I hoped they could be ours again.
When I woke up,Emma was curled up alongside me, rousing from a nap of her own. It was still dark out. We hadn’t been asleep for long. I figured it was around midnight by the time we woke up.
I felt completely refreshed. I put weight on my paw, and found it fully healed. I was ready to start traveling again, though I didn’t think we’d leave until morning, and at the moment, we didn’t have anywhere to go.
Emma rose to her feet with bleary eyes. She brushed her hair out of her face, and went for the door.
“We should check out our surroundings,” Emma suggested. “See if anyone or anything’s come by while we slept. They would’ve left tracks.”
“Good plan.”
Emma opened the door, and we stepped outside. The sky was still overcast, and everything was cold. Below us was the same empty pit we’d faced when we’d come through the gate. I didn’t see any tracks, or signs anyone had been by.
“Nothing. I guess we’re alone,” Emma said. She turned to go back inside, and at that moment, the clouds parted. Light shone down from the sky as Edinmyre’s moons illuminated the pit below. My heart caught in my chest as I watched the moonlight gleam, creating a scene out of what hadn’t been there before. Emotion rose within me as I watched magic materialize, fashioning a city out of nothing.
“Emma. Look,” I said.
Emma came to my side. She gasped in amazement as she watched buildings rise before our very eyes under the glimmering light of the stars. As I gazed downward, a sense of disbelief resonated through my bones. I was stunned that after all this time, we were finally here.
The court of night. We had found it.
Chapter Twelve
Emma
The city didn’t appear until it was underneath the moonlight. That was the brilliant thing about it— the pit was anillusion, a disguise to keep it hidden. If you were looking at it in the daylight, all you’d see was the surrounding mountains, rocky craigs, and a giant pit in the ground that led to a very bumpy road. The road nearly looked like diverging paths, splitting off in different directions around the mountain’s form.
But once the moonlight hit it, everything changed, and the illusion fell away. The road and the paths became streets of silver glass, which reflected the clouds above. The craggy stones became buildings, shifting into beautiful monuments that had tall spires, monumental domes and high-spired architecture that was both foreboding and welcoming all at once.
There was a stone staircase leading downward into the city. “Come on!” I told Ethan. We hurried down the staircase, which ended on an obsidian sidewalk. We took the path forward, gazing upward at the tall black buildings, which were adorned with spikes and pitched towers.
Ethan and I walked through the streets with a sense of reverie. This felt almost like a holy ground, a church built as a monument to Unseelie power. We passed a massive, broken clock tower, a giant stone bridge, an abandoned cathedral, and a stained glass window that was completely made of dark blue glass. The city was draped in a midnight hue that blended into the colors of night. Every surface appeared to be lined with a magical, glossy sheen that reflected your gaze like rippling water.
In its prime, this city would’ve held thousands of people, but as of now, we were the only two that walked inside. It’d been abandoned for centuries, yet the city was still clean, pristine even, kept whole by the magic the Unseelie had cast upon it before the war had begun. The city’s lonesome soul reached out to us now, as if beckoning us to come home.
Throughout the city and written upon the walls were runes in the Unseelie language. We followed the runes and came to a canal, where a boat with hooked edges was waiting.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Ethan asked.
“I think so. I don’t think it’s a trap.” I nudged the boat with my boot, and it floated harmlessly to the side.
I shrugged. We entered into the boat, and of its own accord, it carried us down the canal.
It seemed the buildings grew taller the farther we went into the city. There were a few signs the place had been deserted— a few haphazard candles that hadn’t been touched since the Middle Ages, pages of old books that fluttered through the wind, and a chilling howl that whimpered through the mountainside. Other than that, there were no signs anything about this city had changed… except for the lack of people.
I was certain that protections and wards had been placed around the city to freeze it in time. The people who built this place knew their kin would return to it someday, and therefore, only allowed those who had descended from the people who had lived here to enter. I was keenly aware that our ancestors had built it like this to keep it void of outsiders. This city was only forourpeople, and this was where we belonged.
Glowing lanterns hovered over the canal and above the city streets, providing us with light. I was stunned the magic had held on this long, and wondered where my ancestors had drawn the magic from, to keep the illusion going for such a long time. I heard the sound of rushing water, and looked up to see that there were waterfalls pouring off some of the buildings, crafted in an articulate design so they flowed seamlessly into the canal.
We reached the end of the canal, and disembarked the boat. I put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, and we wandered past the silvery gates that led to the center of the city. When we reached it, I gasped. A massive stone statue stood in the middle of the circular square. The statue was made out of the impressions of hundreds of people, all different expressions and faces, the images of dragons, wolves, griffins and alicorns placed beside them. The monument rose upward hundreds of feet, blocking out the light of the moon.
I skimmed my fingers over the stone monument and felt a chill echo through my bones. It was like I could feel the suffering of the Unseelie. As if the ancient war had taken place yesterday, and not hundreds of years ago.
“We should get a better vantage point,” Ethan suggested, and he jerked his head toward a nearby tower. “This building looks taller than most.”
I nodded, and climbed on his back. We took a set of winding stairs upward to a domed tower. Once we reached the summit, I saw that the trip was well worth it. The stone columns framed the city below in a perfect picture, nearly identical to a painting. I slid off Ethan’s back and placed my hands on the balcony of the tower to look down. At the edge of the city was a circle of runes, which glowed teal in the moonlight. I looked carefully at the streets and realized that each road and street were formed in precise patterns to create a design. If one were looking down the city from directly above, they’d see that the entire metropolis was designed in the shape of the Unseelie rune foreverlasting life. The buildings appeared to little bits of starlight speckled along an inky black portrait, the mountain range spanning beyond. A bit of snow trickled over the scene, and I felt a stirring in my heart that was neither love nor amazement, but rather, a sense of home.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” I whispered, and tears rose to my eyes. “It’s so beautiful.”
