CHAPTER 56
Bristol came to a fork in the trail and was uncertain which way to go.
She was making her way back from Reuben’s cottage after a fruitless attempt to see if he had learned anything from Willow.
He hadn’t been there, but her burning desire for more information had subsided.
I’m certain he’s safe. Maybe that was all she needed—someone to believe in the same thing she did, in the resourcefulness of her father.
The wonder of Danu. Willow had shaken her belief, but Tyghan had strengthened it.
Now she headed for the dining pavilion. She had missed her midday meal and was starving.
She had hoped to find a shortcut straight to Sun Court but then stopped, studying her unfamiliar surroundings.
The palace had infinite pathways, and she had never traveled this one.
But she could still see the spire of Sky Pavilion and used that as a beacon.
One way or another, she would get there.
She rounded a curve and came to a place she recognized.
Judge’s Walk. She hadn’t passed through it since Cully first led her down the path.
She paused, talking stock of her surroundings.
“Perfect,” she whispered, knowing the way from there, but inside she didn’t feel so perfect.
She viewed the wide corridor more cautiously this time.
The worst of the worst, Cully called them.
By the time their sentence is over, they beg for death.
She tried to recall where Pengary’s column was.
He had given her a scare the last time she traveled this way.
Cully had told her if you pressed an ear to the stone, you could hear the prisoner’s heartbeat.
The silent ones were still empty. But Bristol had no intention of putting her ear to any column, so she would simply move quickly down the center of the walkway and hope she didn’t wake any of them.
Thankfully, Cully said it was rare that they roused and pushed against their prison walls.
Partway across, she spotted a wine bottle near the base of a column.
An offering for the condemned? But the bottle was empty.
Someone had enjoyed it, but not anyone within the monoliths.
They can see but never touch, smell but never taste.
She couldn’t imagine the agony of that limbo existence, not unlike what Samuel went through as an unanchored shadow.
He, like Liam, welcomed death when it was offered.
She carefully stepped wide around the empty bottle, but then a terrible keening split the air.
The scream of anguish quivered through her bones.
Pengary, she assumed as she ducked to escape his giant muzzle and sharp teeth.
But it wasn’t a dragon’s head straining toward her.
She blinked, unable to move. It was a man. A man who looked like her father.
What was she seeing? Her head pounded.
The marble mouth struggled to move. Reeeeeeeeeeee.
A man. He was the color of pale veined marble, like a tortured sculpture. But the deep-set eyes, the strong brow, the square jaw. The determination twisting across his face. He was trying to say her name. Bri.
She choked back a scream.
He struggled to say one more word. Kasssss tuh.
And then he was gone, yanked back into the column. Bristol stared. Her hands trembled. She hugged herself, trying to stop shaking.
Her father, in a pillar of marble? The worst of the worst? They had hunted him down and sentenced him to this without telling her?
Kasta. He wanted her to go to Kasta.