“Alright. Let’s do this, because I need to get back before Bastian realizes I’m missing.” I started towards the stairs.
“You’re traveling with Bastian?” Kieran jogged to my side.
I slid him an annoyed glance. “Yep. You could have told me the two of you were so friendly.”
Kieran snorted. “I’m friendly with a lot of people.”
“Were,” Draven drawled from where he trailed after us. “You were friendly with a lot of people.”
The pure possession in his tone had me blushing.
“Ugh. Don’t you two start,” Roth complained from my other side. “Alaric and Vail have been traveling recently, so I’ve been stuck listening to Sam, Kieran, and Draven do their version of flirting, which is basically Sam or Kier getting sassy at Draven and then him getting all possessive.”
“You don’t seem to mind reaping the benefits of our flirting,” Kieran mocked. “Or am I misremembering what happened at dinner the other night?”
Roth twitched their nose but didn’t say anything.
“I seem to recall Roth eating their fill and making us wait,” Draven said in an annoyed tone. “Despite the fact that we were the ones who got Sam all riled up, and I’d very much been looking forward to doling out some punishment. Not getting tied to a chair.”
We went up the stairs, and I tried to figure out why Draven was upset over Roth eating dinner first. It wasn’t like they didn’t have plenty of food.
“You had a good view,” Roth said mildly.
Oh. Oh. I missed a step.
Kieran’s hand shot out to stabilize me. “Now she gets it.” He chuckled.
“Forgive me for not constantly thinking about my best friend’s sex life,” I grumbled.
But you do think about sex quite a bit, Talis whispered in the way that meant they were only speaking with me. Is what you’re doing with Ryker considered hate fucking? I confess I’m very confused by this term.
Tal?
Yes?
Shut up.
Rude. But I’ll withdraw my question. For now.
We reached the top of the stairs and the three of them waited. The secret room beneath Lake Malov was small, more like a space for the Fae to hide their treasures, but when they’d built these levels under the temple, they’d put in a lot more effort. In addition to living quarters and multiple rooms of books, artifacts, and weapons, the magic guarding the hidden area was a lot more sophisticated.
I looked at the glyph etched into the stone wall on my left. It was a silencing spell, but unlike the basic one the Moon Blessed used, this one allowed us to hear everything around us, but once you left the stairwell, you couldn’t hear anything from the rooms below.
Which meant Erendriel had missed out on all our banter. Something told me he wouldn’t have thought it was funny anyway. All the Fae seemed to have sticks up their asses.
Stepping out of the stairwell into a large cavernous room, I glanced up to the balcony that encompassed the room. Somewhere were Moroi rangers, but the Fae lanterns weren’t lit up there, and even though my eyes had adjusted to the low lighting on this floor, I couldn’t spot them in the absolute darkness of the balcony. They’d overhear anything I said, but I wasn’t worried about it. Vail was in charge of the rangers stationed here and he only assigned those he trusted.
I strode through the archway into the smaller room that sat at the front of the temple of forgotten Fae gods. The towering double doors that led outside were closed, and most of the room was swallowed by shadows.
Shadows that moved. And whispered.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Not just because wraiths were dangerous and terrifying. No. It was the wrongness of them. All sorts of monsters roamed Lunaria, but none of them felt like abominations. Not even the Strigoi with their lack of humanity.
It made sense though. The Seelie Fae had stolen the shadow magic of the Unseelie, ripped it away from their Fae counterparts, and taken it for themselves. We didn’t know if their own magic had revolted against them or if there was a flaw in their spell, but the end result had been the Seelie losing not only their magic but their physical forms as well.
They’d become nothing but shadows, only capable of turning solid for a few seconds at a time.
The whispers grew louder as I stopped at the boundary. Every part of me wanted to clap my hands over my ears at the sound of them talking. It was like parts of their speech were swallowed by the shadows, resulting in me not being able to distinguish the words.
