Chapter 36
thirty-six
Getting inside the Fire Palace was easy.
Maera led the way, barefoot but her entire body was covered by the black cloak on her shoulders, and the only thing we knew was to not go to the west of the palace because that’s where the fake king and queen had created their new throne room, one that wasn’t connected to the palace.
Hil knew this because he’d planned that heist for months.
He’d worked with a former guard, he said, and he knew the layout of the west because that was where he’d stolen the gold from, so it was only natural to assume that the original throne room would be somewhere in the east. Hil wasn’t worried, though.
He said the security detail everywhere else in the palace other than where the king and queen hung out was a joke.
At first I didn’t believe him. But we left the stables and walked all the way to their other side to find a door inside the palace, and there was nobody to stop us there.
The fae who worked outside in the back of the stables watched us, but they didn’t stop us.
Didn’t say anything at all, just continued to go about their business.
There were no guards near the three doors on the palace’s wall, even though they were all unlocked.
Maera chose the one in the middle that took us to a stairway leading up, and so we were inside just like that. Like we belonged there.
The inside of the Fire Palace looked more broken than alive.
The banners that hung on the walls were torn.
There were no paintings here, but the outline of the ones that had been hung possibly a long time ago remained on the bare walls.
The high ceiling felt empty, dust falling from the beams, cobwebs hanging where lights should have burned, and they used fire on torches and lanterns here, not fae lights.
Our steps rang out across cracked tiles, the sound too loud in the heavy silence—and it was unusually silent, at least in the hallway those stairs led us to. The air smelled like dust, but I wasn’t complaining. It was much better than the scent out there.
Then there were more animal statues made of what couldn’t possibly be marble—it looked almost like my fingers would sink into them if I pressed too hard.
So many of them in the corners, near the ceiling, placed over the outline of the paintings that were long gone, and they were the same animals as outside.
The farther we went down the corridor, and toward another stairway at the end, the more we saw.
Iron sconces shaped like antlers lined the walls here instead of torches.
While we walked up the stairs slowly, I could faintly see bits of drawings on the tiles—of animals: foxes, ravens, and stags—though most were faded, or broken and dull.
The palace watched.
I knew it in the same way I knew the Ice Palace watched me, too. In the same way I’d felt the Queen’s Palace in the Seelie Court watching, even if I hadn’t known it. The same way I’d felt the Midnight Palace breathing down my neck—this place was alive.
But there was a little bit more to it here because this palace was also dying.
And I had the feeling it had been dying for a very long time now.
A silly thought considering this was a fucking building, but I’d been held hostage by a building once, and I’d had doors open for me and food pop up in front of my door. This was Verenthia.
The help here wore brown and most of the fae that passed us by had their hair covered with brown cloths as well. They moved like they were both tired and in a rush, and though they watched us, they did so in silence.
The hallways were built the same way on the second floor, too, and the rooms off the halls were all empty, most with furniture covered with pieces of cloth.
Again—no paintings on the walls. They’d all been removed, every last one of them, but when we finally made our way up the stairs to the third floor, we finally heard something other than footsteps. Voices.
“Ladies.” Hil put his arm in front of my chest before I took the second stair, but he didn’t dare touch Maera. “Allow me the honor of making sure it’s safe for you up there first.”
That grin. The way his eyes sparkled, I was tempted to smile.
I liked Hil. I really didn’t think he had it in him to be evil in any kind of way.
“The honor’s all yours,” I said and waved a hand for him toward the stairs.
“Such generosity,” Hil whispered as he moved past me, then bowed his head to Maera. “Your Exquisite Highness…”
Maera gave me a look when he went ahead, and I could have sworn she was trying her damn hardest not to smile, too.
“I’m going to shift again. She’s restless,” she told me—and I knew she meant her wolf. I had yet to understand how it worked, what it was like in her head, but I nodded.
“Of course. Whatever feels more comfortable to the both of you.”
“Thanks.” She took off the cloak and gave it back to me. “Till next time.”
By the time I secured the cloak around my shoulders again, her wolf had fully shifted, and she was already moving up the stairs as she sniffed the air deeply.
We found Hil there, eyes up toward whoever was speaking on the third floor, the voices too low for me to understand a single word.
Maera stopped beside him, her ears perked up and her neck extended.
Then came the noise.
Something made of metal fell to the floor with a loud thud, and a scream followed. Hil and Maera were already running back down the stairs, and Hil waved for me to keep moving, too, that same grin still on his face.
“What the hell did you do?” I hissed, as more sounds came from upstairs, shouts and footsteps and even glass breaking, but Hil grabbed me by the arm and he turned me around, took me back down the hallway where we came from.
“Nothing, nothing, just made a friend, that’s all. Keep walking,” he said and turned to look behind us with every step, though there was nobody there. Nobody chasing us, I thought. But when we turned the corner, I could have sworn I heard someone calling, “Hey!” from those very stairs.
“Move, move, move!”
Hil was running again, and so was Maera’s wolf. I had no choice but to follow.
“Hil, for fuck’s sake—what the hell!”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t let me go back downstairs all the way. Instead, he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through a wide doorway decorated with cobwebs, and right into a dark hall that we’d been pretty sure had been empty when we first came.
It was.
Maera ran ahead as if she already knew where she was going.
There were footsteps behind us, but they were far away, fading with every new step we took.
Orange light, smaller than those that Rune and other fae made, came from Hil’s raised hand, as there were no torches or lanterns here.
The light illuminated the wide hall just fine, but we were already at the other end, and Hil was aiming for the wooden doors on the wall.
He didn’t slow down his pace at all. Instead, he let go of me and ran faster, then kicked the door right under the handle.
It gave.
The door swung open and slammed against the wall on the other side, and I was pulled into a narrow corridor, with empty lanterns on the orange-colored walls.
I was as terrified as I was excited, not going to lie.
We went through another set of doors that gave easily against Hil’s shoulder when he slammed onto them like a savage—and behind them were people.
Seven fae men and women, all Unseelie, all handling baskets full of either food or cloths.
Shit.
We stopped right inside the wide hallway. They stopped, too. No guards.
My chest rose and fell fast, and for a moment there, I considered grabbing Hil and turning around to go back through the doors, find a quiet place and regroup, but—
“Throne room.” Hil’s voice pierced the sudden silence. “We’re looking for the old throne room. Be so kind and point us to it, will you?”
My eyes closed. I fisted my hands as the magic inside me intensified. I was going to fucking murder him with my own hands, I thought, as the people ahead looked at one another for a second, and…
One of the fae women holding a smaller basket full of apples balanced it on her hip, then raised her hand and pointed to the other side of the room across from us.
Holy fuck.
She was actually pointing to the other side of the room.
“Thank you, beautiful lady. Please, carry on,” said Hil, bowing deeply to the woman who smiled and lowered her head and continued toward the doorway she’d been going to, while her eyes remained on Hil.
Hil, who walked with his chin up and a smile on his face, as if he suddenly wasn’t in a hurry, and he didn’t care much about all these people who could see him.
The hallway was wide and there were doorways that led to stairs on either side, and the people were moving from one to the other constantly, but again—they weren’t stopping us.
Instead, their eyes were on Hil, and they whispered in each other’s ears, but they never said anything out loud.
I almost didn’t believe my own eyes, but we made it all the way to the other side of the hallway that was much longer than I’d initially thought.
It ended in a wide archway that was covered with a deep red cloth, like someone had accidentally put up a curtain there.
No signs and no threads and no emblems—just an old dusty piece of fabric that Hil pulled to the side with ease, then turned and waved for us to go through.
Smiling. Always smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world and hadn’t just been locked up in a cage a few days ago.
But when we went through to the other side and he let the red curtain drop behind us, I knew we were exactly where we needed to be.
Dust on the floor, layer upon layer of it.
Broken pieces of glass and wood were everywhere, and the paintings here weren’t all taken off and thrown at the marble floor designed with patterns in all shades of orange and maroon.
Some remained on the walls, barely hanging, the canvases torn so that you could barely see any color left on them.
It was worse than the paintings in the Gallery of the Cursed.
This place, too, was destroyed, and it was abandoned, and it was dark. Almost dead.
So much dust had gathered on the dark floors that our footprints remained when we went ahead.
The hallway was round, and there were four sets of doors in it, all painted orange—except the ones at the very end on the right, which were made of rust-colored metal.
Someone must have thrown red paint at them at some point, because splatters were everywhere on it, the color too bright to be blood.
“There,” I whispered, pointing at the metal doors, shaped almost like a triangle, engraved with all kinds of shapes that we couldn’t yet make out properly.
The throne room would be behind those doors, and not just because they were different, but because I felt the energy of the building here.
This was the part of it that had existed first, that was tied to Verenthia, to the stars. The part that was sentient.
This abandoned hallway of the palace was exactly where we were supposed to be, and we were already here.
Tears in my eyes as I rushed forward, and the others followed. I stopped in front of the doors and put a hand against the cold metal. The moment my skin made contact, I sucked in a deep breath as the energy went through me.
It was faint, barely there, and just a few months ago I’d have probably convinced myself that I imagined it, but I didn’t. It was there. This place was it.
I stepped back.
“You sure? Because these doors look heavy. It’s gonna hurt.” Hil was looking at me like he was suddenly begging me to tell him to try another set.
I didn’t, though. Instead, I reached for the handles that were shaped like leaves folded in themselves halfway, and I tried to open the doors. Not sure why I’d been so sure that they would open, but they didn’t. The handles wouldn’t even go down a single inch.
“Closed.”
“Yes—and I can break wood, but this is iron.” Hil reached up to touch the paint that had been splattered over the metal, and I waited for him to react, but he didn’t. Like he didn’t feel a thing.
That’s the first time I got the feeling that something was…off. Couldn’t really put my finger on it, but it was wrong—or maybe just not as it should be.
“It’s this one, I’m sure.” I stepped back, looked around the empty hall, at the curtain in the distance that looked black from here because the orange light couldn’t reach all the way to it.
“Fine, fine, okay.” A sigh, and Hil kicked the door with all his strength.
It didn’t give.
Maera and I stepped aside to give him space, and he kicked the doors another two times, but they didn’t open. Neither even moved or groaned a little bit. Like he said, it was iron.
Cursing under his breath, Hil gritted his teeth and he tried to slam his shoulder against them, but it was useless. The pain must have pissed him off because the next second his hands were glowing orange.
“I’m going to get to the other side of this. Step back, ladies. I will now burn these doors to the ground,” he said, his voice low and dark. Yes, he was definitely pissed off.
Pulling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, Hil pressed his palms against the door and took in a deep breath, preparing to unleash his magic while Maera and I moved farther back.
I watched in awe as the orange glow spread up to Hil’s knuckles and climbed over his forearms. The sight of magic in action was never going to get old.
I held my breath, too, and waited for the explosion.
It was going to be loud, I just knew it, but…
A click disrupted the silence instead.
A click—like a lock turning—from the very doors.
Hil’s eyes popped open. The glow around his forearms retreated to his hands again quickly, and he turned to look at me, the question clear in his eyes—did you hear that?
I nodded. Yes, I did.
With his hands glowing still, Hil grabbed the handles and pulled the doors open.
They gave.