Chapter fifteen

A Fool's Bargain

W e waited below the arena in an open room that seemed like it used to contain cages of some sort. I shuddered to think what those cages might have contained and didn’t have the stomach to ask even though I knew Rook would probably tell me. I just stayed in the shadows, standing near the wall, close to where Rook stood. No one had said outright that he was to guard me but I understood his attention for what it was and allowed myself to be guarded, thankful for the protection for the first time.

“Brother,” Taurus announced in his booming voice as he entered the room they had instructed us to wait in, having finally torn himself away from his adoring fans. “Tell me, how is exile treating you?”

Rook tensed but Lark only tapped his fingers on the table that he and Cass were seated at and frowned.

“It hasn’t been the vacation father promised it would be,” he answered in a low tone.

“You seem to have brought back a souvenir anyway,” Taurus replied, dropping into the seat across from them and reclining easily, his eyes flicking up to where I stood. The corner of his lips quirked upward and Rook took a step in front of me.

“Speaking of father,” Lark drawled, ignoring his brother’s unasked question regarding the strange mortal in the room, “is he recovering well?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Taurus snapped, his gaze darting back to his brother fast. Too fast.

Lark raised a brow and Taurus’ jaw snapped shut. He leaned back in his seat again, this time folding his arms across his chest.

“What happened, Taurus?”

“Maybe you should ask Ursa.”

“Why?” Cass intervened then, narrowing her eyes to a glare. “Because she stayed by his side while you ran away to these dreadful pits?”

“I did not run away,” Taurus snarled. “And if you’re pissed at me because of what I did to our sister, you might remind yourself that it was she who came for me first. Besides, I’m not the only one who ran.”

Cass’ lips curled, her glare intensified, and I could feel the heat of their combined power thrumming throughout the room.

“Alright,” Lark interrupted their stare off with a tone of attempted mediation. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Just tell us what happened, Taurus.”

Taurus’ eyes flicked to Rook and I where we stood in the shadows.

“It’s family business,” he growled.

Cass barked a bitter laugh.

“So now we’re a family?” she asked, collapsing back into her seat with a huff and a roll of her eyes.

Taurus gritted his teeth and cast a glare in her direction.

“Fine,” he snapped. “It’s Morningstar business. Court of Blood and Bone royalty business. Children of our father business. Take your pick.”

“Whatever it is,” Lark began, “you can trust them with it.”

Taurus’ eyes remained on me for a moment but, eventually, he relented.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “The assassination attempt wasn’t an assassination attempt at all. Or maybe it was. I’m not even certain anymore. But the main attempt, I think, wasn’t to kill father but to curse him.”

“Curse him?” Cass asked, sitting forward in interest.

“It’s powerful magic, Lark. Ancient. Whoever did this has to be… old.”

Taurus was staring into his brother’s eyes as if trying to get him to understand something from the simple look that passed between them. It seemed to have worked. Lark cocked his head to the side.

“You don’t mean—” Lark began but Taurus was already nodding.

“Who else? I’ve never seen anything like it, Lark. Even Ursa couldn’t undo it and you know about her… specialties.”

“What’s the curse?” Cass asked, her jaw tense for an entirely different reason now.

“It’s his power, his magic. It’s been… funneled out him somehow, like locked away. He can’t use it, Lark.”

I felt the silence in the room in my very bones. A powerful Fae, a King of a Major Court, unable to use his powers, cursed so that he could not access his magic? What force could have such a capability to lay such a curse at the King of the Bone Court’s feet? And, if they could do that, what else were they capable of?

Cass was openly gaping at her brother. Lark was quiet, contemplative, as if thinking about every consequence of such a thing. Rook didn’t say a word but his jaw clenched and I caught the worry in his expression, the fear. I felt it like a bitter taste on my tongue, permeating the room, the fear.

“Rifts between the planes,” Lark finally said, his voice sounding older, more tired, “ancient curses wreaking havoc on Fae Kings, beasts awakening from their slumber. Taurus, when is the last time you checked on Hellscape?”

Taurus frowned at that.

“It’s been… a while,” he admitted and Cass muttered a curse.

“You were appointed its warden five hundred years ago,” Cass reminded him. “How many times, in all those centuries, have you actually done your duty?”

Taurus reached up with one hand to rub the back of his neck, uncomfortable.

“I’ve been busy,” he said but Cass was already shaking her head, blowing out a breath, incredulous. “Besides, why would I need to pop down there time and time again just to check on a prison that’s stood for millennia?”

“Because, you bastard, one of the minotaurs escaped into the mortal realm and killed at least a dozen soldiers and would have killed more if Ren hadn’t stopped it when she did,” Cass snapped.

“Ren?” Taurus asked, and must have noticed the sidelong glance Rook passed my way because his eyes were drawn up to mine once more. “Her? The mortal? She slew a minotaur?”

No one answered.

“Lark, come on,” Taurus said then, his tone almost pleading, much less impressive than the booming bravado he had displayed before. “You know the title of Warden means nothing. Not really. Not when those beasts have been down there for generations.”

“Except they’re getting out,” Lark drawled slowly, his gaze narrowing as well. “And it’s your responsibility to lock them back up again. You need to go down there, Taurus. Now.”

Taurus was rubbing the back of his neck again.

“Yeah, see, that’s not possible,” he said, his face turning as crimson as this court.

“What do you mean it’s not possible?” Lark asked, his tone taking on a measured fury which grew larger with every word he spoke.

“I sort of… lost the key at one of the gambling dens around here.”

Cass gaped.

“You lost the key?” she asked, stunned. “You unbelievable bastard.”

“Who?” Lark asked simply, his voice now simmering with rage.

“He didn’t look like much. I knew he couldn’t get in anyway, not without the magic of a Fae, so I figured—”

“Who?” Lark asked again and even I knew that tone brooked no disagreement.

“Some gorgon,” Taurus blurted.

“A gorgon!” Cass shouted, leaping to her feet in her rage. “You lost the key to Hellscape to a gorgon?”

I blinked, searching my memory for what a gorgon was. When I realized, I visibly paled. Because I knew the most famous gorgon who had ever lived. Even in the mortal realm, we had heard tales of the horror she had wrought. Medusa.

“He can’t get in!” Taurus was shouting back in defense of himself. “He can’t get in without a Fae, you know that!”

“Had you ever considered that he might have been working with one already?”

Taurus paled this time, his eyes widening, his jaw slackening.

“Why—why would a gorgon want anything to do with Hellscape?” he asked, still trying to justify his actions, still trying to lessen the need for any immediate concern. “His kind, they go crazy down there. Gorgons hate Hellscape. They would never set foot—”

“Take us to him,” Lark interrupted him with a primal growl that set my teeth on edge.

“I can’t. After I lost the key to him, the next day when I’d… sobered up and realized what I’d done, I went after him myself. But then he crossed into the Court of Peace and Pride.”

Another silence descended upon the room and I knew, again, that I was definitely missing something.

“Given the state of our relations with that court, I didn’t chance it,” Taurus muttered and then, looking up at his brother as if he could sense the direction of his thoughts already, added, “and you shouldn’t either.”

Lark’s jaw was set, firm. His gaze was narrowed, his lips curled in anger.

“You haven’t given me much choice. We have to get that key back,” he said simply.

“Lark—” Taurus tried.

Inexplicably, suddenly, Taurus’ eyes flicked to me and he blinked once in recognition.

“Oh,” he said with a sigh, collapsing into his chair.

My brow furrowed with confusion. I turned to Rook to find that he was taking great pains not to look at me. Even Cass had her eyes closed. Panic gripped me then. Sheer mortal panic. I hadn’t understood half of what they had been talking about all this time but I had understood the tone, the body language. Things were tense. Lark and Cass were angry, almost desperate, and, in the end, somehow it all related to me. Somehow, I was a part of this. Though I couldn’t fathom how.

“Where did you find her?” Taurus whispered a moment later.

“We will get the key,” Lark snapped, ignoring him and rising from his chair.

Cass rose again with him, folding her hands in front of her and keeping her mouth firmly shut as Lark leaned menacingly across the table so that he was mere inches from Taurus’ face.

“And when we do, you will take us to father yourself.”

My lips parted slightly. This was it. This was how Lark won his way back to his realm. This was how he earned the end of his banishment.

Taurus gave one silent nod, and then we were leaving. Rook and I followed the royal brother and sister from the hall, up a narrow set of rocky stairs, and out into the fresh air once again. It was disorienting. During the hours we had spent underground, day had turned to evening and the sun was setting over the horizon.

“Does anyone want to tell me,” I spoke when we were all far enough away from any potential eavesdroppers, “what just happened in there?”

They all froze. Rook cleared his throat and peered out at the horizon. Cass looked to Lark.

“Taurus lost the key to Hellscape to—” Lark began.

“No, I understood that,” I snapped, annoyed at how much of a simpering fool he apparently believed me to be. “I’m not an idiot. I know what a gorgon is. I know what Hellscape is as well and yes, I can see why a monster having the key to it would not be ideal. I can put all of that together myself, thank you. What I don’t understand is how I fit into all of this.”

Rook was staring at the ground now. Whether his averted gaze was due to the knowledge he had that I did not, or because he had just witnessed a mere mortal scolding his future king, I wasn’t sure. But I knew even Cass wouldn’t meet my eye and that was what made this situation seem far more precarious than I might have assumed otherwise.

“The Court of Peace and Pride is ruled by the only other man in this realm older than my father. King Alban Dawnpaw,” Lark told me, his mouth a grim line. “He’s the only one ancient enough to possess the magic it would have taken to level such a curse upon my father. Now, it is his territory that the gorgon has entered while a war is brewing between our courts. He is the one who tried to kill my father. He is the one who cursed him. And Ren, he is your grandfather.”