by Joshua King
"I want to see what's in that room."
"No, Hayden. Don't go in there."
"I have to."
"No. Fight it."
His voice sounded like he knew more about the compulsion I felt than I did, but that didn't matter to me. I needed to follow the urge to go down the hall and into the room. Something was there, calling out to me though it couldn't be heard with my ears. A few of the rooms we had passed had candles melting in large candelabras or lamps creating dark orange glow in the corners. Light also came from the room where I was headed, but it was different. This light was pale and almost shimmery. It wasn't coming from any sort of fire, and the curiosity of knowing what was illuminating the space only made it harder to resist. Wooden double doors were open enough that there were several inches of space between them. Stepping up to the gap, I looked through into a long stone room. Something seemed to be hovering in the middle of the room, and I pushed through the open gap to get a closer look.
The sound of my footsteps reverberated off the stone floor as I walked deeper into the room. The entire time we'd been walking through the fortress, my skin had tingled with the feeling of eyes watching us, like there were people on either side constantly monitoring every move we made. It felt different in this room. The sense of being watched was gone and instead the entire space felt still and quiet. Walking through the room, I saw that the glow that had spilled out into the hallway was coming from the object floating in the middle of the room. It looked like a glass box and there was nothing above or below it to hold it in place. It simply hovered in the middle of the air, its bottom several feet above my head. The position made it more difficult to see inside, but when I got to within a few feet, I noticed something seemed to be lying on the bottom of the box. A sudden flicker of movement startled me, and my hand tightened around the spear I'd brought from the encounter with the guards out on the balcony. The object on the bottom of the box shifted again and as it rose up, I saw it was a woman.
She looked like one of the Fey from the other village. Beautiful and delicate looking, she wore a gauzy white and pale blue dress that lightly swirled around her body as she moved. Unlike the women we had met in the other village, this woman's wings were visible. As she turned away from me, glistening translucent wings emerging from the smooth bare skin of her back caught the light emanating from the box and sent a cascade of multicolored light onto the floor at my feet. The wings hung down past her hips and were bound in place by narrow ribbons. Her hands pressed to one glass wall and she stared out, her gaze moving back and forth for several seconds before she moved to the next wall.
"Hey," I called up to her, rushing around to the side of the box so I could look up at her. "I'm right here. Who are you?"
The woman didn't look in my direction or act like she'd heard me. Her mouth moved like she was trying to say something, but her voice didn't get through the thick glass.
"Can you hear me? Why are you up there? Can I help you?"
The woman shifted over to the third wall. This time she balled up her fists and pounded on the glass, but I still didn't hear anything. My heart pounded in my chest, thudding against my ribs and giving me the same intense pull toward the woman in the box that had dragged me down the hall to this room. I needed to know who she was and why she was there. Not trusting the space beneath the box, I ran around the side, so I stood beneath her again. Her face was even more desperate now, her expression drawn tightly over her pale, tired face. She reached the fourth wall and pounded on it, her mouth open in a silent scream, then she paused. Her fingertips slid down the glass and fell away, dropping to her sides as a shadow of defeat darkened her face. She took a step back from the glass and slowly dropped to the floor, curling onto her side and burying her face in her arm.
I wanted to reach up for her, to smash through the glass and gather her up, but as soon as I took a step closer to the box, shouts from the hallway stopped me.
"Hayden!"
It was Aurora's voice. My head whipped toward the sound, wanting to see her at the doorway. She wasn't there and when I turned back to the glass box, the woman who had been inside was gone. My head swimming, I ran around the edge of the box, examining it from every angle to try to see her or where she might have gone. The sound of Aurora calling out to me again broke through the fog of confusion and I ran through the room and back out into the hallway. Bex stood a few yards away, Aurora's hands grasping his shoulders as she stared into his face. She looked up and met my eyes. Pushing him away, she ran toward me as I went to her. We met in a tight embrace and I held her close to me, burying my head in the curve of her neck and shoulder so I could draw in the smell of her and feel the beating of her heart against my chest. Setting her back on her feet, I pulled back to look into her eyes and brush hair away from her face.
"Are you all right?" I asked. "What happened?"
"I'm fine. Really. After the fight with the guards in the courtyard, I ran into the fortress hoping to find Ashe or the collection so I could lead the rest of you to it. Something told me we should split up and look around the fortress by ourselves to cover more ground, but I shouldn't have done that. We should have stayed together."
She was obviously shaken up but didn't want to talk about what she might have seen while she was on her own in the hallways and dark rooms. I didn't push her. Instead, I gathered her against me again and pressed a kiss to the side of her head.
"You're safe. That's what matters. You found your way back to us. I tried to look for you but didn't recognize anything I saw when I connected with your thoughts."
"I hoped you would do that and tried to look around as much as possible so you could see everything, but nothing looked familiar so I didn't know if it would actually do any good. It was all right until I got into that white hallway. It almost drove me mad."
"Have you seen Stephana? Do you know where she might be?"
Aurora shook her head.
"No. You haven't found her, either?"
"No."
"And Ashe?"
"We haven't found her, either. We need to keep going. I don't want to think about what could be happening to them in the fortress by themselves. Especially Ashe. Those guards weren't exactly gentle with her when they took her."
We started running down the hallway, taking a sharp turn that led us into a passage so narrow we had to move into a single-file line rather than going along beside each other. I walked in front with Aurora tucked between Bex and me to keep her as safe as we could. Even as I tried to strategize moving through the fortress and finding our way to the center, my mind wouldn't let go of the images of the woman in the box. She had been entrancing, even with the look of fear in her eyes, but it was her disappearance that struck me the most. In an instant she had gone from lying on the bottom of the box, suspended in midair without any window or door in the box, to being gone. It was disturbing and sent a shiver through me wondering what it could mean.
The tight passageway got even smaller around us and soon my shoulders scraped the walls on either side.
"Good thing Jaxxim isn't here," I said, twisting to release the pressure by walking sideways. "Trying to pry him out of here would have put a major damper on our progress."
Just when it seemed the stone walls would crush us, the passage opened to a large round room.
"Who are you?"
The unfamiliar voice boomed around us, coming from some unseen force that seemed to take up the entire space.
"It's the Dark Fae King," Bex muttered beside me, his head tilted back as he examined the corners of the ceiling.
"What are you doing in my fortress?"
It was obvious the king was used to intimidating people and the volume and depth of his voice alone would have been enough to scare the shit out of most people. Add to that not being able to see him, and this would be the time common sense would have us run right out of the fortress and back through the woods, hoping for the best for the other women and a man that would show us a detour to Malakan
. Instead, it just made me angrier. The words vibrated through me and I took a long stride forward, turning around slowly.
"My name is Hayden. I was sent here by the Fae. Return Ashe and Stephana to me immediately and give me what you took from the Fae so I can return it to them."
The sound of laughter bouncing off the walls was worse than the booming voice. It was powerful enough for me to physically feel the force of it, but I fought the movement, not wanting to give the king any more satisfaction and amusement than I obviously already had.
"I have no need to do anything you say. Anything in this fortress is mine and here for my amusement. If I didn't want it here, it wouldn't be here, so why would I return it?"
"Ashe and Stephana don't belong to you, and neither does what you took from the Fae. They want it back and have sent me to retrieve it for them. Give it to me now, return the women to me, and we will leave here without any other problems."
"I was angry when I found out there were intruders in my fortress, but now I'm glad you came. It's been a long time since anything has made me laugh quite this much. Just so we are clear, you've done nothing to persuade me. I'm not going to just hand anything over to you, no matter who you think you are."
"Who we think we are is none of your concern," Bex said.
"Oh, but it is. You should know that. In all the time you've spent digging into others' lives and doing the dirty work for people whose respect and appreciation you craved more than life itself, you must have learned something about me. Or have we met before, perhaps? It's hard to tell. The insignificant ones rarely stand out."
Bex's jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything.
"And you, Princess. Should I be honored to have you here in my humble abode? The Prime has always believed himself far above any of the rest of us, and I'm sure he has raised you the same way. You think you are more important and have more power because you have vampire blood. But here in the woods you aren't special. You are nothing. None of us is impressed by you or the power you think you have. Here, you bow down to me."
"I bow down to no one," Aurora snarled.
Another laugh rumbled around us.
"Not even your blood mate? I'm sure Daddy was none too happy he didn't have a say in the man you chose to sink your teeth into. That's not how he wanted it to work out, is it? But that doesn't matter to you, does it, Hayden? You don't care about tradition or upholding the sanctity of the Underworld. You're hungry for the power and the privilege it will give you. The days of you meaning anything have long since passed, haven't they? You used to think you were somebody, but that all went away. Then you found yourself here, and suddenly you mean something again. At least, to some people you do."
The insights the king spat at us were unnerving, making me wonder what else he knew, and if us roaming the halls was just more of the same intention -- just amusing him. I wouldn't back down.
"You will give me Ashe and Stephana, and you will return to the Fae what you took from them."
All amusement was gone from the king's voice when he called out his guards.
"All I will give to you is your survival, and that's only if you can make it out of my fortress."
Within seconds, the room was swarmed with more guards. They poured through doors I hadn't even noticed, some carrying the spears the first two had held. There wasn't even time to look at Bex or Aurora. I had to trust in their instincts and in the experience each of them had that trained them for this moment. The battle was fierce and fast. I fought blindly, a blend of my vampire and warlock powers pushing the guards back so the three of us could get out of the room. They followed after us without hesitation and we had gone only a few yards down the hall when more forces started toward us in the other direction. A blow to the back of my head brought me to the ground, but I was back up quickly, blasting magic toward the guard that threatened Aurora a few steps from me. This pushed him back enough for her to gain her bearings again and go after another guard. As we fought, the guards came in toward us deliberately, and I realized they weren't just fighting against us. They were trying to herd us toward the center of the fortress, away from the exit. The king had promised we would survive only if we could escape and was undoubtedly enjoying the guards making that impossible for us.
What he didn't realize is they were doing exactly what I wanted them to do.
The king’s threat meant nothing to me. I had no intention of attempting to escape the crumbling palace. Not without Ashe and Stephana, and not without what the Fae had sent me to get.
3
The harder we fought, the more the guards pushed back against us. It was obvious they thought we would run, and all they had to do was chase us out or have fun killing us along the way. They hadn't expected the battle, and soon the floor was littered with their bodies. A fresh group of guards swarmed the hallway and before the three of us had the chance to realize what was happening, they broke through us, isolating each of us into our own pod surrounded by guards. I heard Aurora scream and tried to force my way through the wall of Dark Fae to get to her, but an unseen strike took me off my feet and slammed me against a wall. Lights danced in front of my eyes as I pulled myself back to my feet and smashed the heel of my hand up into the nose of the nearest guard to make room to get away from the wall. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't concentrate on trying to find Aurora or protecting her in the fight. I had to trust she knew what she was doing and would be able to hold her own. Instead, it was up to me to keep moving and find my way through the fortress. She and Bex would come after me and we would find our way back together when we could. Concentrating too much on her would keep me from my mission and lower the chances all of us would get out alive.
Maneuvering my way around the guards, I ducked into the small passage and squeezed along it until I got back to the more open area of the hallway. The guards struggled to make their way through, giving me several seconds of head start to get down the hallway and choose one of the shadowy off shoots. It wasn't one of the paths I'd already followed, and I knew I was heading into the complete unknown, but at that point getting away from the guards and orienting myself within the building to make my way to the center was the most important goal. If the guards were trying to herd us in that direction, I didn't want to be at their mercy when we made it to face the king. Standing in front of him and repeating my demands was my goal, but it would be done on my own terms.
The corridor I'd chosen seemed abandoned. Even though the rest of the fortress had been largely empty, this section held the energy of being forgotten. The temperature dropped as I moved further into the space and my feet skidded across dirt and dust coating the floor. The sound of the guards' footsteps chasing me was still loud in my ears when the floor beneath me gave way and I crashed through. My fingers grabbed for the edge of the floor as it disappeared overhead, but I was falling too fast to catch myself. Darkness engulfed me and I didn't know what might be waiting beneath me. Pain burst in my shoulder as it crashed into the unseen wall beside me. The impact bounced me to the other side and my head cracked against the surface before I slid down several feet. Finally, my body rammed into the ground and the sound of my leg snapping left me lying in a heap. Biting into my bottom lip to stop the scream of pain, I tried to change position to ease the pressure as my leg pieced itself back together. Groaning, I slammed my fist on the wall to let out some of the tension building inside me.
"Who is that?"
A shuddering voice came through the darkness. It was weak and quiet, but I recognized it.
"Stephana?"
There was a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and a presence came toward me.
"Hayden, is that really you?"
"Yes. Where are you?"
She crouched down close beside me and a spark of blue light formed in the darkness. When it was big enough, I could see a flame hovering over Stephana's palm, illuminating her face.
"Are you all right?"
"No. I broke my leg on the way down."
&nbs
p; "Actually, it was probably the landing that broke your leg."
She reached down to touch my injured leg and I hissed with new pain that shot through me.
"Thank you for the insight."
"Here. Hold this so I can look at your leg."
She held the fire out to me and slipped it into my extended palm.
"What the hell is this?"
Lifting my hand to my eye level, I examined the blue flame, trying to figure out how it was made.
"The Fae said we didn't need to bring any of our stuff with us when we came here. They didn't say anything about stuffing our pockets with stuff we found around the house."
"You stole something from the Fae?"
"Steal is such an aggressive word."
"It's apparently an accurate word."
"Everybody else had gone to sleep and I needed some water, so I went downstairs. I caught one of the Fae women down there and watched her use this little flame thing to make light so no one would know she was there. I stayed hidden until she extinguished the flame and left, and I took it, figuring it might be useful."
"What was she doing in the house?"
"I don't know. By the time I saw her, she went into the kitchen, then back into the front of the house. That's it."
"Do you think she went through our bags?"
"I don't know." She pressed hard on my leg and I realized the pain was much less intense. "You're healing fast. That's good. Try standing on it."
She took my arm and helped me to my feet. Cautiously putting my foot down on the ground, I experimented with pressure. It wasn't comfortable, but the pain was bearable. The break had healed enough to support me moving on it, and that was good enough.
"How did you get down here?"
Stephana touched the base of the flame in her palm and it brightened.
"I don't really know. After the guards took Ashe into the building and you followed, the three of us fought for a little longer and then broke apart to go into the fortress."
