Chapter 12 #2
Irritation bubbled in my veins as we descended on a shallow slope. The prickles on my flesh, the sensation of always being watched…we were far closer than I’d like to the city of Liuridar, and if Rasmus spoke truth, we would need to enter the wretched city itself.
I did not like it one bit. I wished I had sent fel Arron with the knights, secured her escape to the sun, but I’d promised to protect her like she was mine, and I could not do that without keeping my eyes on her.
We entered a wide avenue, a cobblestone road stolen from the world and dropped into the caverns, the craggy, crystalline walls rising far above our heads.
Fel Arron stayed at my side, a pace or so behind me, taking in everything with those hugely magnified eyes.
“What does it look like? How will we know when we’ve reached the city?
” She craned her head back, trying in vain to pick out details of the ceiling overhead.
In the absence of the crystcore’s effects, she seemed greatly recovered.
“Believe me, you’ll know.” I kept one eye on Marrion’s back as she raised her hand, Rasmus trembling at her side. “These are nothing more than hallways, small paths. Bits and pieces of other places. Liuridar is a world unto itself.”
Fel Arron watched as a pale wisp of steam emanated from the crystal walls, coming in regular intervals as though the tunnel itself was breathing.
“In the beginning, this place was crawling with hostiles.” I waved a hand towards the distant ceiling.
“You could not move for something marking and hunting you. There are few, if any bastions below this point, because they were impossible to maintain and protect in those days—the relics bred in the dark, and killed by attrition. During the long exile, vampires stayed as close to the surface as possible. Hunters were sent out to retrieve sustenance. Bloodpowder tea was created in an effort to allow us to travel further distances without tending to livestock, which would’ve made our collectives an even more appealing target. ”
Fel Arron’s jaw tightened, and she glanced at me sidelong. “Human livestock?”
I shrugged. “On occasion. Mostly beasts of burden. An ox holds a much larger quantity of blood than a human being, even if it tastes unpleasant. The hunters mostly took what they could get, and were grateful for it.”
“Why not feed on the hostiles themselves?” she asked, and my lip curled in disgust.
“They were not things…of nature. They were Fae-made. Aberrations.” Like us, I wanted to say, but I held it back.
She might know, but I didn’t want her giving the concept any further thought at this particular moment.
“Creations that should never have existed. This was before my time, understand. I heard plenty of tales of the first explorers of this terrible new world: the royal highbloods venturing into the deeps. But it wasn’t only the environment, or the sheer number of leftover relics that killed them.
It was trying to feed on those relics that ruined them.
And thus, we lost many of the eldest of our kind. ”
For the humans, killing the tyrant Blood Empress, Liliach Daromir, and driving our kind into the Below was one of the brightest points in their history.
For my kind, it was one of the lowest. Centuries of knowledge, of history, of our own people’s culture, lost in mere decades as our population was whittled down.
Another hundred years of darkness, and we might have lost all civilization, becoming nothing better than the things we had once hunted to near-extinction.
And it was the ‘near-extinction’ that was the problem; we had mostly avoided the Fae cities during our exile. Only a small portion of Liuridar was cleared before Wyn and her knights blocked the only known passage to the city, containing the relics rather than exterminating them completely.
I didn’t want fel Arron anywhere near it, but Rasmus and Marrion were blazing a familiar trail, and I knew that the city itself lay at the end of our path.
“So these Fae-made things are poisonous to you?” fel Arron asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Mmm…not necessarily. I suppose it’s entirely possible some were poisonous, but the main concern was more about what their blood might do to us.
Like some of the waters, their blood contained strong metamorphic properties.
Many of the highbloods who died were put down by our own kind before they could change too much. ”
“What kind of changes?” Her voice was so neutral, I couldn’t quite pinpoint if she was aiming for a certain answer.
“Most of what I know is hear-say.” I glanced at her, trying to read her delicate profile.
The light of the lanterns reflected off her lenses, hiding her eyes.
“By the time I was reborn as a vampire, most of the elders, the royal highbloods, were long since dead. But I was told that to drink from the things down here meant undergoing…changes. Not what I am now, no…but something unintended. Something worse.”
I waited for a snide comment, half anticipating fel Arron would come back with, “How could you possibly be worse?”
But she was silent, her nose scrunched under the bridge of her spectacles as she thought.
And it really, truly sank in: she was nothing like Kajarin. They were so far apart it was hard to believe they could’ve existed in the same world.
Every time I expected the worst of her, she shattered the bitter core of my expectations a little further. Now I could see what lay between those fractures, and I was both exhilarated and terrified of it.
A single word from her could stab me deeply, and she would never know.
“And I suppose since the city was sealed off…these relics are still living there?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Yes.”
“In great numbers?”
“It’s entirely possible. I’d go so far as to say likely. Since our return to the light, we have fought tooth and claw to stay above, and the remaining relics have had an unhindered opportunity to breed.”
Fel Arron sighed, hitching the straps of her pack further up on her shoulders, and her hand dropped to check the pistol at her belt. “You know how to take a girl to all the best places, that’s for sure.”
I drew back, affronted. “I beg your pardon? You horned in on this expedition—”
“You could’ve told me no,” she said, raising an eyebrow. A faint smile lurked about the corners of her mouth, and I realized that she was teasing me.
It had been so long since anyone had done such a thing.
“I’d be willing to bet that every time you’re told no, you find a way to wriggle around it,” I grumbled.
Fel Arron squinted at me. “How much are you willing to bet?”
To hell with it. “The Tower of Waves. One quarter of my castle, from foundation to peak.”
Her smile grew wider. “In that case, prepare yourself for a lifetime guest. I’ll be moving in as soon as we’re out of this wretched place.”
Warmth flared in my chest at the thought of fel Arron taking over the entire tower. She’d probably fill it with all manner of dangerous or unwieldy Artifice, but she’d always be within arm’s reach.
This developing fondness for intractable women was terrible.
“The bed will be made and the fire lit for your arrival, my lady,” I said with a bow, and as fel Arron opened her mouth to make another smart crack, she instead thumped right into Rasmus’s back and let out an undignified squeak.
Rasmus and Marrion had stopped. “Didn’t you hear us?” my niece asked, a faint tone of recrimination in her voice.
The paved road had ended in a massive crevice, slicing up through the wall to the unseen ceiling, and down into the ground underfoot. Chunks of rock were strewn everywhere, from pebbles to small boulders, dust coating the crystal walls.
And on the other side of that wall, beyond the thin sliver of the crevice, was the sense of a wide open space. Not just wide, but…vast. Unending.
The wind that rushed through and blew everyone’s hair back tasted so horribly familiar—the tang of old minerals touched by sourness, and under it the faint hint of sweetness that lured one in like poisoned candy.
But even closer than that was the sweat of men, and the ghost of an expensive cologne I knew Kajarin had imported from Foria for her eldest son. Alvar had come this way.
“Liuridar,” Marrion whispered, and Rasmus shuddered.
Fel Arron stepped towards the crevice, frowning. She ran her fingers over the walls, then took them away and rubbed her fingertips together before smelling them.
“Lick them at your own peril,” I informed her. I would never allow her to live that down.
A brief smile flashed across her face, eyes twinkling, but her moment of levity quickly faded as she held her hand out to reveal the black stains on her fingertips.
“Black powder,” she said. “This was the entrance your Magus Olwyn sealed, yes?”
I nodded, glaring at Rasmus.
He clutched his cloak tighter, as though he could shield himself from recriminations behind a layer of wool. “Alvar had them dig most of it out, and used black powder to destroy what was left,” he said softly. “It didn’t take much.”
“You have walked this exact path?” I growled.
Rasmus nodded, his olive skin paling. “Yes. I went down…once. That was all I could take. But I—I think I can show you the way.”
“You’d damn well better.” I leaned in close, my ears flat to my head. “Your life depends on it, boy.”
Rasmus looked like he would vomit as I glanced over our small group. “Weapons out, at all times. Maybe your fool brother cleaned up any leftover relics, but we’re not risking being caught off-guard. We’ll wait for the knights before we follow.”
The humans in the group had time to sit against the wall, resting their legs and eating bread and hard cheese from fel Arron’s pack.
She sat with her legs crossed, the pack cradled in her lap, gazing through the crevice as though she could see the city in the darkness beyond.
Marrion sat on the ground opposite her, eyes closed, deep in meditation.