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Chapter twenty-nine

A Warden of Hell

O ur narrow walk along the cave wall ended abruptly at a craggy opening and we entered a chamber bathed in soft moonlight, though there was no moon to be found and no opening above us. Stalagmites rose from the floor, some of which were nearly touching their stalactite brethren hanging above them. They were formed from a mineral that looked strangely volcanic. I brushed a finger along the smooth surface and froze.

“Is this—” I started, eyes widening as I looked around in wonder. “Are we inside of a volcano?”

“A hollowed out one,” Rook answered, grinning broadly at my realization. “So don’t go worrying about lava and all that. This one died a long, long time ago.”

“A hollowed out volcano as a prison for ancient mythical beasts. Incredible.”

“We can probably dispense with all that mythology business now, can’t we? I mean, it isn’t exactly a myth after all, is it?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but was interrupted by an ethereal female voice floating into the chamber from somewhere off to the side.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of a Morningstar’s presence?” She cooed, floating into the chamber in a gown of ombre gray. As her skirts shifted, they changed color. From white to gray to black and shades in between.

Her skin was cracked and splintered and of a grayish-green hue. Her hair, which seemed perpetually wet, was roped and hanging in strands around her face. At the base of her throat was a deep cut all the way around, as if her head had been severed from her body and reattached long ago. Her lips were full. Her eyes were both dark and bright. Everything about her screamed unnatural and yet I could see she had been beautiful once, before whatever had occurred to her, before time had taken its toll as it did for all things, even the immortal.

“Which one are you?” she asked, coming to a stop in front of Lark and raising her chin while narrowing her gaze in examination. It wasn’t an act of intimidation, but mere curiosity. She folded her hands demurely in front of her and awaited an answer.

“I am Canis Morningstar,” Lark announced. “Son of Perseus Morningstar. This is my sister, Casseiopia.”

She looked from Lark to Cass and then swiveled her head around to peer at Rook and I.

“And your friends?” she asked, quirking a manicured brow. “Or… foes?”

“Friends,” Lark answered quickly at the look she was giving us. “Rook is a Fae of the Court of Blood and Bone. Seren is—”

“A mortal,” Medusa hissed, nostrils flaring as if she had just caught a whiff of my mortal scent. Her tongue snaked out and flicked once and I realized, with horror, that it was forked.

“Half Fae,” Lark corrected and Medusa’s gaze whipped to him. She cocked her head in surprise and raised a brow again.

“Yours?” she asked, simply.

“Uh,” he hesitated, clearing his throat. It was the first time I had seen him flustered and it was nearly as shocking as the ancient woman of mythical lore standing right in front of me.

Medusa’s cracked lips spread into a grin and she clapped her hands together so suddenly that I couldn’t help but jump.

“It’s been so long since we’ve had visitors,” she cried, suddenly excited. “Come on out, everyone. We have new friends to get to know.”

At her encouragement, dozens of gorgons began to slink closer from the shadows. Without making the conscious decision, I leaned closer to Rook, so close that it pressed my heaving chest against his back.

“You’re safe, Ren,” he told me under his breath. “But you may want to take just a tiny step back. I’m not in the mood to be gutted by Lark today.”

Cheeks heating, I stepped away. I couldn’t help but gape at the creatures crawling toward us. Their skin was much like Medusa’s, cracked and splintered, coarse like stone itself, and various shades of pale red and light yellow, even blue and green, but all faded and grayish. Their hair was roped, their teeth sharp and dripping with some blue venom. Most shocking of all was that they had no legs. Unlike Medusa’s moderately humanoid form, the surrounding gorgons had the upper body of a human and the lower body of a snake. They slithered forward rather than walk and I shuddered at the hissing emanating from all corners of the room.

“Tell me, Canis, what situation is so dire that a Morningstar would dare to treat with me?” Medusa asked as her people hissed their approval.

I narrowed my focus to her, seeking her emotions. But I was met with silence as solid and sturdy as cold stone.

“You won’t be able to read her,” Rook whispered under his breath, divining my intentions. “She’s—well, she’s technically dead.”

My eyes bulged from my head as I turned my gaze to him.

“Dead?” I croaked.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it, of course. But yes. She’s… not alive, not really. You know the story, don’t you? Medusa was the only gorgon born mortal, the only one passably human. She had a rough go of it and then Perseus, not Lark’s father, another one, killed her by cutting off her head. Then her sons sprouted up from her blood and he took the head as a trophy.”

“So how—”

“Some necromancer came along and, well, it’s really not worth getting into. But these gorgons still see her as their queen down here. They follow her word like its law. There isn’t anything a gorgon does that she doesn’t know about, in or out of Hellscape. The point is, you won’t be able to read her. But Cass will.”

“Cass? What do you—”

A sudden hissing sound interrupted me as a blinding white light shot suddenly from Medusa’s own eyes toward Lark. I let out a scream but Rook didn’t even move as Cass flung out a hand and silver smoke flew from her, colliding with Medusa’s strike and landing on the cave floor with a soft thud, smoke turned stone, silver, gleaming rock.

“How did she know?” I asked, gaping at what had just occurred in front of me.

“Premonition,” Rook whispered back. “That’s her gift. But she should tell you about it herself sometime.”

I didn’t have time to respond before Medusa was speaking again.

“I had to try, you know,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and raising her chin as she stared back at Lark and Cass. “They wouldn’t respect me if I didn’t.”

The gorgons hissed their assent.

“I’m here about a gorgon named Lycurgus,” Lark said, steering the conversation back on track and getting to the point of our visit. I could feel his impatience. At least I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. “I assume you know who that is.”

“Is he dead?” Medusa asked flatly.

“Captured.”

“Pity.”

She raised a hand and examined her nails as if the matter was of no consequence.

“I know he bargained with my brother to procure the key to Hellscape,” Lark said.

“Procure,” Medusa scoffed. “Is that what you call a rightful gain from your gambling addicted brother?”

Lark’s gaze narrowed.

“Very well,” Medusa sighed, rolling her eyes. “Not that it mattered. He needed Fae blood to use it, you know that. Though I imagine the one who conscripted him for the task in the first place might have sufficed.”

I tensed. This was the information we needed. This was why we were here. And she knew it. She was playing with us, I realized, letting her eyes roll over her nails and flick up to Lark who stood completely still in the eerie moonless light.

“What do you want to tell us who it was?” Lark asked. “And don’t say you want to be set free.”

Medusa rolled her eyes again and then twisted her head back and forth, as if rolling out the muscles of her neck.

“I want that Cerberus next door moved,” she said, frowning. “Howls all night and whines all day. Makes getting one’s beauty sleep a trifle more difficult. Not that I need it.”

“I’ll move your noisy neighbor,” Lark promised. “Now. Who sent Lycurgus to get the key from my brother?”

“You already know, don’t you? You just want me to verify your suspicions.”

Lark’s gaze narrowed. Medusa just smiled, those sharp, pointed teeth on full display. When she realized he wasn’t taking her bait, however, she huffed out a sigh.

“Fine,” she said. “It was the Dawnpaw. The younger one, not that any of us are young anymore, are we? Well, except you, sweetling.”

Her gaze snapped to me and she licked the top row of her razor-sharp teeth with that forked tongue. I stood my ground, trying to appear unaffected by the obvious taunt.

“Ariadne?” Lark snapped, drawing the Queen of the Gorgons’ gaze back to him.

“The one and only,” she hissed.

“Why did she want it?”

“You already know that too.”

“Humor me.”

“She’s been experimenting, dabbling in a bit of dark magic here and there. The sort that your kind always claims to abhor until you decide you want to use it.”

“For what?”

“That.”

Medusa pointed upward at the same time I and everyone else noticed a sudden ribbon of sunlight flowing into this otherwise dark world. The gorgons in the shadows hissed and withdrew into the dark. Medusa smiled even wider, turning her ancient eyes to the golden beams she likely hadn’t seen for centuries and positively basking in them, holding her arms out wide and letting her eyelids flutter closed.

It was a rift.

My eyes bulged, lips parting in surprise as I stared up at the hole torn into the fabric between worlds. It was growing as we watched, turning from a pinprick of sunlight into a veritable skylight. And beyond, we could see a balmy beach, ocean water lapping up the coast, and scientists in white lab coats running back and forth, already searching for their instruments, already shouting instructions to one another. And then I saw him, staring up into the rift as if peering up at me from the surface of a lake.

Wyn Kendrick.

I felt his fear, his determination, his fury that another one of these things could blemish his world, become a blight upon his people, his department. He stared into the void with such intense hatred that I thought, for a moment, he might have seen me. But then he turned away, waving a hand and calling for someone else.

“Incredible, aren’t they?” Medusa asked, pleased with herself. “A window into the mortal realm, a doorway back to where we’re from, back home. If you’re brave enough to claim it. I know a minotaur who was. Poor thing didn’t make it.”

Her gaze flicked to me and my breath caught in my throat at the realization. She knew me. She had seen me take down that minotaur. They could see everything from this side of the rift. Everything.

“Very chivalrous of you,” Medusa quipped then, turning back to Lark, “kidnapping this one a second time to save her life.”

“Is she here?” Lark snapped. “Ariadne. She must be nearby to perform this.”

“That’s the beauty of it. Whatever dark and ancient magic she’s drawing from allows her to conduct this little light display from somewhere else, a fact she figured out after her one and only jaunt down here. I assume that’s why she let you get your hands on the key so easily. She didn’t need it anymore.”

Rook muttered a curse. Cass hung her head. Lark just stood there, gritting his teeth and staring up at the rift.

Then, with one primal cry of rage, he threw his arms outward and began to steam. White mist rose from him and slithered against the cave floors. Medusa gasped and slid away. The gorgons hissed and retreated even further, as if afraid to touch such powerful magic. The mist thickened as it rose up the cave walls and came together to cover the rift above. There was a moment of struggle in which it seemed the Divide couldn’t decide whether or not it intended to heal but Lark’s magic won out and we watched as the rift disappeared, the mist dissipated, and we were plunged back into darkness, back into that dim, eerie moonlight glow.

“You can’t keep us here forever,” Medusa hissed, her melodic, narcissistic tone vanished and replaced by one of utter cruelty, genuine hatred. “If she doesn’t free us, someone else will. We are eternal. Hellscape is not.”

“It will be,” Lark promised. “So long as a Morningstar sits the Obsidian Throne.”

Medusa fell to hissing with the rest of the gorgons as Lark spun around and led us all quickly from the makeshift hall, his cloak snapping after him as he left.