide me an opportunity to figure out how to keep her and Kieran safe long-term and make it easier for me to keep track of them, because where Samara went, Kieran would surely follow.
I couldn’t let them go back to that temple or stumble into any other areas where the wraiths frequented. They had no idea just how much the world was falling apart around them, and I couldn’t let them walk into it blindly, but I couldn’t tell them either.
If my mother found out just how much Samara knew . . . she’d make sure Samara met an unfortunate end, likely at the hands of wraiths. She’d also make sure anyone Samara might have told would be killed off as well. The Moroi Queen did not like loose ends.
Carmilla was the wild card in all this. The best I could tell, she was truly just friends with my mother and wasn’t caught up in the plot with Erendriel and the wraiths, but I’d been wrong before about people and paid dearly for it. The only two people in the world I trusted were Samara and Kieran, and they both thought I was the villain in all this.
Which I supposed I was. An unwilling one, but a villain all the same.
I started to turn in the direction Samara had headed when the light from the Fae lanterns glinted off something nestled in the blankets of one of the beds. It appeared something had been left behind after all. I strode over to the bed and pulled back the blanket. A perfect glass sphere sat there, a swirl of dark blue and purple with thick white markings that reminded me of clouds cutting through the color.
A Fae memory ball.
Excitement coursed through me, and I picked it up, concentrating on the magic within. But the hope I’d been feeling faded. Empty. Someone had brought it here but had never stashed a memory in it. Looked like whoever had used this safe room before would continue to remain a mystery to us.
I glanced to where Samara was standing at the other end of the room, facing the wall, and hurried after her. There might be another one of those weird portal spells here, and I didn’t want to risk her activating it without me.
“Find something?” I asked when I neared her.
“A book. Poetry.” She held up a slim, leather-bound book, not taking her eyes off the wall. “And another glyph. I don’t know this one.”
My arm brushed against hers as I leaned in closer, but she was so engrossed by her discovery that she didn’t seem to notice. Unlike the glyph in the other room, this one was carved into the stone and easier to spot. It was a triangle with three horizontal lines slashed through it.
“Never seen one like this before.” A mischievous smile curled on my lips as I reached out to touch it .
“Damn it, Drav!” She gripped my wrist and tugged my hand away. “Quit touching shit you don’t understand!”
As soon as Samara realized she was still holding me, she released her fingers almost reluctantly. My grin transformed into a self-satisfied smile. She liked touching me. Despite everything she knew—or thought she knew— about me, Samara wanted me. I needed to use that to my advantage if I was going to convince her to marry me.
“Where did you find the book?”
“Over there.” She pointed towards an empty bookcase tucked into the corner. “I didn’t find anything else. Either they never actually used this space, or they cleared everything out when they . . . left.”
“Trade you.” I tossed her the memory ball, and she snatched it out of the air with one hand. I saw the exact moment disappointment hit her when she realized it contained no memories.
I tugged the book out of her other hand and started flipping through the pages. “Unseelie,” I noted, which made sense because, based on the style of murals I’d seen on some of the walls and ceilings here, this had been an Unseelie stronghold. “Didn’t know you were a fan of poetry.”
Samara’s cheeks darkened, and she hastily took the book back, clutching it to her chest. “I’m intrigued by anything they left behind. You know that. Plus . . . I have a friend who . . . umm . . .” Samara stammered, and I cocked my head at her as she continued to struggle. “They like it when I read Fae poetry to them, and this book has a bunch of poems I’ve never read before.”
I had absolutely no idea what was making Samara blush like crazy, but it was highly amusing.
“Here.” She handed me back the memory ball. “You found it, so it’s yours.”
I took the Fae artifact from her and pondered it for a moment. Perhaps it was reckless of me, but if things went bad—which I strongly suspected they would—I wanted her to have at least one good memory of me. Kieran too. Maybe someday, they could view me as someone other than the villain.
“What are you doing?” Samara asked, tension flooding her voice as I sliced open my thumb on my fang and swiped the blood over the glass orb.
My blood vanished, and I felt the tug on my mind as a copy of the memory I’d chosen slipped into the orb.
“Here.” I held the glass sphere out to her. “A memory just for you. Might I suggest listening to it at night . . . when you’re alone in bed.”
Her gaze narrowed on me, and I let my lips curl into a sinful smile. I was rewarded by her cheeks flushing before she scowled. “It’ll make a beautiful paperweight.”
I laughed before waving a hand at the rest of the room. “Do you want to look around more?” Not that there was much to see. I was curious about what the glyph on the wall did, probably an escape route of some kind, but I could return later and explore.
“No.” Samara shook her head, dark eyes darting back to the glyph. She knew something about it. Something she didn’t want to share with me. Turning her attention away from the wall, she gave me a brilliant smile that caused my heart to skip a beat. The way her eyes laughed at me, I knew that had been her intention. Samara never had any problem wielding her beauty to knock others off their game. “This place is depressing. Let’s go walk on the beach for a bit. I want to feel the sun on my skin.”
“Anything for you, Sam.” I let my voice drop low so it was more of a raspy purr than anything, and Samara’s smile slipped for a fraction of a second, her breath hitching before she rolled her eyes at me and took my arm as I extended it to her. “Hopefully the glyph that got us down here can also get us back up to that room.”
That was how the one beneath the Sovereign House worked, so I assumed this one did as well, despite it’s magic being a little fucked up. Samara just hummed her agreement as we walked back down the aisle, arm in arm, neither of us speaking.