59. Eradin #2
The white stone hadn’t been carved. It looked grown, from enormous bones that had been polished until they gleamed. Blood-red veins ran through it, but I suspected they weren’t decorative. Because they moved. Slowly. Jerking in time with the steady heartbeat-thud vibrating through the building.
We’d stepped inside the beast’s core.
And it was still hungry.
The world tilted. Fen’s hand found my elbow, steadying me before I could fall.
“Lean into me,” he said quietly, his breath warm against my temple. “I’ve got you.”
His body was solid against mine, the only fixed point in a space that refused to stay still.
Magic crackled through the air, and Lord Andra appeared, materializing in the center of the foyer with a flash of blue light. Lord Holmen followed, then Lady Chambers. The Queen’s Council in full force.
Queen Valindra came last, in a magical projection, her form translucent and shimmering.
She looked exactly as she had the one time I’d seen her at a distance, composed and immaculate, the kind of beautiful that had been maintained rather than given. Her eyes moved across the space, a general surveying a battlefield. They landed on Fen and moved on without stopping.
She couldn’t even take the time to come here in person.
“Remarkable.” Lord Andra’s voice carried across the open space, warm, almost jovial. “Three riders, bound by unforeseen harmony. A bond that goes beyond bloodline and station. It’s truly remarkable.”
“Was remarkable,” Lord Holmen said. “It appears their sweet bond has been severely damaged.”
“Broken, if I had my guess,” Lord Holmen said.
The queen smiled. More or less. “You’ve proven yourselves worthy beyond all expectation,” she said in a stilted tone. “This trial has tested you, shaped you, and you’ve emerged stronger for it.”
The words rang empty, because they’d been carefully chosen to sound praising while meaning nothing.
Hope crossed Fen’s face before he could stop it, the reflex of someone who’d been reaching toward this woman his whole life. He straightened, his chin lifting. Some part of him still believed she’d see him.
When her eyes passed over him again, he stilled. She’d decided he was contaminated beyond saving. Her son had died the moment he crossed the boundary to sit by my fire. The person standing here, the one I’d watched choose differently at every turn, simply didn’t exist to her anymore.
The hole his dying hope left behind pinched tight.
Fen’s face went carefully blank. Years of training held him upright when a part of his soul had shattered past repair.
His hand found mine, and I squeezed.
Lady Chambers stepped forward, the silk of her ornate gown shimmering in the Oracle’s light.
Her gaze cut like a blade, peeling back the layers of my skin until she found the parts of me that shouldn’t exist. She lifted a gold-headed cane and, before I could move, she hooked the cold curve of the handle under my chin, forcing my head up.
I ground my teeth to keep from snapping at the wood.
“Look at this,” she murmured. She used the tip of the cane to nudge aside the hem of my sleeve, exposing the red lines. “It’s an infection. A feral stain on the sacred stone.”
Lord Andra leaned in, his goatee twitching. “We’ll have to cleanse her before she enters the Ascension Chamber. We can’t have the Oracle tainted by the contamination of a commons’ blood.”
Fenian’s body went rigid, and the temperature around us dropped.
“Gabriella.” Fen’s voice was a low, predatory rasp that stopped the councilor’s breathing.
Blue sparks crackled across his knuckles.
“If you touch her with that cane again, or if any of you so much as whisper the word cleanse again, you won’t live to see the next day.
I will burn the tongues from your mouths and the life from your veins before the sun clears the ridge. Do you understand?”
Lady Chambers jerked the cane back, her face turning the color of the bone dust scattered across the plateau.
“Your Highness,” Lord Holmen stammered, his hands fluttering at his robes, “we only meant to preserve the protocol—”
“I am the only protocol that matters now.” Fen’s grip on my waist tightened, and he pulled me against his side. “She is mine. Touch her again, and I’ll kill you.”
He turned his gaze toward the ancient doors, dismissing them.
“The Ascension Chamber is waiting,” he said, his voice echoing through the living stone.
Lady Chambers forced a smile. “Enter, and the Oracle will grant your wishes. All three of you. Together. United, as you’ve proven yourselves to be.”
Too easy. The thought flashed through my bond with Selira.
Magic prickled under my skin. Selira’s unease bleeding through the bond. This court didn’t reward harmony. It rewarded dominance. So why were they welcoming us like honored guests?
Lyndie’s gaze met mine, and she tightened her grip on her blade.
We’d come too far and lost too much to turn back now.
“Lead the way,” Fen said, his voice carefully neutral.
Lady Chambers grunted. “Of course, Your Highness.”
We followed the council members, the queen’s projection keeping pace overhead.
The floor had been polished mirror-bright, and it reflected our bloodstained, exhausted faces back at us. My eyes had sunken into my face. Fen had locked his jaw so tight I could see the muscle jumping. Lyndie’s expression remained blank.
We looked like we’d lost instead of won.
Each step took more than the last one had. My legs had stopped feeling like mine. The magic that had been burning through my arms all day had left channels behind, paths that ached when I moved.
But I couldn’t hold myself back.
Tolross…
Fen kept his arm around my waist, supporting me. Lyndie walked on my other side, the blade still dripping. Vella’s blood hit the marble with soft plinks.
Lyndie kept her voice low. “I tried to pick the least terrible way.”
“What does that mean?” I hissed back.
She just nudged her chin, urging me forward.
The corridor opened into a chamber. Ancient doors stood at its far end, carved with the same runes that covered the foyer walls. These doors had seen many centuries pass.
“You’ll find the Oracle inside,” Lord Holmen said, his voice gentle. “State your wishes, and they shall be granted. The Oracle is feeling magnanimous today.”
We stopped at the threshold.
Fen looked down at me, his gray eyes holding everything he couldn’t say out loud with the council and his mother watching. If we die, we die together.
I nodded once and checked the talon-blade at my hip, one of the few solid things I trusted.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn and run. That whatever waited inside would take everything we had left, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
But Tolross was dying.
Fen needed to know what had happened to his father.
Lyndie ached to help her mother.
And Reece had died believing this could mean something.
So I stepped forward.
We walked through the doors together because that was the only way any of us were walking through them at all.
Selira’s keening wail cut through the stone.
Mouth, she cried in my mind, her terror slamming through the bond. Scales know. MINE—
The doors swung shut behind us with a boom that rattled my bones.
I spun.
Stone. No handle. No seam I could pry open.
The lock clicked into place.
Cutting off Selira’s voice.
Leaving us alone in silence.