Page 26 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

Chapter

Eighteen

“ W hat’s the in-between?” I asked.

“A godsforsaken wasteland,” Kaden muttered. “It’s a place neither of this world nor the Otherworld. It exists in the crevice where one realm meets the next.”

“But I thought . . .” I shook my head. “The Coranthe line created the veil between realms to protect mortal kind. How could anything exist that’s not on one side or the other?”

“It’s not a literal veil,” said Kaden. “More of a dynamic magical field that has these sort of . . . voids. Folds in space and time. Over the millennia, the magic contained within forced those voids to expand. The in-between lies in one such void. It is a place that obeys its own laws of reality — one where no mortal or faerie can survive.”

I frowned. “And the author thinks Mankara’s last writing was hidden in this . . . this void ?”

“It would be an ideal hiding place. No one in their right mind would attempt to steal a book guarded by the Watchman.”

“And who is the Watchman?”

“Not who — what.” Kaden’s expression hardened.

“The Watchman is a creature that bartered with the gods when the realms were first formed. Our legends say the Watchman so feared death that he begged the gods for immortality. What they gave him was . . . worse. An eternal existence of neither life nor death in exchange for guarding the in-between.”

“Guarding it from what?”

Kaden sucked in a breath. “From demons — and other sorts of creatures that prey on souls passing from one world to the next.”

I shuddered. “And you want to go to the in-between to retrieve the book from this Watchman?”

Kaden shrugged as if to ask what other choice we had.

“And how do you plan on getting there?” I asked. “All the portals are sealed.”

“You and I both know that’s not true. If it were, those demons never could have crossed into this realm.”

“And you know where this portal is?”

Kaden squinted. “It’s not a portal so much as a doorway,” he said. “One that goes in but not through .”

He stood smoothly, and I shivered as a buzz of magic rippled over him.

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that Kaden’s street clothes had been replaced by a complete set of fighting leathers that clung to his broad chest and thick, muscular thighs.

The hilt of a sword was just visible over his shoulder, and beneath his jacket I could see the glint of knives sheathed in a bandolier .

My eyebrows crept up. I’d never seen Kaden armed before, even when we’d walked into Caladwyn’s party.

“And where are we going with you dressed like that?” I asked.

Kaden’s eyes glistened. “To see an old friend.”

We hardly said another word as we set off into the gathering dusk. Even though the sun hadn’t set, I kept my head on a swivel. Vampires might not be prowling the Quarter at this time of day, but that didn’t mean Silas’s hunters weren’t.

Soon we left the gaudy main strip behind, and Kaden turned down a residential street lined with dilapidated old houses that had probably once been fine manors.

“This friend,” I asked after a moment. “What do they have to do with finding the portal to the in-between?”

Kaden didn’t turn to look at me as he said, “I told you. It isn’t a portal. It’s a doorway.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. How is this friend of yours going to help us find the doorway?”

“The doorway to the in-between has existed for as long as the veil has,” said Kaden. “Mirabella had her home built around it just so she could show it off to her guests — and threaten to toss them through it if they displeased her.”

Upon hearing that this so-called friend of his was female, something snagged at my insides. It wasn’t jealousy. That would have been ridiculous. Kaden was dark fae and over five hundred years old, which meant that his friends and his friends likely numbered in the hundreds .

“She sounds charming,” I muttered, unable to keep the bitterness out of my tone.

Kaden snorted. “Mirabella is poison. But no one throws a party like her.”

I opened my mouth to reply but thought better of it. We’d reached an old cemetery surrounded by a sagging wrought-iron fence half choked by weeds and brambles. Gnarled trees stood sentinel over the graves, their trunks stooped and twisted as though they, too, had grown tired of the place.

Headstones jutted out at uneven intervals, leering at us through the long shadows cast by moss-covered trees.

Some of the stones were worn so smooth that the names carved along the faces were totally illegible.

Others were cracked or broken clean in two.

A statue of an angel stood near the leaning gates, her face half covered with lichen, as if she were slowly being consumed by the land.

As we rounded the corner, the derelict cemetery gave way to a neat hedgerow and another foreboding iron gate. A huge padlock hung from a chain around the bars, but Kaden merely ran a finger down it, and the lock clicked open obediently.

I hesitated only briefly as he opened the gate before following him down an immaculate tree-lined walkway.

The gate swung shut with a loud clatter, and I got the off-putting feeling that I’d entered another world entirely.

Here the air was heavy and sickly sweet, as if the grounds themselves were trying to lure any visitors into a stupor.

For several minutes, the only sound was the crunch of our footsteps on gravel. No birds squawked. No insects chirped. Even the trees seemed to be holding tight to their branches, as if every living thing feared awakening the predator that slumbered nearby.

Finally, the house came into view, and I sucked in a breath. Made entirely of buff-colored stone, the manor loomed over the grounds like a ruthless empress. Its arched windows were dark, but I felt a sinister presence within — as if the house itself had been lying in wait to claim its next visitor.

My unease mounted as we approached the front door, where a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of Medusa’s head glinted in the moonlight. Her chin was lifted, exposing the long line of her neck, and her eyes were rolled back in ecstasy.

Kaden didn’t knock. Instead, he ran one long finger down the center of the door — a lover’s caress.

Goosebumps sprang up all over my arms as Medusa’s eyes rolled forward, snapping onto him.

I jumped, but Kaden remained perfectly still as her mouth opened to reveal two long, gleaming fangs. The snakes protruding from her scalp began to writhe, lifting their heads from the door to face Kaden, hissing and bobbing as they regarded him.

Kaden rolled his eyes, and the snakes gave another spiteful hiss. Then Medusa’s eyes returned to their previous position, and I heard the click of a lock. The door swung open with a loud creak, and Kaden let himself inside.

I didn’t feel the unpleasant tug of wards as I crossed the threshold, but the second the door snicked shut behind me, the house seemed to swallow us whole. An unnatural darkness pressed in on all sides, and my skin prickled with unease.

“Is your friend . . . a vampire?” I asked uncertainly .

“She is.”

My stomach lurched. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised — we were in the Quarter, after all. But the thought of Kaden befriending, possibly even bedding, a vampire made me feel sick, and I was glad he couldn’t see my face.

Just then, a ball of faelight beamed into existence, floating above our heads. Kaden waved a hand, and the faelight split into a dozen tiny orbs, fanning out across the parlor to illuminate the heavy iron sconces that lined the walls.

My gaze followed the streaks of light up to the arched cathedral ceiling, where shadows seemed to devour the faelight before it could reach all the way to the rafters.

A huge stone staircase swept along the wall to my left, and a stuffy little parlor beckoned from the right. A narrow stone passageway stretched before us, its walls lined with dusty oil paintings of foggy moorlands.

Kaden moved through the house like someone who had been there many times before, summoning little balls of faelight as he went. Dust shifted under our feet, carrying the scent of unwashed bedsheets, rotten floorboards, crushed bone, and blood. My whole body recoiled at the smell.

“We’ll need to be quick,” said Kaden, stopping in front of an arched wooden door and producing an enormous hickory stake. It was so large that he couldn’t possibly have had it on him for our walk through the Quarter, unless he’d kept it concealed in some kind of magical pocket.

He took my hand gently in his and pressed the stake into my palm. My fingers curved around the smooth wood automatically, and when I met Kaden’s gaze, he looked uncharacteristically grim.

“They shouldn’t bother us before dark, but —” His lips became a thin line, and I could have sworn those silvery-gray eyes landed on the half-moon scars along my neck.

My skin prickled where his gaze brushed over those old fang marks, and I had to fight the urge to cover them with my hand. “I thought Mirabella was your friend.”

Kaden cracked a salacious grin that made my insides burn. “She has been, at times.”

I made a sound of disgust and tightened my grip on the stake. It shouldn’t have bothered me that he’d fucked Mirabella, but it did.

“Their crypt is down there,” he said, nodding at the door. “If any of them wakes up early . . .” He took a quick breath. “Just go for the pool.”

“The pool?” I repeated, frowning in confusion.

“It’s the doorway to the in-between. Mirabella had this whole damn pile of bricks built on top of it.

She’s . . . fond of collecting things. Things she can show off to her guests whenever she hosts parties.

” A muscle ticked in Kaden’s jaw, and his gaze seemed to sear right through me as he said, “Whatever happens, do not reveal who or what you are. Mirabella’s collection is not limited to rare magical objects. ”