Breathtaking. Magnificent.Ethereal.
I had only seen such exquisite carvings once before.
My heart sank low into my gut. Shade had never mentioned this place. Why hadn’t he told me?
Terym caressed the carved stone, sending uneasy nostalgia crawling along my skin and adrenaline pumping through my veins.
“Bring mywife.”
A guard thrust me forward at the king’s command, sending me stumbling over the loose rocks beneath our feet. With each step closer to the archway, the thrumming in my pocket intensified. As if Shade and his magic could sense our proximity to the archway and where it led. The warmth of the metal grew hot, so hot I was sure it would burn if I touched it with bare skin.
Once within Terym’s reach, he seized my hand and dragged me close. His jeweled knife flashed in the torchlight, and I struggled against his hold. A knowledge deep in my bones told me that if he drew my blood and placed it onto the white stone, the archway would open a door, and I couldn’t let that happen.
The king was far stronger than me, and he barely moved as I tried to wrench free from his grasp. Sharp pain erupted from my palm when the jeweled knife pierced my skin, and I released asoft cry of shock. Then Terym forced my still-bound but freshly bleeding hands against the white stone.
As soon as my blood touched the surface, a deep rumble sounded beneath us. Exactly as it had when I’d opened Shade’s cave, the stone wall crumbled under my hand, falling away to reveal stone steps descending into the earth.
I stared at the smooth stone, and déjà vu washed over me. Unlike last time, when Terym stepped up to the entrance, he passed through easily, there was no invisible barrier to impede his entry. A knot of dread settled in my gut at watching the king descend. I didn’t know where this led, but I didn’t want any part in it.
I had no choice but to follow, not when a guard pushed me through the archway and I stumbled over the top step. The scent of damp dirt hung heavy in the air. The way down narrow enough my shoulder brushed the walls covered in drawings. Depictions of violent battles against demon-like creatures made of shadow and fire. Villages burned to ash. Men, women, and even children slaughtered.
The churning in my gut increased the deeper we went underground. All the while, the lamp in my pocket burned. The vibrations reached a numbing speed, and my earlier dread morphed into panic, my chest tightening and my breaths growing short.
It couldn’t be …
Footsteps echoed ahead and a few moments later, we stepped into a cavernous room, these walls filled with more drawings. The room rose in a large cylinder to the sky, the sun visible at the top and beaming down on us. The guards spaced out around me, allowing me to follow the wall around the room. My hand trailed along the stone, the story showing a young king traveling up a snowy mountain atop a giant horse, leading into a depiction ofthe same king kneeling in a dark room before the Gods, who sat above him on massive thrones, their faces shrouded in darkness.
Then demons of fire and shadow fell into a fissure cracking the ground open, a man in a deep-purple tunic fell with them, his blond hair wild, while the Gods looked on from above. The king, surrounded in lithe tendrils of smoke that twisted into a lamp. A small black lamp identical to the one beating a staccato rhythm in my pocket.
My eyes settled on him. Raiden Emyrdeis.
Shade.
The king who’d sacrificed his life to stop his own brother from destroying his kingdom. The world. He watched his brother fall beneath the earth, his face pained and shoulders slumped. I ached to see him now, to comfort him despite the time that had passed since the moment depicted on the wall.
Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention, and I turned to face the current king. Terym stood before the illustration of hundreds of demons falling through the large crack and into darkness. Humanoid figures made of fire and shadow twisted in rage. He caressed those drawings, tracing over the evil almost reverently.
My heart stalled, then took off at an alarming rate, pumping adrenaline and panic through my veins. The way he looked at them, the way he traced their forms.
I finally understood. Every decision he had made, to find Shade, to keep me close to his side, it had all been leading to this.
He wanted to release the demons.
“Oh, Gods.”
Chapter 39
At my gasped words, Terym’s head snapped my way, a small crook at the corner of his lips and a glint in his eye. He stalked toward me, body vibrating, and I shuffled back, panicked.
“Release him.” The order had barely left his lips when I hit a wall of armor. I turned to find Gensen blocking my path and the escape I planned to make back up the stone steps.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said, my voice small as I made a pointless plea to an unyielding man. I had to try. Eleanor would want me to try.
“Actually, I do.” Terym bounced on the balls of his feet, not able to contain his excitement this close to everything he wanted. He turned with awed eyes and greedily took in every inch of the illustration covering the walls. “This is all I’ve been focused on, everything I’ve worked toward since I read these texts in my youth.” I shook my head, though the king couldn’tsee it, as his eyes were glued to the demons. “The power they can yield. I’ll be unstoppable.”
“You don’t know what they will do to your land or your people.” My voice cracked on the last word. So many innocent lives would be lost if they were released, the stories told on the steps to this chamber could attest to that.
So much hurt. So muchdeath.
