Her heartbeat quickened. “Let me out, please.”
No answer.
The scent of cold stone filled her lungs. Her shallow breaths sounded too loud in the stillness. Rune had trapped her again, buried deep within the mountain with no way out. Her chest heaved; anger caught like a lump in her throat. Light thrummed along her arms, rising up her neck in a menacing rhythm.
“Karag Dûr,” she hissed, “open the door this instant or I’ll blow a hole right through you!”
An empty threat, really. Alora didn’t know what she was capable of, but the mountain must have believed her because the stone shuddered beneath her feet, and the wall split open, unveiling a door.
“Thank you,” Alora huffed, stepping into the hall.
Strangely, no one was guarding her door.
“Do you know the way to Calla’s chambers?” she asked Nexus. The female Harbinger was the one person she trusted to be honest with her.
And because she wasn’t ready to face Rune yet. His words in the combat area were still too loud in her head.
Nexus gave a short meow and padded ahead, tail flicking.
Alora followed him through the silent corridors, and the air thickened the farther they descended, growing warmer with each step. She knew they had left her hidden wing when the black-marbled walls elevated high above her like the ribs of a great beast, etched with runes that pulsed faintly red, as if the mountain itself still bled fire.
Black spires jutted from the arches, catching the candlelight of the chandeliers above. The deeper they went, the more the air grew warm. A hot gust wafted through the fissures, the distantmurmur of molten rivers moving beneath the walls. Shadows clung to every corner, restless and alive, as though the fortress itself was watching her pass.
She picked up her pace, feeling exposed in the quiet castle.
Alora turned a corner and slammed into a wall of cold, wet flesh. Her stomach dropped.
The thing before her was no wall. A towering, skeletal demon loomed there, its flesh clinging like tattered silk to an elongated frame, sinewy and torn as though its body had been stitched together by shadows. Black tendrils writhed from its chest and arms, serpentine and alive, slithering around it like a nest of sentient smoke.
Its face was a horror carved from nightmare, featureless, save for a gaping, jagged mouth stretched too wide, packed with rows of teeth like broken glass. A long, eel-like tongue slithered free, tasting the air.
The sound it made wasn’t a growl but a low, wet gurgle, like rot bubbling in a throat that had never known breath.
A ripple of unnatural cold rolled through the corridor as the demon stepped forward, torches dimming as the darkness bent around it.
“Ah, Shadow Queen.” Its voice rasped like claws dragged over bone, layered and hollow. “Even with that bangle on your wrist, I can taste a hint of your essence in the air. Your dreams must be truly…delicious.”
A cold shiver crawled down Alora’s spine. But Nexus sat at her heels, tail flicking idly as he studied the creature. If her familiar wasn’t alarmed, then she forced herself not to be.
Alora folded her glowing hands at her waist, forcing her voice to stay steady. “You heard the command of your god. You cannot touch me.”
The demon’s lipless black mouth stretched with a cackle, a horrid, skin-crawling sound that made her ears ring. “I know no command of any god—only he whopretendsto be.”
Her breath caught.
It slithered closer, the air trembling with its stench. “Oh, you truly are so enticing. So powerful without knowing what power lives in your veins. Not evenhecould stand against you.”
Fear kept Alora frozen in place, her heart thundering and mind reeling at the implication.
Then a flash of midnight smoke cleaved through the creature’s chest. The demon convulsed, a strangled sound escaping its maw before it burst into ash. Standing behind it was Deimos, a black heart pulsing in his Nightstone claws, dripping trails of ichor down his wrist.
“You escaped,” the spy stated, his tone unnervingly pleased. “To my great fortune.”
Deimos’s scarlet eyes gleamed with rare delight as he studied the heart before slipping it into an empty glass jar from his satchel. The organ fell in with a wetplop. Alora’s stomach churned as he tucked it away.
When his gaze rose to her again, the faintest smile touched his lips which was far more terrifying than what she had witnessed.
“Wandering about?” Deimos mused with interest. “Perhaps I should accompany you. There are many demonsprowlingthe halls.”
