King Elon nodded amicably. “That is a solid—” His mouth snapped shut at the sound of a door opening, jarring our ears in the otherwise unnatural silence of the Ancient Archive. He pointed quickly to the closest door behind us and hissed softly, “Hide.”
I opened the door and shoved the dragon king inside the dark space, following suit and cramming my soul mate in. The gorgon king squeezed inside the small space and, just as silently, shut the door, closing us in. With my back pressed against a wall, it was only then that I noticed the smell.
Tilting my head to the side, I saw why.
I gagged and then looked away. Swallowing down the bile in my throat, I eased my expression in the darkness and whispered stoically, “We’ve trapped ourselves in an outhouse of sorts. Nothing has died in here. Excrement is what you’re smelling.”
A total of four proud faces stared silently at the door, not moving to give our location away—truly, unable to move, we were so tightly pressed against once another—regally bearing the fact we had squeezed ourselves into the foulest of shitters together.
It was rather embarrassing.
King Ula made a soft heaving noise in his throat, but his facial features didn’t change once, holding it in as I had done, with the guardians’ voices now heard as they talked amongst themselves.
We listened as they traveled down the corridor, eavesdropping for any word on where their hostages were being hidden away. Unfortunately, they only spoke of the blistering temperature making their bones weary and sweat traveling to unwelcome locations on their bodies.
The heat was also not helping in here. I would not argue if they wanted to switch places with us right now.
Bile rose again inside my throat, but I breathed out through my nose, carefully keeping my mouth shut this time.
Once the voices had finally carried far away and were no longer heard, King Elon cracked the door open and peeked out. With a heavy sigh of liberation, he stepped out…only to step back in when more voices were heard.
As an entirely horrible hour passed, we discovered this area was fairly busy with guardian movement—while we hid with shit.
Then we overheard it.Finally.
“Did you know the diviner is set to arrive tomorrow?” a voice noted. “Should be here at high noon.”
“Will we need to wake them?” another voice asked. “Or just keep them asleep?”
“If they’re found guilty of consorting with Ruiuen to steal the artifacts, we’ll wake them. The only obvious part, though, is that they used the artifacts. We can’t read their Fae-sparks at all…and, as you know, the other problem,” the first person muttered—and then laughed hard, their voice roaming further away. “Truly, have you seen Princess Trixie’s belly? She isheavywith child. Once the king and queen discover this, they’ll kill King Athon and her—and whatever is growing inside her.Death this way comes.So it may be more merciful to keep them asleep with that definite outcome.”
I froze utterly down to my core, my Fae-spark burning inside my chest from not only my panic but my soul mate’s as well.
No one in this disgusting space even breathed.
It was like a tomb of the shocked.
“Mamue should be the one to decide, I suppose,” the second guardian grumbled, barely loud enough to still hear. “This is far more complicated than what we planned for…”
I strained to listen further, but their voices floated too far away, my mind spinning with the details they had spoken of. Staring blindly at the door, I hovered between attention and distraction, wavering between safe options and what needed to be done.
Most likely, that was why I didn’t even notice when the door opened. Reality snapped back into focus when a head with antlers stared at us, stunned stupid with shock. That was his misfortune, his lack of action. Within the blink of an eye, green snakes stood in the air, and the guardian wasinstantlymade of stone.
“Huh,” Minnie mumbled in shock, watching as the snakes changed into braids and dropped back down around his shoulders. “You’ve gotten much faster, King Elon. Quite impressive.”
Hehissedsoftly. “We’ll need to move him elsewhere before anyone else comes.” The King of Gorgons cast a careful look in my direction. “Then we should find somewhere we may discuss the developing situation.”
“Agreed,” I whispered quickly. “Let us leave this dreadful room behind.”
We darted out the door one by one, and the dragon king simply picked up the stone statue and shoved it on his left shoulder as if it weighed nothing. It should have been helpful, except now this man simply had more possibility to create a disaster.
“Just…put him in the bathroom,” I hissed softly, holding the door open. “I’ll burn the door handle closed so no one can open it.”
King Ula nodded silently, set the statue down, and then cracked the head off it, tossing it down into the depths of the shit.
Mayhap he believed it was necessary?
After King Elon’s memory, he may think so. But the guardian had died as soon as his eyes had met the gorgon king’s with how quickly he’d been turned to stone.
