“Who?” Lark asked again and even I knew that tone brooked no disagreement.
“Some gorgon,” Taurus blurted.
“A gorgon!” Cass shouted, leaping to her feet in her rage. “You lost the key to Hellscape to a gorgon?”
I blinked, searching my memory for what a gorgon was. When I realized, I visibly paled. Because I knew the most famous gorgon who had ever lived. Even in the mortal realm, we had heard tales of the horror she had wrought. Medusa.
“He can’t get in!” Taurus was shouting back in defense of himself. “He can’t get in without a Fae, you know that!”
“Had you ever considered that he might have been working with one already?”
Taurus paled this time, his eyes widening, his jaw slackening.
“Why—why would a gorgon want anything to do with Hellscape?” he asked, still trying to justify his actions, still trying to lessen the need for any immediate concern. “His kind, they go crazy down there. Gorgons hate Hellscape. They would never set foot—”
“Take us to him,” Lark interrupted him with a primal growl that set my teeth on edge.
“I can’t. After I lost the key to him, the next day when I’d… sobered up and realized what I’d done, I went after him myself. But then he crossed into the Court of Peace and Pride.”
Another silence descended upon the room and I knew, again, that I was definitely missing something.
“Given the state of our relations with that court, I didn’t chance it,” Taurus muttered and then, looking up at his brother as if he could sense the direction of his thoughts already, added, “and you shouldn’t either.”
Lark’s jaw was set, firm. His gaze was narrowed, his lips curled in anger.
“You haven’t given me much choice. We have to get that key back,” he said simply.
“Lark—” Taurus tried.
Inexplicably, suddenly, Taurus’ eyes flicked to me and he blinked once in recognition.
“Oh,” he said with a sigh, collapsing into his chair.
My brow furrowed with confusion. I turned to Rook to find that he was taking great pains not to look at me. Even Cass had her eyes closed. Panic gripped me then. Sheer mortal panic. I hadn’t understood half of what they had been talking about all this time but I had understood the tone, the body language. Things were tense. Lark and Cass were angry, almost desperate, and, in the end, somehow it all related to me. Somehow, I was a part of this. Though I couldn’t fathom how.
“Where did you find her?” Taurus whispered a moment later.
“We will get the key,” Lark snapped, ignoring him and rising from his chair.
Cass rose again with him, folding her hands in front of her and keeping her mouth firmly shut as Lark leaned menacingly across the table so that he was mere inches from Taurus’ face.
“And when we do, you will take us to father yourself.”
My lips parted slightly. This was it. This was how Lark won his way back to his realm. This was how he earned the end of his banishment.
Taurus gave one silent nod, and then we were leaving. Rook and I followed the royal brother and sister from the hall, up a narrow set of rocky stairs, and out into the fresh air once again. It was disorienting. During the hours we had spent underground, day had turned to evening and the sun was setting over the horizon.
“Does anyone want to tell me,” I spoke when we were all far enough away from any potential eavesdroppers, “what just happened in there?”
They all froze. Rook cleared his throat and peered out at the horizon. Cass looked to Lark.
“Taurus lost the key to Hellscape to—” Lark began.
“No, I understood that,” I snapped, annoyed at how much of a simpering fool he apparently believed me to be. “I’m not an idiot. I know what a gorgon is. I know what Hellscape is as well and yes, I can see why a monster having the key to it would not be ideal. I can put all of that together myself, thank you. What I don’t understand is how I fit into all of this.”
Rook was staring at the ground now. Whether his averted gaze was due to the knowledge he had that I did not, or because he had just witnessed a mere mortal scolding his future king, I wasn’t sure. But I knew even Cass wouldn’t meet my eye and that was what made this situation seem far more precarious than I might have assumed otherwise.
“The Court of Peace and Pride is ruled by the only other man in this realm older than my father. King Alban Dawnpaw,” Lark told me, his mouth a grim line. “He’s the only one ancient enough to possess the magic it would have taken to level such a curse upon my father. Now, it is his territory that the gorgon has entered while a war is brewing between our courts. He is the one who tried to kill my father. He is the one who cursed him. And Ren, he is your grandfather.”
