CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EMMERY
At the edge of their temporary encampment, Emmery glared at the sky-high wall of the strange stone fortress, but even as they pondered, shared ideas, and spouted theories, the entrance to the structure remained a mystery.
They quickly ruled out climbing since no foot or hand holds existed in those impossibly tall walls. The only way had to be through.
Emmery fumed, so damn frustrated from the lack of answers. She wanted to stamp her feet like a child and throw a tantrum. As she scrubbed a hand down her face, her poor night’s sleep weighed on her. The bruises under her eyes could attest to that.
At her side, Destonne stood quietly, his arms crossed over his chest. He stroked his chin, tapped his foot, acted as if he hadn’t been torn to pieces the previous day. And between how quickly he’d healed and the new shirt that had manifested out of thin air, only the scabs remained as evidence.
Brennen sat several paces away and studied them like he catalogued each shared look, intentional touch, and accidental brush as they manoeuvred around one another and sought an entrance.
After he’d caught Emmery that morning with her hand stretched across the campsite, her fingers woven through Destonne’s after unknowingly reaching for him in the night, the wolf’s assessing gaze picked away at Emmery’s already frayed nerves.
She blamed her fatigue, and her gurgling stomach nearly feasting on itself.
But they were all hungry and thirsty and downright miserable.
Destonne skimmed his fingers over the intricate wall etchings before he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid my Calmalian is a tad limited,” he said, his tone lousy with frustration. “But this word is ‘blood’. And this”—he dragged his forefinger across the letters—“is ‘fear’.”
Emmery’s stomach clenched. Combined, those two words couldn’t be good. “Are you sure?”
His gaze slid to her. “Would you care to take a crack at it?”
Her less than polite response brought the tiniest tilt to Destonne’s lips.
A hint of a smile. She nudged him aside to read the script herself, not that she had a damn clue how.
But her eye snagged on a symbol. “What does this say? It even looks like a door. In Deimos’s Mausoleum when I slotted my pocket watch into the wall, it opened.
What if this is the same? That outline,” she said, and waved at the grooved rectangle around the carvings, “could be a door.”
“Hmmm.” Mischief glimmered in his eyes as he gestured to the spot between him and the wall. “Stand here.”
Her heart slowed as she studied the narrow gap. “Why?”
He answered with an arch of his brow. Too tired to fight, Emmery sighed and stepped to him.
His heat bled into her back as he leaned his hands on either side of the wall, caging her in.
His warm breath tickled the back of her neck and her skin prickled.
She tried to focus on anything but that.
Anything but the strange stir it coaxed in her belly.
“You may be right. And this outline may be the door,” he said, his voice low, thick with something that sent a flutter through her chest. “However, that doesn’t solve our predicament of getting through, does it, Emmery?”
“Since you seem to think you know everything, what do you suggest?” She snuck a glance at him over her shoulder and found his face impossibly close.
Her breath stuttered, but she met his gaze for a brief moment before his eyes fixed on the crook of her neck.
In fact, he stared at the length of exposed skin with something akin to hunger.
“I want to know what you think,” he breathed, his lips at her ear.
Her heart sped, but even as she cleared her throat, her thoughts jumbled with him this close. “You said that word is blood, right? What if…”
“We offer blood?” he finished for her.
Emmery nodded.
“My thoughts exactly. If I’m correct, and I’m rarely wrong”—he punctuated his statement with a smug quirk of his eyebrow—“I’ve read about similar enchantments that work just the same.
” He tapped a divot in the wall beside the door-like symbol.
Without further explanation, he pricked his finger on his crown until blood welled, and pressed it into the groove.
His breath quickened, his lips impossibly close to her neck.
Emmery shivered and glanced at him though his eyes remained shut.
Seconds ticked on. Grew into minutes.
And although doubt festered, and she feared they’d be trapped in this godsforsaken place forever, the groove buzzed a low, guttural noise and glowed crimson.
“Offer it your fear,” he said, voice rough. He removed his finger and nodded at the divot, now stained with the red of his blood.
She and Brennen shared a hesitant look, but it cut short as the wolf followed his King’s lead. The same reaction shuddered through Brennen’s body as he made his offering, but when the outline glowed he retreated.
Emmery’s swallow stuck in her throat. Blood offerings and confessed fears could only mean horrors awaited on the other side. Perhaps this fortress fed off terror, like Senka seemed to. Could the offered fears be chosen? And whatever she gave would surely be exploited.
But with no other choice, she did the same: drew blood, pressed a finger into the divot, and wished for this to work.
The moment her flesh met stone, the hair rose on the back of her neck. The wall trapped her there, suspended in whatever frigid nightmare composed it. Because this enchantment, the force entombed within it, claimed her fears. Held her captive until she surrendered them.
All of them.
Every moment her knees trembled, all her regrets, loathings, failures, and the dark whispers that endlessly slithered through her mind.
Hideously condemning images flashed before her eyes, ones she couldn’t unsee.
A tiny cry slipped from between her lips but she clamped her teeth and endured as this strange magic bled her dry and defiled her mind.
When the glowing wall released her, she wrenched her hand away, eager to be rid of that soul-sucking vulnerability.
An eerie silence followed.
Emmery glanced over her shoulder at Destonne, whose gaze had already found hers.
His brows drew together, lips parted like he wanted to say something, but the loud grind of stone on stone interrupted before either of them could say a word.
Bricks shifted within the wall and the ground trembled as the outline of the door slid under the stone above like the entrance at Deimos’s Mausoleum.
A dark, endless hallway loomed ahead and stale air breathed from the path like this place had been long sealed away, perhaps with good reason.
As if it would allow her to sever the shadows, she squinted, though all she spotted was a forking path.
The ceilings sat low, converse to the unfathomably high walls.
How strange. And as she stared into the blackness, Reize’s warning struck her and her gaze shot to Brennen. “Is this … a labyrinth?”
“I think you’re correct,” he replied and sighed a deep, heavy breath.
In need of comfort, Emmery reached for the crystal hanging from her neck, but came up empty, since she’d returned it to Destonne the night before.
As if he provided the same solace, she turned to the King to find his eyes wide, cheeks pale, and hands fisted at his sides.
Blood streamed from his crown, down his temples, and dripped off his chin.
His chest and forearms rippled, stretched, and strained against the thorns, like his skin teetered on the verge of splitting.
Whatever spurred that look of unfettered terror on his face Emmery couldn’t be sure, but one thing was clear: this wasn’t some game. Panicked, her eyes sought the wolf.
“Dez is afraid of closed in spaces,” Brennen said, his hesitant voice ringing in her mind and weary eyes a dulled burnt orange. From Destonne’s lack of reaction, the words must have only been for her.
Emmery sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she contemplated that revelation. Unsure what else to do, she walked to Destonne. Shadows swam in his gaze as his eyes darted from the ceilings, to the entryway, and settled on the black corridor.
When she stood before him and he still refused to meet her gaze, she looked up at him and whispered, “Destonne?”
A bleak silence steeped between them disturbed only by his disjointed breaths. After an impossibly tense moment, he cleared his throat and choked out, “I don’t suppose there’s another way?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Emmery replied gently with the same patience he’d extended in her swimming lessons. She waited for a shift in his demeanor, his usual bold annoyance, a flicker of humour, or—
Damn it, she didn’t know. But she practically saw the imprint of terror’s fingers as it gripped him by the throat. She could only think of one way to distract him from the fear. The same tactic he’d used to get her into the water. A challenge. A game. Harmless flirtation.
It didn’t have to mean anything.
Shade didn’t have to know and she could shove her guilt aside for the moment. Besides, this was what they did. They teased and taunted and danced around one another until one of them gave in. And she’d coax him into the labyrinth if it was the last thing she did.
Because she refused to be stuck here. So she reached for him, and even as the thorns wrestled beneath his skin, she placed a hand on his chest. His breathing faltered, but he remained fixated on the dark hallway.
“You said you weren’t afraid of anything,” Emmery hummed. Her fingers leisurely drummed over his still heart.
Beneath her hand, his chest inflated with a jagged breath. “I might have been wrong. Only this once.”
Emmery stood on her toes and craned her neck, her lips beneath his ear. “Can I convince you to come with me?”
“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “I’m not going in there.”
She breathed a soft chuckle against his neck. “Not even for a distraction?”
When she pulled back, he finally met her playful stare. He blinked at her and his gaze shifted to recognition or a hint of delight and—
Oh gods, that was undoubtedly lust.
“Why don’t you follow me inside and tell me exactly how you would like me to take your mind off things.
” Emmery barely recognized the purr in her own tone.
“I offer a variety of services.” She used his own words as a weapon, a dare, and a balm, like he’d done the day he’d pulled the quills from her hand.
He trembled as her fingers traced his shoulder, the curve of his bicep, down his forearm to the inside of his wrist. She teased the thin skin before sliding her hand into his and linking their fingers. A shiver worked through his body.
As Destonne leaned in, his warm breath caressed the shell of her ear with a quivering exhale. “You're not helping me control the thorns, angel. In fact, you’re making it impossibly worse.”
“Why is that?” She tugged on his arm, but his feet stayed firmly planted. So, she stepped toward him, her body flush with his. “Where could your mind possibly be wandering off to?”
“To a delightful number of things.” His velvety deep tone swelled with dark desire. “Ones you likely wouldn’t hold a flicker of interest toward, let alone be able to handle.” If his eyes weren’t so damn dark, she could have sworn his pupils swallowed his irises.
Warmth spread through her, and her blood hummed. What in the world did he mean by that? “Rest assured, I can handle you,” Emmery said. “But I want all your attention. All your thoughts.”
Emmery nodded at Brennen who took up the rear. Once more she tugged Destonne’s arm, but this time he let her lead him a step toward the doorway.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” he asked.
She only smiled sweetly. When his gaze wandered behind her to the shadowed labyrinth, her fingers found his jaw to draw his attention back. “Mmm, I don’t think so. Eyes on me,” she teased.
His eyes flicked back, focussed wholly on her, as he drew his bottom lip between his teeth and obeyed. Blood slid down his temples and the thorns strained against his flesh, but now it seemed for an entirely different reason. One that filled Emmery with a twisted thrill.
“And if I don’t?” he asked, a challenge in his voice.
“That would be an entirely different game, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose we’ll see.” But his face fell and his throat bobbed with a swallow, a flicker of worry trickled back into his gaze. “It’s dark, Em.”
Emmery’s body stilled, her heart along with it from how he’d shortened her name, how it fell off his tongue with ease, and the unfamiliar vulnerability in his voice that burrowed inside her. She didn’t know what to do with it. Where to place it, or leave it or—fuck.
She squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll chase the darkness away for you. As long as you behave.”
“I’ll play, but it’s unlikely I’ll be good,” he said, a spark of mischief returning to his eyes.
“I’m counting on it.” Emmery cupped her khaos flame in her other hand, and winked at Destonne. A playful curl claimed her mouth as she tugged him across the threshold. “Remember, eyes on me.”
His gaze traced her lips, as if committing her smile to memory as they stepped across the threshold and the door slammed shut, plummeting them into darkness.