Chapter 10 #2
The temperature dropped to a frigid point as if I were suddenly trapped in a blizzard, icy sleet pounding my body.
The blood in my veins froze when I saw her walk into view and stand right in front of me.
Inky strands of hair were coiled into a sophisticated updo.
Glossy black fabric fell around her figure like dark water.
She looked effortlessly elegant in her evening dress, soft pink coloring her cheeks and lips.
“Hello Nelle,” she greeted me with a viperish smile.
“Valarie.” I wasn’t going to be calling her Miss Crowther anytime soon.
A myriad of questions crashed through my mind. Why the fuck had we stopped here? Were we meeting Valarie so she could escort me back to the estate? Were the Crowthers suspicious that Graysen might betray them?
I glanced behind Valarie’s tall figure. My gaze trailed up along the bone-chilling lines of the building we’d arrived at, darkness pooling around its form with whorls of shadows and smoke.
In my periphery, I caught movement, and half-twisted around to watch men and women strolling on the pavement across the street, moving much slower than those marching down the sidewalk without so much as a glance at the building.
These mortals appeared ordinary, but for one thing.
Desire swirled in their eyes, and arousal made them wet their lips.
Yearning made them slow their pace even further and turn slightly toward the ancient building.
They were drawn here for a reason that eluded them.
I wondered if, in some small way, they were distantly aware they were other.
A terrifying sensation pitched my gut. Even though I knew exactly where we were, I still asked, “Where are we?”
Caidan answered. “The Emporium.”
The sky had detonated into the hues of a sunset, reflecting fuchsia, coral, and canary yellow across the limousine’s sleek surface. Though the day’s ferocious heat beat against my skin, I was ice-cold, right through to my very bones.
The Emporium.
Beautiful yet deadly.
Exactly how I would describe Valarie.
The elder Crowther swept gracefully around to stand flush beside me, staring upward.
Valarie had been absent from the Keep for almost as long as I’d been a prisoner there, and now she was back from only gods-knows-where.
Soft-pleated fabric draped around her figure, silver twinkling through the black to give the one-shouldered dress a submetallic luster like anthracite coal.
A glint of sunlight caught the teardrop pendant nestled in the shallow valley of her cleavage.
She plucked it up and turned the pearl between her fingertips while admiring the building.
Anger was a breath blown onto a bed of embers, stoking my temper hotter.
My fingers bunched into fists. I snapped my head toward Caidan and caught him staring down at me beneath a fringe of lashes.
Guilt stamped across his features before his gaze darted away.
He widened his stance and drew his phone from his pocket, deliberately checking his messages instead of meeting my eye.
Traitorous motherfucker.
I glared at his profile. I’d make Caidan pay for whatever was in store for me inside. Our being here wasn’t good.
Standing there, with my face angled toward Caidan, allowed me to peek through the corner of my eye to see the Emporium as one would without truesight.
To the mortals, the building appeared to be squat and staid, understated with classic lines to its heavy masonry.
A decorative wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and the ground-floor windows were positioned high so that one couldn’t peer inside from the sidewalk.
The Crowthers’ limousine glided away, circling the fountain before disappearing into the private parking facility, leaving me marooned with Valarie and Caidan.
A few more bodyguards joined us with Valarie’s arrival.
Her personal security detail was smaller than Caidan’s, and the men and women were more weathered-looking, with cold, sharp eyes that swept the area.
We’d driven up serpentine streets to the foothills of the mountain that loomed over Ascendria and its lake.
The same mountain an artist had sculpted inside the snow globe Graysen bought for me at the market.
Pretty, I’d thought then, and intriguing enough to keep as a memento.
The Emporium resided in an older, dignified part of the city.
Across from us lay an elegant park, and through clusters of maple trees with lime-gold leaves, I spied children running ahead of their parents down a webbing of paths toward a slow-running stream dotted with ducks and swans.
No mortal who lived or worked in the area knew the Emporium as anything other than what it presented itself to be: a respectable Gentleman’s Club.
Nor would they ever notice the faint distortion of light striking off the magical shield surrounding the building.
This type of magic was the same kind that ran through the electrified fences encircling our compounds—intense, persuasive magic that whispered into mortal minds that there was nothing here to see, nothing here of note, urging them to keep driving onward without a second glance.
Unless, of course, you were the kind of other who was inexplicably drawn here by what they sensed behind that shield.
Desired it. Hungered for it. Wanted to spread their legs for it.
The kind of other with a ferocious appetite for mind-shattering pleasure from those they plunged their cocks into or clenched with their sex.
Nymphomaniacs and Terotas. We didn’t even need to steal them.
They offered themselves willingly to our bordellos, eager to dissolve into soul-obliterating orgasms, desperate to disappear into a tangle of limbs, whether it be with a human… or not.
The exact type of other currently drifting along the pavement at a snail’s pace with arousal-flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded gazes fixed on the building behind me.
It was the scraping of high heels on the bricked sidewalk that had me swinging back to the Crowthers. Valarie had shifted to face Caidan. She frowned. “Where’s Graysen?”
I was curious myself if Graysen knew anything about this. And if he did, I was going to snap every fucking bone in his body the next time we met. Even without my wyrm, I could still get my hands on a baseball bat and break his godsdamned kneecaps.
Caidan paused typing a message and glanced up from his phone. He answered his aunt in an easy tone. “He’s been called in to finish Sirro’s task. I took possession of Wychthorn so he could join his team and the V?duvas down in the catacombs.”
Mela V?duva.
Although I refused to think of Graysen as mine. And even knowing Mela was in love with someone else, no doubt, drowning in her own grief and heartache. Despite all of that, savagery still roared through my blood, fierce and bright, forcing my fists to clench tighter.
The searing pain of fingernails carving into my palms jolted me mentally awake.
He wasn’t mine.
I had to remember that.
I flexed my fingers and rolled my neck to release the tension.
Valarie’s brow furrowed deeper, and she spoke as if I weren’t even standing there. “Graysen took her off the estate?”
I almost snorted. It was weird to be talked about in this way. I wanted to remind them I was right here. I could fucking hear them.
Caidan casually hitched a shoulder. “It was a side mission for Sirro. He was killing two birds with one stone. Wychthorn needed to be brought to the city… And Gray does love to mess with her.” He flashed a sharp-toothed grin that reminded me of a shark.
I blinked.
Interesting.
He was protecting his brother.