“I’ll check these,” she said, meeting my stare. “You keep going.”
I blew out a breath. It felt like we were in some sort of horror movie, checking all the rooms and trunks. I kept waiting for a body to pop out—or worse.
I doubted Ry would leave a body for us to find, but still.
There looked to be another room hidden behindthe wall to my right, though I couldn’t see a door to it. As we passed Maeve and her new stack of trunks, I couldn’t help but look inside the one she was opening.
I expected a large stack of weapons, maybe something worse. But instead, there were books.
Maeve closed the lid without looking further, despite my interest being piqued. She moved onto another trunk as we made it to the double doors.
This time, Thor was the one to push them open, and as he did, I drew in a sharp breath.
Orion had taken some time to clean it up. The kitchen looked antique, but nicely refinished, with deep wood cabinets and marble countertops. There was even an adorable black and white checker tile that looked freshly polished. The kitchen was huge, almost galley style, with rows of counters on either wall, upper cabinets, and the far wall also had the same, except for two huge full-length cabinets that looked like a pantry. There was an island of counters running the length of the kitchen, with a massive sink set within.
“Wow,” I whispered, noticing the skylight above our heads and the rain running off the glass. “This would be a dream come true for Thea.”
Elias squeezed my hand reassuringly. “When we can, Adrian could call on his brother to bring them here.”
The thought of them here made my heart soar, but I immediately shook my head. “If they’re safe with Griffon on his island, then I want them to stay there until we know Dante is no longer a threat.”
“This place might be safer, though,” he replied, meeting my stare. “The glamour and wards here are powerful.”
Still, the thought of taking them away from the safety they have with Griffon and his mates made my stomach twist painfully. “I’ll think about it.”
Elias nodded once. I needed to know how long we could stay here undetected, how long the glamour would hide us before we were forced out.
“We took a good chunk of his army,” Elias murmured, eyesflickering to Thor. “A lot of shifters were taken back to the Underworld.”
Relief flooded me at that, but it didn’t stop the worry or fear. “He has more than just the shifters. There were a lot of soldiers down there, Elias. Even more that I didn’t see.”
“We know,” he replied. “Avalon is full of them. But his main source of power is gone. We know where it is, and we’re flushing him out. Once we’ve cleared our agents, they’ll go in.”
“Cleared?” I asked, turning to him. “Why would our agents need to be cleared?”
“Over ninety percent of our Phoenix agents were compromised at some point in the last six months,” Maeve said as she entered. “They’d been hit with the sickness you noticed.”
My stomach turned again threateningly. I remembered the way my magic rose within me to get rid of the darkness burrowing within the agents who found us. I remembered pulling it out of their magic, healing their power and restoring them to health.
“How was it so many?” I asked, looking back at her. “How did he do it?”
“We don’t know,” Maeve replied. “Elara Blackwood is working with a small group of healers. They are working as fast as they can, but it takes them hours to do what you did in minutes.”
A new kind of guilt hit me like a tidal wave. A despair and anguish I would never escape.
If I had my power, I’d be able to help them. I could be there curing them of the sickness now.
But I didn’t. Icouldn’t. Dante made sure of that.
It was yet another one of his plays that we hadn’t seen coming.
63
Ivy
“Well, we don’t need plates, cutlery, or glassware,” I muttered, closing a cabinet. “Or, thankfully, mugs.”
Much to my delight—as much as I could muster, anyway—there was a section of the kitchen that looked like a mini coffee bar in the making. Mugs of different sizes and design lined up in an upper cabinet, and a suspiciously perfect counter for a coffee maker.
