Page 28

Chapter twenty-eight

A Cave of Nightmares

R ook was in much better spirits when I finally emerged from the bathroom. I had taken a shower first, telling myself it was because of the bloodstains still visible on my hands from helping Rook but really it was because I was trying to buy time before I had to face them all again after the bombshell that Lark had just dropped on me regarding our connection.

So I had taken a particularly long shower and an even longer time selecting the dark gray denim pants and loose gray sweater that I threw on before exiting into the living room again. I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t heard the revelry taking place just outside the bedroom door.

Rook was entirely healed, the magic having done the trick, and he was drinking heavily, smiling as Cass laughed uncontrollably at some story they were recalling. Even Lark was grinning, raising a glass to his lips which he paused when he saw me, that penetrating gaze sweeping over me from head to toe, drinking me in as if he could never get enough. Heat rushed to my cheeks and I lowered my head, pretending to fix my hair as I settled onto the settee next to Cass.

“You are so lying,” she was saying, though she was grinning from ear to ear.

“I swear to you, I’m not,” Rook boomed back. “That gorgon took one look at Lark and shit his metaphorical pants.”

Cass snorted into her glass as Rook reached behind her to hand me one of my own. Our eyes met and he gave me a solemn nod of thanks. It was enough.

“He’s not used to a Morningstar actually taking the job of Hellscape warden seriously, I bet,” Cass replied, rolling her eyes as she took a drink. Rook nodded his agreement. “Did he give you the key?”

Rook grinned, looking at Lark.

“It took some convincing,” Lark drawled before taking a deep sip of that amber liquid.

His eyes flicked to mine and I squirmed in my chair, internally cursing myself for the physical reaction. But the smirk on his lips when he noticed how he had affected me was almost worth it.

“He didn’t turn you to stone,” Cass said, brow creasing in confusion as she looked over her shoulder at where Rook lounged beside her. “But he stabbed you through the leg. How did that happen?”

“Turns out, he wasn’t working alone,” Rook told her and he wasn’t smiling anymore.

Neither of them were.

“Lark?” Cass asked, glancing at her brother as if hoping he might tell her it wasn’t true.

But Lark’s smirk fell into a frown.

“Fae appeared before we could grab him,” Lark said, swirling the contents of his glass and staring down into them. “Dressed in brown.”

I froze.

“Peace and Pride,” Cass muttered.

“My ass,” Rook snorted.

Lark cut a glare to him and he fell silent, raising his glass to his lips instead.

“Do you think she’s behind this?” Cass asked, her voice wavering as she did. “That she could be… recruiting gorgons to do her bidding? And why would she want the key to Hellscape anyway?”

“My guess?” Lark asked. “Access to minotaurs she can drop into the mortal realm.”

I dropped my glass. It shattered against the rug, brown liquid seeping into the orange shag. But Cass waved a finger, without even looking my way, and the mess was gone and Rook was handing me another drink, which I took with shaking hands.

“You think she’s behind the rifts,” Cass breathed, so in awe that her voice barely rose above the whisper.

“Who else would have such power, such ambition? Who else might want to see our planes collide? Who else might want to tear down the division between mortal and immortal?”

“But even she doesn’t have the power to tear through the Divide. Even she cannot control beasts or access Hellscape.”

“Sixty years ago, we claimed she couldn’t control minds either, Cass. Truthfully, we don’t have the slightest idea what she is capable of. And we have been underestimating her for far too long.”

The group fell silent at the implications of what Lark was suggesting. That a single woman, my mother, might be capable of ripping holes into the temporal divide that separated the immortal plane from the mortal, that she might be sending monsters of lore and legend back into the mortal world once again, was almost too much to take, particularly given what I had learned about her only recently.

“Is it even possible?” I asked in a whisper when no one else was speaking.

“It… would be the first time,” Lark said. “I can’t think of a way, but if anyone could…”

He left the rest unsaid. That it would be my mother. That she could feel justified in creating that much chaos, that much destruction. I felt sick to my stomach and set my drink on the table beside the settee, taking a deep breath.

“What’s your plan?” Rook asked. “Storm into the Court of Peace and Pride and ask her? I don’t really think she would be all that forthcoming, considering the last time you saw one another.”

“We don’t need to ask her,” Lark said. “When there’s the matter of the gorgon.”

“They captured him. We won’t be able to get to him.”

“All gorgons report their actions to their queen.”

Silence descended upon the group once more. I sensed an overwhelming feeling of doom surrounding them.

“You don’t mean—” Cass started but Lark interrupted.

“It’s been a while since we visited Medusa.”

Wrapping my mortal mind around the fact that Medusa was real, let alone still alive and thriving as a self-proclaimed Queen somewhere in Hellscape, was proving nearly impossible. I had been quizzing Cass on what to expect for the last half hour as the men armed themselves to the teeth and prepared to leave again despite my suggestion that Rook take some time to recover. Even if he was healed physically, nearly dying and experiencing the pain of cauterization was a mental wound that would need time as well. But he waved me off and armed himself alongside his prince.

“Does she really have snakes for hair?” I was asking as Cass strapped a knife to her inner thigh and handed one to me to do the same.

“No,” she answered with a snort. “That’s a mortal myth. She can turn you to stone, though. That’s sort of a gorgon’s whole deal. She’s also a raging bitch.”

“Cass! Ren!” Rook called from the next room and I quickly slipped the knife beneath my waistband before joining Cass and the boys in the living room.

“Not that it would be a problem… again,” Lark said, his gaze flicking to Rook, “but don’t let her kiss you.”

Cass rolled her eyes and then disappeared.

“One time, Lark,” Rook argued with a sigh. “I kiss a gorgon one time and you never let me live it down.”

“You were paralyzed for six hours,” Lark reminded him.

Rook raised a particular finger in Lark’s direction before disappearing as well. Lark chuckled, shaking his head, and extended a hand to me.

“She would talk to me, you know,” I said softly. “My mother. So we don’t have to go into Hellscape, so we don’t have to face Medusa.”

“I would rather face Medusa any day than Ariadne Dawnpaw,” Lark replied with a frown, dark eyes boring into mine with significance. “Besides, unless you choose to go to her for yourself, she will have to drag you there over my cold, dead body.”

Then he snatched my hand and we were gone, leaving behind the soothing warmth of the cozy orange apartment and emerging into a world of darkness.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust as I looked for the sky and could not find it. Everything around us was pure blackness. Not a trace of light to be found. But we were illuminated somehow. Just us, just our bodies. I raised my hands and peered down to find shining specks of light glinting from my fingertips.

“So you know you’re not a monster,” Cass whispered as I continued my examination. “And so you remember not to become one.”

I shuddered as Lark approached an enormous door. He pulled a blade from his cloak and sliced his hand right down the middle. I gasped but Cass held me back as he pressed his palm to the ancient door. He muttered something in a language I did not understand and then pulled an obsidian block from an internal pocket of his coat and pressed it against where his hand had been, the bloody print left behind glowing red against the endless night.

With a groaning hiss of a mechanism that had gone mostly unused for centuries, the doors pushed inward and we strode inside. I stuffed my hands into the sleeves of my sweater, trying not to shiver. It was cold here and damp. Like a cave, but darker. Somewhere, far away, a beast I couldn’t see let out a howl that chilled me to the bone. Shivering increased, I hastened forward to walk closer to Cass who had waved her hand and summoned a ball of light which she was using to light our way through the dark passages. Lark led on ahead as though he knew the way so well he didn’t need the light.

Snarling emanated from a pit below, accompanied by hissing and the savage gnashing of teeth. I gasped, stumbling back a step and tripping on a rock. Rook caught me against his chest as I righted my footing.

“Careful there, beautiful,” he warned lowly. “Wouldn’t want you getting lost in here.”

“Don’t be a prick, Rook,” Cass called out from up ahead.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, princess,” Rook muttered back, falling in beside me as we continued our walk.

He ushered me to the inside protectively, against the rising cliff of rock rather than next to the drop off into an enormous dark pit. I glanced up at him, wondering if his protective nature was instinctive or if Lark had commanded him to treat me this way.

“Thank you for earlier by the way,” Rook said a moment later, so quietly I had to look up to make sure I’d heard him correctly.

“You don’t have to thank me,” I told him. “I imagine I owe you a great deal more than a healed leg.”

“You don’t owe us. None of us. We did what we did because it was the right thing to do. And I would do it again.”

“Even with the banishment?”

“Especially with the banishment,” he said and then turned to me, grinning mischievously. “Mortal women can be pretty fun when they let loose.”

I snorted, the sound echoing around in the cave. Lark glanced back over his shoulder and I fell silent, Rook grinning like a fool all the while.

“Medusa isn’t so bad,” he whispered then, sensing my discomfort. “I’m sure whatever you’ve heard about her is worse than she really is. Mortals have a tendency to exaggerate.”

“But she can turn people to stone.”

“Delights in it.”

“So should I avoid looking her in the eye or—”

“It doesn’t work like that. It’s magic, same as everything else. I won’t let her get to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s stop thanking each other now, agreed?”

I smiled up at him.

“Agreed.”

“Lights out,” Lark called suddenly from the front of the line. The darkness seemed to close in on us even more so than usual as we stopped at the foot of the incline we had been descending. And Lark’s voice was just as dark when he made the announcement that brought all of my fear and anticipation right back to the surface. “We’re here.”