The sound earned him a hard glare. “What’s so funny?”
Fucking Enfara, he couldn’t help himself. He never could. He laughed more fully this time, wrapping an arm around Mariah’s shoulders and drawing her into him. She nestled against his side as if on instinct—as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Jasmine and cedarwood surrounded him and he struggled desperately to remind himself why this wasbad.
Struggled, and failed. He planted a soft kiss onto the crown of her head, allowing him just a moment to inhale that intoxicating scent. “Only you would call an immortal, all-powerful god an asshole,nio.”
She scoffed. “Immortal, maybe. But they’re far from all-powerful, I think.”
Andrian frowned, pulling back. “What do you mean?—”
He didn’t get to ask the rest of his question.
Thundering hoofbeats sounded over the ridge, but they were different from horses—slower, less cadenced. Signe raced past, her silver cloak billowing around her.
“Madr!” she called, just as the new arrivals crested the ridge.
Andrian knew that word. Signe had said it to him once, back in that inn on the way to Khento. It was one his mother had taught him.
Countryman.
Three great beasts with curling horns, white fur thick and bushy, appeared on the road. On their backs sat three men wearing simple, comfortable garb. The beasts’ cloven hooves trotted down the rise as they chewed idly on their bits.
Matheo inched closer. “Are those…goats?”
“It would seem so, Matheo,” Mariah answered, stepping out of Andrian’s embrace. She followed Signe, Kodie walking behind her with pricked ears and curious eyes.
And Andrian, as he always would—no matter how much he knew he shouldn’t—followed.
The three riders and their very large goat-steeds stopped, conversing quietly with Signe. They lifted their gazes as Mariah approached, and Andrian would’ve bristled if everything about them wasn’t so docile.
No visible weapons. Soft, open expressions with laugh lines around their eyes. Not a trace of distrust.
Which was strange enough, but still, neither Andrian nor Matheo reached for their weapons.
The leader—a dark-skinned man with Leuxrithian amethyst eyes—slid off his mount. He took two steps forward before he bowed low to Mariah, worn gray cloak swirling around him.
“Welcome,” the man said in a warm, accented voice, “to Eyarfell.”
Chapter 33
The young lord never should have come to this place.
Anniliese watched from the shadows as Gabriel Laurent was dragged, bound and gagged, into Khento’s great hall. Blood stained his golden-blond hair and one of his eyes was swollen shut, his lip cracked and bleeding.
“Yet another failure from House Laurent. How disappointing.” Kol lounged upon his temporary throne on the raised dais, black suit perfectly pressed, drumming his fingers on the arm, as if bored. The rest of the court had gathered in the hall, watching on with nervous glances and the thick lingering scent of fear.
Anniliese had grown quite accustomed to that scent. What she’d first noticed all those months ago in Shawth’s personal wing had spread throughout the castle like a noxious gas. Ever present and suffocating.
She’d also grown used to its effects. No longer did she fear the darkness all around her.
She only felt numb to it.
The crowd hushed as Gabriel lifted his head, meeting the dark god’s gaze.
And spat on the polished tile below the dais.
Kol chuckled. “Such defiance from someone who saw his father executed in this exact spot not even a week ago.”
Gabriel didn’t even flinch. Only kept his chin lifted proudly.
