His brother had arrived in Khento two days ago, and things had been painfully mundane. No nightmares, no whispers, no summons to the throne room for public displays of dominance. For a reason Andrian didn’t want to understand, Kol had all but retreated, content to watch the goings-on of court in silence with Ksee stationed ever-dutifully at his side.
Andrian wondered if Gabriel’s arrival had caused the shift—wondered if the dark god desired to keep his image pristine and untainted in order to buy the loyalty of a great house that had already failed him so much.
He halted, crossing his arms over his chest. The rooms he’d been given were nice enough—a typical castle guest suite. It had a large bed, a sitting area around the crackling fire, and an attached bathroom. He was thankful that, at least, he’d never been made a true prisoner here. While he couldn’t leave the grounds, he wasn’t confined to a cell and could wander as he pleased.
Not that there were many places to wander. A heaviness hung about the castle, as if the atrocities committed here hardly more than a week ago had tainted the very earth beneath it.
Andrian drummed his fingers on his arm, brow pinching. His shadows writhed beneath his skin, unwound without Kol’s looming presence, just as restless as he was.
The lack of action was driving him to madness. But there was one subject his mind kept circling around, kept returning to.
His father. Or, rather, the man who’d raised him as such.
He still found what his brother had said bewilderingly curious. Gabriel still didn’t know Julian Laurent was imprisoned in this castle because he’d dared to defy the very god they all now kneeled to. Andrian couldn’t understand why Julian had told Gabriel that should Kol ever summon him, Gabriel was to obey without question.
If he ordered his heir to obey the god, then why choose to defy Kol himself?
It felt like everything about Julian Laurent was a contradiction. How could someone who hated Andrian so much—who despised Mariah so much—end up making decisions that, in a twisted, fucked up, and unsuccessful way, protected them both? While at the same time issue threat after threat on Mariah’s life?
Andrian raked a hand through his hair. It had grown a little; not long enough to need a haircut yet, but still noticeable.
Just the thought of a haircut sent a pang of desperate, aching longing through him, enough to almost send him to his knees.
Even with the darkness of this place and the despair surrounding it, every little thing reminded him of her. Mariah was a constant echo in his mind, a drumbeat in his heart, a lighthouse in his soul. Their bond was still quiet—too terrifyingly, maddeningly quiet—but he held her memory close.His personal glow in the darkness, the prayer he whispered to himself at night.
Andrian rolled his shoulders and sighed, shaking off the familiar ache. A resolve was slowly filling him. He knew what he had to do to get the answers he sought. The answers heneeded.
He might as well accomplish something useful while he was trapped here.
He turned toward the door, but a rustle and flurry of movement at his window made him pause.
What he saw had him blinking in shock, dumbfounded.
The windows of Khento’s castle were all the same: lined in gray stone, with a foot-long ledge on either side. They couldn’t be opened, locking the occupants in, making the only entrances and exits the few doors on the ground floor.
Perched on the outside ledge, staring into the clouded glass with gleaming golden eyes, was an Attlehon eagle.
Andrian blinked again. Surely, he was imagining this. Hardly anyone saw the eagles now; they were invisible when they flew, and they were smart enough to not land where people could see them. They certainly didn’t fly this far north, preferring to remain in their nesting grounds deep in the Attlehons.
But when he moved closer to the window, the eagle didn’t disappear. It cocked its head inquisitively, as if assessing him.
It was a too-intelligent movement. Far more than he was comfortable with. Despite his shock and awe at the bird, Andrian crossed his arms again, giving it his best glare. He loosened his shadows around his shoulders, and they drifted down his arms, reaching threateningly toward the window.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he growled, low and quiet, “but this is not a place for you. You need to leave.”
The eagle only watched him, unperturbed.
They remained like that for a long, stretched moment. Beast and man, trapped in a strange struggle of wills. Finally, as ifsnapping the tension with its shimmering feathers, the eagle broke its gaze, shaking out its neck. Its feathers rumpled in the breeze, and it spread its great wings, the light already catching in those remarkable feathers.
The eagle let out a low whistle that reverberated through the glass. It set off from the ledge in a furious downbeat of its wings and disappeared from view.
Andrian shook his head. Of all the things on his mind, the travel patterns of an Attlehon eagle was not one that he could let consume him.
Pulling his shadows back beneath his skin, he marched toward the door, slamming it behind him as he stormed into the dark, cool hallway.
Andrian didn’t remember ever visitingthe Khento dungeons, but somehow his feet knew the way.
It filled him with a cold, sick sense of dread. He knew why his body could find these dark tunnels, even when his mind didn’t remember.
