Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
A s promised, Kaden was waiting for me the following morning just inside the courtyard gates. Those enormous wings were flung wide, the onyx talons tipped with gold. He was clad in black fighting leathers not unlike my own and wore twin swords strapped to his back.
The effect was . . . striking.
With slashes of dark hair falling across his chiseled face and the light shining through his velvety wings, I wondered how I had ever believed that he was an ordinary fae male.
Then there were the swords. Though I was never without my daggers, I’d only seen Kaden arm himself once, and that had been for our journey to the in-between. The fact that he carried them now hinted at what we would face in Dorthus.
A light breeze played in my hair as Kaden turned toward me. His silver-gray eyes flashed in the twilight as he dragged his gaze up my body, lingering on the steel strapped to my thighs and where the front of my new leather jacket plunged in a deep V .
A highly impractical feature — one my old jacket had not had.
The corner of his mouth lifted in a wicked grin. “It’s almost as if they were made for you.”
I held out my arms. “Weren’t they?”
“They were. Leather goods aren’t common in Adraeis, due to our climate and the fact that we do not have a standing army.” Kaden’s eyes smoldered, cutting once again to the exposed swell of my breasts. “The cut of the jacket was my idea.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
The demon prince gave a low chuckle, and there was a great creak as the gates swung open.
I blinked. Dazzling golden light spilled in through the opening, blocked only by the silhouette of Kaden’s wings.
He made a sweeping gesture with his arm and led me onto a street, where rows of crumbling stucco houses painted white and peach and sun-faded blue tumbled down to the river.
Linens hanging from the clotheslines flapped cheerfully in the breeze, and all manner of flowering plants burst from clay pots outside of every shop and home.
I stared, wondering why I hadn’t seen or heard the sounds of a city from the window of my bedchamber.
“Is this . . .”
“Adraeis,” Kaden said with a nod, his face suddenly grave as he gazed down the hill to the rows of cheerful houses.
“Why didn’t I —”
“Traveling souls are often overwhelmed when they first arrive in Adraeis,” he explained. “The House is enchanted to lend the occupants a feeling of safety and seclusion. They can’t see the city, nor can the people of Adraeis see beyond the courtyard walls. ”
I shook my head, marveling at the sight of the sprawling city below.
The sun was pleasantly warm on my face, and the breeze carried that fresh, spicy scent I’d come to associate with Adraeis.
If we weren’t embarking for the Dark Kingdom, I might have even enjoyed strolling down the cobblestone street, admiring the colorful houses.
But when I looked at Kaden, I was surprised to find his expression tight, as though we were entering a war zone rather than the lively heart of a riverside town. As we approached a row of shops, I understood why.
Underneath the bright paint and laurel-scented air was an unmistakable sense of wrongness and decay.
Bells hung over the shops, but they didn’t ring. There were no shoppers out gossiping or admiring the wares of the many businesses we passed. A tricycle lay abandoned outside a cheerful yellow house crammed between two taller buildings, but I heard no joyous shrieks of children playing.
Adraeis seemed almost deserted. The first soul we passed was an old man in a filthy shirt sporting a long gray beard. He was slumped in a rickety chair inside a doorway with his knees spread wide, slowly peeling an apple with glassy eyes.
A few doors down, another woman sat on her balcony overlooking the river, staring out at its glistening expanse with a vacant expression. A younger man with sun-browned skin was painting a low stone wall, slopping white paint over the already pristine surface as if he’d forgotten what he was doing.
I shivered. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They’ve been here too long,” Kaden murmured, a muscle working in his jaw.
“I don’t understand.” Freydolf had been here for hundreds of years, and he seemed perfectly fine .
At first I thought Kaden wasn’t going to elaborate, but then he said, “Adraeis was only ever meant to be a brief stop along the journey to the Otherworld. But ever since —” He broke off, the lines in his face deepening.
“I’m not a monster. I don’t take a single soul for him that I don’t have to.
I spare as many as I can — leave them here, rather than take them downriver to Dorthus, but . . .”
He glanced around, looking sickened by what he saw. “Magic cannot survive in stagnation, and untethered souls cannot survive without magic. For living creatures born of the Otherworld, the effect isn’t as noticeable. But for a mortal soul . . .”
“What will happen to them?” I asked, dread unfurling in my stomach.
“Eventually, their spirits . . . atrophy. A slow death of the soul.”
A leaden weight sank into my gut, and suddenly, I saw it. The lifelessness in their eyes.
“I fear the same thing may happen in Anvalyn,” Kaden muttered. “Without souls to replenish the magic, the land becomes depleted until it cannot support life. But if Anvalyn cannot sustain souls when they do begin arriving again . . .”
He did not need to finish that thought. The implication was clear: It would be the end of the faerie kingdom.
We didn’t speak again until we reached the riverbank and the crumbling cobblestones gave way to a shaded rocky trail.
I looked around, expecting to see some sort of boat.
But Kaden kept walking until the tall reeds along the bank grew too high to wade through, then turned and cut a path through the trees.
“We’re walking to Dorthus?” I asked indignantly .
The Adraeis sun was relentless, and I was already sweating in my form-fitting leathers.
“I won’t take you down the river. The things that live in its depths are . . . Well, let’s just say they’re hungry, and it’s been a while since a living female made the journey to Dorthus.”
“Can’t we fly then?” I asked, eyeing his enormous wings.
“I won’t risk being intercepted by one of my father’s scouts.”
“Scouts?”
But Kaden didn’t elaborate, and I had to quicken my footsteps to keep pace with his long strides.
The trees grew taller the farther we walked, the spindly upper branches intertwining to form a thick canopy that blotted out the last golden rays of sunlight. As the path narrowed, Kaden magicked away his wings and summoned a ball of faelight to illuminate the trail in front of us.
After a while, I realized I could no longer hear the steady rush of the river — only the scuff of our footsteps, the rustle of leaves, and the occasional squawk of some strange dark thing concealed in the upper branches.
Squinting through the gloom, I stared up at the ancient, sinister-looking trees.
Their trunks were bowed, their branches twisted, their bark so coarse that it formed hollows the size of my fist. And their roots .
. . their roots were like the tentacles of some giant ocean beast hellbent on bringing down every two-legged creature that passed.
After we’d been walking for what felt like hours, darkness snuffed out the last of the fading twilight, and when I glanced up at the canopy, there was no hint of gold gilding the leaves of the topmost branches .
True night had fallen — something I hadn’t experienced since Kaden had swept me from the Quarter.
Despite my enhanced hunter vision, I couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond that glowing orb in the distance.
Then the voices started — whispers so faint it might have been the rustle of wind in the leaves.
Kuh-kuh-kuh.
Kuh-kuh-kuh.
Kuh-kuh-kuh.
Kihhhh. Kihhhh.
Kil-ler.
Kil-ler.
Kil-ler.
“Do you hear that?” I demanded, my voice ringing out in the clearing as if I’d shouted.
Kaden stopped and looked over his shoulder. His face was cloaked in shadows cast by the ball of faelight in front of him, his expression unreadable.
“They do not call to me,” he replied. “The creatures here are not part of my father’s court, but they know who I am.”
“Must be nice,” I muttered, stomping through the decaying leaves more forcefully, if only to drown out the sound of those voices.
But they seemed to sense my refusal to listen, because the whispers grew louder. More insistent.
Killer.
Killer.
Killer.
Killer.
Kill her.
Killed her .
You killed her, Lyra. Your only friend .
The voice sounded from just over my left shoulder, and I whipped around to face the intruder.
There was no one there.
I drew in a shallow breath, trying to ignore the prickle along the back of my neck. The chilling sense that I was not alone.
She will be delicious. A filling treat.
Those with magic always satisfy more than a mortal meal.
We’ll crack you open and see what’s inside, lovely.
A soul as black as pitch, no doubt.
Stained with the blood of innocents.
Kaden turned a few paces ahead, and I realized I stood frozen with my hands clamped over my ears.
My chest felt too tight, my breathing ragged. Each inhalation was an effort, like trying to suck air through a straw.
“Lyra.”
I barely heard my own name, but I saw Kaden’s mouth form the syllables. He was standing right in front of me now, but I didn’t recall moving.
You killed her.
Killed her!
“How do you make them stop?” I croaked, sweat beading on my forehead. “How do I . . . get them out?”
It was the same feeling I’d gotten when that demon had invaded my mind — a sense of needing to crawl out of my own skin.
“You don’t,” said Kaden, prying my hands away from my ears. “They aren’t inside your head.”
“Then how do they know —” I broke off, hands shaking as I contemplated how I might shatter my own ear drums just so I didn’t have to hear those damned voices.