Chapter 18 The Gilded Throne #2
First of all, there is gold everywhere. On the floor, the pillars, the vaulted ceiling overhead… but all of it is equally cold and uninviting. The light fractures and bends unnaturally, reflecting off surfaces that seem designed to disorient, to overwhelm.
And the shadows…
Darkness pools in the corners like a living thing. My shadows recoil instinctively, curling around my boots, weak yet angry at how twisted Queen Celeste’s shadow magic has become over the centuries, here in her seat of power.
And speaking of her seat…
At the end of the main room, guarded entrances on each side, I see a dias.
It’s about a foot off the ground, built out of the same gilded, marbled stone as the hallways, but on top of it…
if that’s not the actual Gilded throne mentioned in the queen’s prophecy, I’ll strip naked and live in Loki’s old cabin in the shadows from the time when Rafe’s dad was a feral demon.
It’s a massive chair, completely carved from gold. My rear hurts just thinking about sitting on something so solid… until I notice a gold-colored cushion beneath the voluminous skirts of the queen’s dress.
And then, because I have no choice but to finally face the queen, I do.
She is beautiful. I mean, of course she is.
I’ve seen the high fae and the low fae here, and as the ruler, she’s the highest of them all.
I can’t tell if it’s glamour or not that makes her appear so flawless, but her skin gleams like polished gold, her hair a cascade of pale fire, her amber eyes sharp and knowing.
Power coils around her like a second skin, ancient and practiced.
She looks at me—my ruined dress, my tangled hair, my muddy boots… my horns—the way one looks at a problem they’ve already solved.
It doesn’t help that she’s wearing the friendliest of smiles as she pats her palms on the armrests of the throne.
“So,” she says, her lovely, lyrical voice echoing softly through the chamber. “You finally chose to come to me on your own accord.”
I stop at the center of the room. Dressed in black like the shadows, their features as golden as the queen’s, there are countless members of the Court watching as the four guards march Thane and me toward the dais.
Binx trods forward on all fours, his tail swishing, but of us all, I know it’s me and the monarch butterfly resting on my right horn that has all the attention.
“I figured it was for the best,” I call out, sounding brave enough that, oh, yeah, I have got to be as stupid as Thane once accused me of being. “I don’t like chains. And I definitely don’t do cages.”
A titter breaks out among the nobles. Next to me, Thane frowns. Binx bristles. My shoulders tighten as the queen’s smile widens. She doesn’t look annoyed that I talked back. Instead, she looks… amused.
Uh-oh. That can’t be good.
She lifts his right hand. As I watch in sudden trepidation, her slender, golden hand starts to turn black.
At first, I thought she turned to ash which would make this a whole lot easier for me…
and that’s when I notice that it only looks like that because she’s conjured up such tight, hungry shadows, it becomes more of a gauntlet than anything else.
She flexes her fingers and opens her palm, shooting the shadows at the space between us and the dais.
As the shadows jump from her hand to the floor, growing, building, thickening…
as something forms beneath the shadows, too tangible to be a portal, Thane clutches my bicep and every part of me hums in anticipation.
“Funny,” she muses from behind the shadows. “My other demon pet said something similar.”
The shadows fall away, leaving a small, cramped golden cage in its place. And inside the cage…
My hand flies to my mouth. If it wasn’t for Thane clutching my bicep, I would’ve darted forward, throwing myself to the floor. Because, sitting on the bottom of the cage, deep shadows under his purple eyes, is…
“Rafe!”
That’s all I can see of him. His eyes, I mean. Every part of his skin is covered in shadows, leaving his panicked eyes on display and his mouth unable to answer me.
With the shadows gone, I can see Queen Celeste on her throne. Her smile is still there, but she taunts me with it.
Same with the daring look in her eye.
I try to shake off Thane. He doesn’t let, but I can still point my finger at the queen.
“Let him go! You let him go right now!”
“After all the trouble it took to get him? After all the realms we’ve searched, and the demonesses we stole?” Her laugh is like a tinkling bell that sends shivers down my spine. “I don’t think I shall.”
Rising up from the throne, Queen Celeste eases down from the dais, her steps so graceful, it’s like she’s floating downward. She walks right over to the cage, running her finger down the nearest bar.
“Not that it mattered. I would’ve sent my people to as many realms as it took, captured as many demonesses as it required to find the one spoken of in the prophecy.
Only I thought the power belonged to me alone.
The shadows… it wasn’t until my beloved nephew sent me a gift that I realized that it was a wee slip of a Sombra demoness who thought she could take what’s mine. ”
She gestures with her hand right beside me, and I don’t know what hits me harder: that she knows exactly what I am… or that Thane is her nephew.