Chapter 30 The Underearth #2
A man suddenly approached our group, wearing torn jeans and a shirt that hung off his shoulder, with long blond hair split by his pointy ears and eyes the color of pure violet.
He was a beautiful man, but unlike Lucien, whose beauty might be heavenly but was still human in a sense, this man seemed as perfect as a marble statue.
With his flawless, hairless porcelain skin, symmetrical face, and those violet eyes, he would’ve seemed entirely alien to human eyes had it not been for his surprising hipster fashion sense.
Blaise came over to the man, and, shockingly, the two gave each other a manly half-hug, half-pat-on-the-back kind of greeting.
“It’s good to see you face-to-face, for once,” Blaise said afterward, and the man, the obviously Fae man, nodded, his face starkly empty, which made his resemblance to a statue even more acute.
Turning to us, Blaise introduced him. “This is Zairos,” he said and motioned toward Lucien. “Zairos—this is Lucien Delterre, the Alpha of the Montrévère pack.”
Zairos—what an odd name—walked toward Lucien and offered his hand. Wordlessly, Lucien shook it, his gaze scanning the Fae man, assessing him.
When the formalities were over, Zairos stepped back and spoke in the lowest voice I’d ever heard, which contrasted with his elegant statue-like looks so much, it felt as if he was being dubbed. “The HQ is a few blocks away. They are expecting you. Follow me.”
There was an odd lilt to his words, an accent I couldn’t pinpoint, but I ignored it and, along with Lucien and the Betas, followed the Fae man down the block and over the bridge toward our destination.
The walk was silent. Before, the Betas made small talk with one another, but now everyone kept their mouth shut, seemingly on high alert. Oz especially seemed jumpy, glancing around with a scowl on his face, as if something would attack us at any moment.
After a few minutes, Zairos stopped in front of a huge castle. A true, honest-to-God castle, with turrets, a moat created by the surrounding canals, and a flag blowing at the top of the highest spire.
While it was large, I realized why we hadn’t been able to see it until now: The castle was surrounded by equally tall buildings, as if it was meant to be both conspicuous yet somehow concealed.
The castle was built with what seemed like actual onyx stones—the stones gave the illusion of a sun shining on the castle walls and reflecting back, which couldn’t have been done by concrete painted black.
To my surprise, though, there were no guards standing near the entrance gate leading to the short bridge to the large black entrance doors. What kind of a castle didn’t have guards? Especially since it was the Syndicate’s HQ, apparently.
Either way, Zairos hovered his hand over the gate’s lock until it clicked and opened as if it was an automatic door, though the chill in my spine told me otherwise. Still, we followed him inside, across the bridge, and over the moat, and reached the entrance doors.
I expected Zairos to simply walk in, but to my surprise, he paused and turned to us, his eyes narrowed, the first motion I’d seen his face make. But he still lacked an expression and seemed to be merely giving us a warning with his gaze.
Then he spoke in that oddly accented bass-tone voice. “The Syndarch will see you in the Hall of Aelir,” he said flatly. “The Syndarch speaks first. That is the rule.”
I glanced at Blaise, who seemed to be the only one in our group to have any idea about the Underearth, the Fae, and the Syndicate, and when I saw his face darken in an angry kind of caution, I suddenly felt alarm bells going off in my head, and that something from before that had been shifting uneasily in my gut bloomed into a full-on bad feeling.
But we had already come too far, and we had no choice but to follow Zairos through the opening grand doors and into the black castle of the Fae Sable Syndicate.
“Do not utter a word.”
Blaise murmured those words to Lucien, Oz, Teya, and me as we walked through the dimly lit corridor, following Zairos to wherever he was taking us inside the castle.
Teya and Oz nodded, and Lucien did, too, while exchanging meaningful glances with Blaise. It seemed like the two were reading each other’s minds or something, because Blaise gave a small shake of his head before returning his eyes forward.
I couldn’t help but feel extremely nauseous due to the ominous feeling cooling my veins. It reached a point when I couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed Lucien’s hand, needing his touch to anchor me before I spiraled even more.
Lucien seemed to need it, too, because he gently pulled me close, linking our fingers together.
Zairos stopped at the end of the corridor, where another pair of big black doors awaited. This time, he didn’t simply open it; he knocked in a certain offbeat rhythm, as though it was a code.
And apparently it was, because a second later, the doors were pulled open, this time by two men with pointy ears, whose faces were just as blank as Zairos’s.
But unlike Zairos, those two were dressed in black tactical gear that seemed more fitting to Fae who belonged to a Mafia-like organization called the Sable Syndicate.
The moment I stepped through the open doors, I felt all my bad feelings reaching their boiling point, and it took everything in me not to double over and puke my guts out, what with the nausea growing almost unbearable.
At first glance, it seemed like a throne room. It was certainly spacious enough to be one, with high ceilings, Gothic glass windows viewing nothing but a pitch-black void outside, and a long carpet reaching the stone stairs leading to an actual throne.
But the more my eyes darted around, the less fancy the room became. About twenty Fae men and women stood on the sides of the carpet, their eyes following our group as Zairos led us to the throne, while behind them, all over the walls, a bunch of cabinets rested, filled with all sorts of artifacts.
In all honesty, it looked like a throne-room-turned-museum rather than an actual active throne room. Especially with some of the artifacts being oddly shaped jewelry.
Zairos stopped near the stairs and moved to the side, bowing his head. “Syndarch, I present Alpha Lucien Delterre of the Montrevere pack and his entourage.”
Lucien let go of my hand, which made me feel immediately unstable on my own two feet, and as he walked toward the stairs, I felt a sense of panic. I knew that if I didn’t hold on to something, or someone, I would keel over, and so I took the hand of the Beta closest to me.
Unfortunately, that Beta was Oz, who froze when I grabbed his hand, but I couldn’t let him go. He might be a rude asshole, but I needed him right now, while Lucien took care of this meeting.
Oz glanced down at me, bewildered, and I gave him a pleading look. I might’ve looked as ill as I felt, because Oz’s face grew grim as he gave me a sharp, miniscule nod and returned his gaze forward.
Relieved he was letting me hold on to his hand, I looked up to watch the Syndarch as he rose from the throne.
The Syndarch, which I guessed was the leader of the Syndicate, probably holding a status akin to that of a don, was a child.
And by child, I mean a seven-or-so-year-old boy with a mop of black hair, violet eyes similar to Zairos’s, and a round face filled with faint freckles. His pointy ears were a little short, barely peeking through the mass of his hair.
One other major difference between this boy and a normal one, though, was the fact he wore tactical black gear like the other Fae in the room, aside from Zairos.
It seemed I was the only one taken aback by the Syndarch’s age, though. The Betas seemed unsurprised, and so did Lucien, who now stopped near the end of the stairs and stared at the much-shorter boy.
The boy stared down at Lucien and spoke in a serious, toneless kid’s voice. “I have yet to meet a man, specifically a wolf, who survived the Mathenio.”
Something told me I didn’t want to know what the hell the Mathenio was.
Lucien didn’t speak, didn’t respond, and I realized he was following Blaise’s instruction.
The boy smiled, and it sent a chill down my spine. This wasn’t a normal smile. There was no joy or humor in it, but there was nothing else either. It was a smile devoid of emotion. A mere stretching of the muscles.
Such a smile on a boy’s face was maniacal.
“Tell me, Lucien Delterre,” the boy said, staring at Lucien with that creepy smile. “How did it feel?”
I tightened my hold on Oz’s hand when Lucien spoke, now that he was given permission. “It felt like death,” he replied plainly, almost as if he was talking about the weather.
The boy’s smile widened, which made him seem far more sinister than before. “What does death feel like?”
“Pain,” Lucien responded in that same dry voice, as I swallowed hard and didn’t even blink as I stared at him. “Excruciating pain.”
There was a short pause before the boy’s smile disappeared, and he held his hands behind his back, beginning to descend the stairs. Seeing him drawing slowly closer to Lucien made my horror rise impossibly higher.
“The Mathenio is a mysterious power,” the boy said as he descended one stair, then another. “Once in every few centuries, a Fae is born with that power, you see.”
The boy reached the end of the flight of stairs and stood mere inches away from Lucien, who glanced down without tilting his head forward. The boy took notice of it, I could tell, because a sudden light entered his eyes.
“The interesting thing about the Mathenio, however, is that this time, no Fae was born with it,” the boy continued as he passed by Lucien, approaching Teya, who, like Lucien, kept her head straight while glancing down at the boy. “So I wondered if the effects were the same.”
And if I went by his previous smile, whatever this Mathenio and its effects were, they were the same. Which made me wonder—if a Fae wasn’t born with this power, whatever it was, then who, or rather, what, was?