Chapter 39
There were several ways I liked to be woken.
Right at the top was feeling arms tighten around my waist, Kier’s deep sigh of contentment scattering the fine hairs at the back of my neck.
Waking up with him between my legs was a great option, too.
Being woken by food, also not a bad option.
I wasn’t even opposed to a skirmish startling me from sleep, because it gave me an excuse for a little swashbuckling.
Being woken by the low groan of stone grinding against stone and the whole world trembling around me? Right down at the bottom, with being tickled on my feet, getting rained on, or screams tearing me from slumber. Whatever was happening, I was not a fan.
I dragged my eyelids apart, groaning at how dry and sore they were, grit encrusted on my lashes. “Kier?” I mumbled, squinting at my dim surroundings as the world began to quiver. Was it an earthquake? We’d had them a few times in Lucre, but I’d never experienced one in the goblin lands.
I pulled myself upright, rubbing my eyes, and memories struck me like a blue-glowing wand to the gut, making my stomach churn. The land of fog and stolen goblins, the room full of people who thought I was the enemy, the woman who hit Kier over the head.
“Kier!” I said with more urgency, scrambling off the floor and vaguely noticing that it was made of a shimmering blue stone, not the castle’s dark, imposing black or the Haar’s writhing fog.
That couldn’t be good; a whole room made of magic.
I remembered the goblins’ threats of sending us to the spire.
I lifted my head in time to watch the conical roof slice apart, right down the centre, and shift, twist, rearranging itself like a puzzle box.
“Kier,” I hissed now, stumbling awkwardly to my feet, throwing a frantic stare around the curved room, my heart skipping when I found him passed out on the floor.
I rushed unsteadily towards him, the spire twisting and changing above us, and relief drove into my heart like a spear when I found him warm, breathing, and alive.
“You need to wake up, some fucked up shit is happening with this tower and I don’t know—”
The ground dropped from under me and I screamed as I plunged into thin air, throwing my arms out on instinct.
My elbows rammed into stone so hard tears leapt into my eyes.
I screamed in the back of my throat, panting through the pain.
I’d managed to stop my fall, but I felt the openness below me, the ground hungry for my death.
For a spire made entirely of magic, it sure felt solid. The slab I clung to rammed into my stomach as I tried to haul myself up, the tower still rumbling around me, the walls twisting and changing, slotting back together differently.
“Kier!” I screamed when the wall behind him dropped suddenly, leaving his back exposed. If he rolled in his sleep… “Kier!”
He startled awake with a growl when I yanked on our bond, shifting into goblin form before his eyes had even opened. The moment they did, he scoured the shifting spire and landed on me, and panic exploded through them like a burning star.
“Zaba,” he gasped, lunging towards me, and snarling when the stone in front of him dropped, forcing him to stagger back. “Hold on. I’m coming, mate.”
That last word wiped out whatever sharp, snarky thing I’d been about to say and made my bottom lip wobble.
I hauled myself up another few centimetres, but the strength was swiftly fleeing my body, and what would I do if the stone I clung to dropped?
My stomach roiled with violent sickness, sweat pricking my palms and my armpits as I held myself up with all my strength.
Wind tore at my legs, and for a split second I thought it was mist, thought it was the Haar come to save me, but it was only air howling through breaks in the stone as the spire groaned and growled and twisted itself into a new arrangement.
Kier leapt empty gaps in the floor, moving like a panther as he set his sights on me, not letting even the shifting walls distract him as he made his way to me.
The feeling of his hands on my arms made me sob, but I choked it back, alert for more slabs falling beneath us.
When my feet touched solid ground, a vicious rush of adrenaline made me shake, and I nearly buckled when Kier’s arms closed around me.
“I thought you made this place to be safe,” I said in a reedy voice, clinging to him and watching the floor, paranoid it would drop beneath us at any moment.
Or maybe paranoid was the wrong word, since that exact thing happened, just several slabs across the spire’s glowing blue floor.
Another peeled itself from the wall, grinding, shifting, and then snapped into the hole on the floor.
Another thud, solid and final, and then silence rang like a gunshot in my ears.
“I didn’t make this tower,” Kier said with barely suppressed rage. His arms flexed around me, his hand splayed across my back, keeping me pressed to him. “This reeks of someone else’s magic.”
“A psychopath’s, clearly,” I rasped, letting my head thud onto his firm chest when the tower remained still for a minute, then two. “How do we get out? We can’t stay here when the floor can drop at any moment.”
“No,” he agreed, “we can’t. But there are no doors or windows.”
“Kier, the whole spire just ripped itself apart, there must be a way—”
“Unless you want to wait for it to move again…”
“No,” I mumbled into his chest, dragging his scent into my lungs, the sharp crash of life rushing back into me like a shot of lightning. I was alive. I nearly died, but I was alive. “Are you alright? You took a hit to the head.”
“Fine,” he replied with a grumble, glaring at the room around us. ‘Room’ was a stretch; it was an empty, conical space made of stone with no furniture, not even a bucket to piss in. “I heal faster in this…”
I drew back to look at him, fear striking my chest like a whip, speeding the beats of my heart when I saw the look on his face. Horror. Bleached fear.
“We’re not alone.”
“What?” I turned in his arms, my heart galloping, instincts going crazy. I didn’t see anything except the spire and us.
“Can’t you sense it? It’s like the Haar, but…”
I saw it then, lurking in the very highest tip of the spire: true darkness.
So pitch black that there was a clear distinction between the dimness of the spire and that inky, too-still shadow.
Something told me this wouldn’t be protective to a fault like the Haar.
More like Cleodora’s chaotic fire woman.
“Hello…?” I whispered.
Kier and I both flinched when a soft, feminine voice echoed, “Hello…?”
“Was that my voice?” I breathed, staring at my mate, my panic reflected in his eyes.
“No.”
“Do you have a name?” I called this time, plastering myself against Kier when the reply came, soft and lyrical and definitely not my voice.
“I am Lacuna.”
The darkness moved. It crawled down the walls, moving like a sea of shadows, enclosing us far too swiftly.
“I have tasted your darkness before, daughter of Aelouette, son of Roscoe.”
Kier and I locked eyes. I grabbed his arm and held on tight, wishing to every god that I hadn’t swallowed my rings, leaving me without power, without Baby and Valour. But Kier still had his dragon—shit, his necklace was gone. I’d rip the head off whoever had taken it.
If I ever got out of this spire alive. The shifting, rearranging walls were never the danger. The real threat here was Lacuna.
“Such interesting flavours, so many new demons to devour,” Lacuna mused, crawling closer, seeping down the walls like blood in a horror novel. “I remember the taste of yours, son of Roscoe.”
“Remember,” I echoed. My heart crashed into my ribs as I realised where I’d felt this threatening darkness, where I’d sensed the noose of panic and fear and pain closing around my neck.
“The staircase,” Kier said in a cold voice, his back stiffening, walls locking him away, protecting him from the darkness that slithered closer. “At Gaia’s grave.”
I stared at the darkness in mute horror. Natasya’s cruelty, the words that had dug into my brain and still wouldn’t leave, the memories I was raked across like bare skin against coals… Lacuna was responsible for that.
And we were locked in here with her.