CHAPTER FIVE
“Promise it,” I demanded, my voice a guttural snarl more suited to some beast of the night. “Promise they’ll pay.”
A spark of determination as real as the flames that had consumed this house danced in Bellan’s gaze. “Together, we can and will make them pay. I promise.” He sealed his vow with an outstretched hand.
We reached Falcos four hours later, not two.
I stood slack-jawed in the mouth of a three-sided valley that lay cradled between monstrous, sheer-sided mountains.
The peaks jutted toward a sky painted pink and orange in the morning light, their tips buried under a thick layer of snow.
The forest we’d trekked through in silence, thank the four fucking gods, lay at my back.
A smooth expanse of packed snow and exposed, gray rock sloped upward ahead of me.
And nestled at the apex of the valley was Falcos.
“Whoa,” I muttered.
The fortress was a monstrosity that could devour Council Hall and beg for more. I was too far away to make out details, but a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold skated down my spine as I stared at the severe structure, as cold and hard as her inhabitants.
The beast beside me watched expectantly as I took in his domain. I wiped the awe off my face and shot a withering glare his direction. In one breath he was rolling his eyes. In the next, he erupted. I jerked back. Before my boot hit the stone, that winged nightmare towered over me.
His midnight pupils blew wide, then constricted as they adjusted to the light.
My breath hitched as I took in the molten brown starbursts that exploded around them, before giving way to mahogany irises that rippled like windswept dunes.
It had been too dark to see his eyes for most of the night and I’d hardly glanced at him since sunrise, but they were impossible to ignore now.
My attention snapped to his massive wings as they unfurled from his back. The maiden rays of the new day struck the thin membranes and illuminated the delicate veins running through them. Without a word, he ripped those stunning eyes off me and launched skyward.
I shook my head clear and watched his retreating form. “Guess I can just leave, then,” I ground out.
But as I stared at the ancient fortress, calling to my soul in a way I couldn’t begin to understand, I knew I wouldn’t. This was a place of secrets. A thousand of them. My gut told me that, inside, were answers to questions about Solstice that I didn’t even know to ask.
I shucked off my heavy cloak and began the long trek up the valley.
I was head-to-toe drenched by the time I stood at the towering gate, a trail of my footprints marring the deceptively steep slope behind me.
Long ice crystals clung to the underside of the parapet, refracting little rainbows along the wall.
I doubled over and braced my hands on my knees but tried to hide the fact I was dying in my scrutiny of what lay beyond the gate.
Falcos was an imposing mass of stone, its forward facade a bold, three-sided bulwark that jutted out into the courtyard.
Two wings flanked it, each ending in a massive turret that offered a full view of the valley.
A series of smaller spires ringed the structure, each topped with a reptilian beast curled around the thinnest point.
The stone was almost black, somewhere between the midnight of obsidian and the dark gray of basalt.
My gaze shifted to Griffon, lounging in the gateway as he munched on a platter of fruit and cheese. “All you do…” I panted, “is shovel food in your face.”
A low, melodic chuckle drifted from my left. I snapped upright. Another gargoyle, this one all light to Griffon’s darkness, stepped around the gate.
“Pegged him.” His voice was as pleasant as his laugh. One of the icicles gilded his white-blond hair and pale skin a shimmering gold.
Griffon shrugged and popped a berry into his mouth.
“Since she threw a fit the first time I carried her somewhere, I figured she’d prefer to walk.
” Another plump grape passed his full lips and my stomach objected.
Loudly. His smug glance at my abdomen set my blood on fire. “I got hungry while I waited.”
“I ‘threw a fit’ because you knocked me out and abducted me, you fucking cretin,” I snapped.
Griffon’s brow only cocked, his lips curling around a piece of cheese that made my mouth water.
The second gargoyle laughed again. “I’m Alexei Lancae,” he said.
I crossed my arms and stared at him.
He sighed and his voice rose to a squeak. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Alexei. I’m…” He tilted his head expectantly.
My smile was as brittle as my patience. “Not interested in playing nice.”
“Or saying thank you for saving your damned life,” Griffon muttered.
My head snapped toward him.
“Or hustling.” He went on, his gaze flicking to Alexei. “Took her four hours to walk here from Boris the Bold-er.”
I was going to kill him.
“It’s the—” Alexei glanced at my face and took one, comically wide step to place himself between us at what he found etched there.
He ran a hand through his long hair. “It’s the stupid boulder he stopped at.
” Eyes like sapphires danced between the two of us, faint amusement scrawled across his face.
“I see this has gone as smoothly as Laney and I predicted.” He tilted his head toward Falcos’ towering front doors.
“Come. I’ll show you to your room so you can clean up and eat something before meeting with Archon Davina. ”
I eyed the gateway. The portal that would carry me out of my world and into theirs, that thin line between valley and courtyard as significant as an ocean that separated worlds.
Crossing it might be the last thing I ever did.
For all I knew, I was strutting to my own execution.
But it didn’t matter; there was nothing I wouldn’t do for Them.
And digging up some hidden truth about the night they were…
well, it was the absolute least I owed. I buried my deep, unsteady breath in the cloak that was still slung over my crossed arms so the asshole watching me wouldn’t notice, and followed Alexei into the unknown.
Before my body had fully crossed the in-between of our worlds, a sharp prick seared my calf. I jerked away and tilted my leg to find a dart dangling from the fabric of my trousers. I dragged my red-tinged gaze back to the bastard lounged beside me.
“Wouldn’t want you roasting anyone on the way.” Griffon’s brow bobbed in one infuriating dismissal before he turned back to his food.
I clamped down on the inside of my lip. The metallic taste of blood exploded through my mouth, the pain just enough to keep my trembling hands stuffed under my arms. “There will come a day when you regret the past hours,” I hissed. “And I am looking forward to it.”
I plucked the dart from my leg and flung it at him before spinning on my heel and following Alexei into the courtyard. Hard-packed snow crunched under my boots, the sound deafening in the silence that descended around us. I pointedly ignored the hard, unforgiving stares of every gargoyle we passed.
Alexei glanced back at me. “Try not to judge all of us with Griffon as the standard. He’s been a bit grumpy for the past fifteen years.”
I snorted. “Murder not as thrilling as he thought?”
The light in Alexei’s eyes suffered a swift death. “No. I suppose it wasn’t.”
I ground my teeth at the admission. He led me up the steps of the jutting facade and toward the deep, arched recess that housed a thick door.
This close, the stonework was sharp and precise, every angle unforgiving, each window’s alcove a brutal slash through the stone.
I studied the left half of the door as I passed through.
My eyes just made out one of those willowy reptiles before I was greeted by a foyer as dark and brooding as the fortress’s exterior.
The floor was smooth stone the deep gray of dusk, the walls the same depressing black as those outside.
A wide, ostentatious staircase split into two halfway between the first and second floors, each branch leading off toward one of the wings.
The steps were draped with a—shocker—black runner.
“Black like your hearts,” I muttered as I turned a circle, my gaze sliding over a monochromatic sea. A slate-colored vase was the lightest thing in sight, its flowers the drabbest I’d ever seen. The soft orange glow from a dozen hooded lanterns was the only tinge of color in the place.
A grin cracked Alexei’s wide, handsome face. “If you’d ever spent even a second in Stone, you’d understand why everything is bland. The senses can get a bit overwhelmed with constant stimulation. Can make for a nasty headache, especially in the first few years.”
I smiled sweetly at him. “After I’m gone, I’ll be sure to send a garish, ‘I’ll miss you’ gift to all the friends I’m sure to make.”
He snorted and pointed up the righthand branch of the staircase. “Your room is this way.”
He led me through a labyrinth of corridors and stairways, each as colorless as the last, and stopped in front of a door that was just one among dozens. I shoved it open to a room where color had vomited all over it in comparison to the rest of the fortress. I turned a cocked brow on my escort.
His smile was a bit sheepish, now. “These rooms used to be for humans. Back before we all hated each other.”
“Why keep them like this?”
Alexei shrugged. “They aren’t needed.”
He left me to the room. Two guards took up post at each end of the long hall as he disappeared around the corner. They were all winged, their postures rigid and weapons loosely sheathed at their sides. I glared at them before stalking into the room and kicking the door shut behind me.