Chapter Fifty-Four #2
Not every wall bore such openings. Only those that reached the mountain’s outer face allowed the light to spill through; the others lay pressed against the living rock above, sealed within the mountain’s ancient heart.
It was unmistakably a Fae stronghold.
Wherever Kage looked, small birds flitted through the vast space, their wings catching the lanternlight, while smaller animals darted across the polished floor or vanished into creeping greenery.
Fae architecture had a beauty unlike any other.
Less rigid, less severe. It was something softer, something grown rather than built.
Vines climbed the towering columns, their tendrils winding through the carved stone, while plants spilt across the window frames as though the palace itself had invited the forest inside.
The palace was alive.
A living, breathing thing, just as every structure shaped by Fae hands seemed to be.
‘Where is Bryn Wynter?’ Kage asked.
‘He is currently being interrogated to ensure he is not a warlock,’ the valkyrian replied.
Kage muttered a string of curses beneath his breath before turning sharply and striding deeper into the central hall, where an enormous staircase spiralled upward into the mountain’s shadowed depths.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ she called after him.
‘To find him.’
‘He is with the queen.’
‘Then take me to them.’
The valkyrian stared at him for a long moment, her glare cold and measuring. At last she turned on her heel and began to walk.
For a heartbeat Kage was uncertain whether she meant for him to follow, but she paused only a few steps later and cast a glacial look back over her shoulder.
The message was clear enough.
With visible reluctance, Kage followed.
The rails of the staircase had been adorned with clusters of flowers, their petals spilling over the carved stone like a cascade of colour. Upon several of the steps, rabbits and squirrels sat contentedly nibbling their food, utterly unbothered by the mortals passing through their quiet domain.
The deeper they descended into the palace, the darker the world became.
Windows were no longer possible so far beneath the mountain’s weight, and the ceilings stretched higher still, arching into shadowed vaults above.
Yet the space was never truly dark. Fae magic shimmered softly through the lanterns that lined the walls, their golden glow bathing the stone in warm, honeyed light.
At the end of the corridor, the valkyrian halted before a pair of majestic stone doors that guarded the entrance to the throne room.
‘Do not speak unless spoken to,’ she warned.
Kage nodded, his face as blank and unreadable as carved marble.
He had no intention whatsoever of obeying.
The valkyrian seemed to sense this all the same, suspicion crossing her expression before she turned and pushed the doors open.
The throne room beyond was vast.
A sweeping, cavernous space that might have felt cold and empty in another kingdom’s palace, but the Fae had a gift for weaving life into even the most austere places.
The towering columns were not columns at all, but the trunks of enormous trees rising from the stone floor.
Kage suspected magic had shaped them so, for it seemed unlikely that such trees had ever grown within the belly of a mountain.
Above, the entire ceiling had been transformed into a canopy of flowers and trailing vines, blossoms spilling downward in soft drifts, some hanging like living chandeliers.
Stepping inside felt less like entering a hall of power and more like walking into a secret garden hidden deep beneath the earth.
At the far end stood the throne.
It was an enormous bloom of stone and magic, shaped like a great rose unfurling its petals. Upon it sat the queen. To her left, her youngest daughter rested upon a smaller flower-throne of her own.
And before them stood Bryn Wynter.
Along the walls on either side waited the warriors of Black Lotus, poised and watchful, while dozens of valkyrians stood ready for battle should it come.
Every pair of eyes in the chamber turned towards the newcomers.
Kage paid no heed to the stares that followed him. He strode straight across the hall to Bryn and took his place beside the wolverian king. For a brief moment he squeezed Bryn’s hand before turning to face the queen.
The Fae queen was a striking sight. Her skin was deep and luminous, her eyes the burnished gold of a setting sun.
From her brow rose slender antlers, impossibly tall, their delicate branches entirely shrouded in blooming flowers.
Her gown was woven from layered leaves, the living fabric draping across nearly every inch of her form as though the forest itself had clothed her.
Her daughter, Princess Willow Hawthorne, sat beside her.
The girl could not have seen more than fifteen summers, yet there was something ancient in the set of her shoulders.
Wisdom—no, something harsher than wisdom—glimmered within her green eyes.
They were the same shade as her sister Rio’s, sharp and vivid as new leaves.
Unlike Rio, however, Willow bore the pale hair of her elder sisters, the same ghostly white as the queen’s.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ the queen asked.
Before the valkyrian who had escorted Kage could answer, he stepped forward.
‘My name is Kage Blackburn,’ he said. ‘Thirdborn son of King Ozul and Queen Senka. We are not warlocks, neither of us.’ He gestured briefly towards Bryn. ‘I have come to warn you.’
A hush rippled through the chamber, the air tightening with a sense of gathering foreboding.
‘Warn us of what?’
Kage shifted his attention from the queen to Willow Hawthorne.
It was a strange thing, to stand only a few feet from such power. The girl—no, the thing within the girl—watched him with calm, measured interest. Rio had warned him long ago that this was not truly Willow. That her body had been taken years before, hollowed and claimed as a vessel for another.
For the goddess Nyx.
Mother of Eris and Thanatos.
A goddess who had chosen to hide.
From what, no one seemed to know.
‘The gods are coming,’ Kage said quietly, his dark eyes locking with the goddess’s green ones as they narrowed in suspicion.
And despite the tension thickening the room, Kage could not help but smile.