Page 5 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)

Four

Within The Castle of Iron & Stone, Swear Fealty To World Of Below.

T he cold ground came up to meet me, and I landed against the marble with a smack, the impact ringing through my bones. My vision swam, fuzzy and almost snow-blind for the brightness that had at last disappeared. But I wasn’t held down, and I struggled to push up from the floor and take in my new surroundings.

For as bright as it had been mere moments ago, everything around me was now dark once more. Save, of course, for the towering stained glass windows that dominated the enormous black stone walls. The room came more and more into focus, and I looked up, up, up, into the unearthly glowing window that sat ahead of me at the top of a set of stairs.

The long, thin arch of glass was shaped with gothic curves and sections, scenes depicted on its surface that I could not make out from this distance. A hovering mist floated past me, the billowing clouds of gray lazily drifting across the steps and following them the landing several feet away.

And as stark a contrast as the flaring red glow of the window was the dripping yet static trails of crimson that coated the rough-hewn stone floor.

“It looks like—”

“Blood.” A feminine voice cut through the silence, bouncing off the steepled ceiling that stretched endlessly high. “Why, yes. It does.”

I shivered, unable to stop myself. The room was just as freezing as the last, but it was that voice that shook me to my bones. Ethereal and gorgeous while also terrifying and too much for my mind to comprehend. It was backed by that same droning melody.

Except, the notes had altered ever so slightly. A lilting regality was there now, but one that was no less ominous for this change in scenery.

“The wolf. I’d…Who are you?”

A chuckle, sourceless and seductive, rumbled through the throne room. Or what I had assumed was one, though I had yet to see a proper seat for a monarch.

“I am I—as I have always been. Still here, still with you. I have only…adapted.”

Thick pillars, each cut into the curved shapes of ancient columns, flanked either side of the stairs. That scarlet illumination dressed them in chilling lighting, and I could see nothing past them in the shadows. At the juncture of the pillars’ bases at the floor, thick root-like protrusions clogged up the corners, and moss dripped from the loftier edges.

And there is nowhere else to go but up.

Steeling myself as best as possible, I straightened, gathering up the hem of my nightgown—the thing so frail and nearly see-through—and climbed the stone stairs. Step after step, exhaustion clawed at me. But I would not stop. I would keep going. Whatever was trying to weigh me down would find that it took more than some fatigue to beat me.

Time was stretched and thin, but at last, I reached the flat ground before that enormous window. Standing before the glass, the vermillion light it spilled tinted the white of my nightdress pink. It struck me that among this gargantuan fortress, I alone was clad in the color. The pale sheen of my hair—tousled and slipping from the hastily done knot I’d done for bed—contrasted the walls like a checkerboard.

What’s black and white and red all over? An underworld castle holding a girl prisoner, of course.

“Well done, Cerri. Only a little further now.” My skin hummed with each syllable uttered by the unseen woman. “Come, little seed.”

I dropped my head, my chin nearly hitting my chest, and sighed. What was happening? This…this was all much more than a simple girl like myself could handle. But there was scarcely any choice. I had to proceed. When a goddess, a demon, or whatever ancient being of power this was asked something of you, it was unwise to refuse them.

Lifting my foot, I put it back down again on the next bit of stone to greet me. As I turned to the left, ready to follow this path wherever it led, I noticed the designs forged into the iron of the window. The intricate work of stained glass was painstaking and involved, and the images created here in a castle outside of the mortal realm were…exquisite.

And unnerving.

Swirling lines and angles painted out the pictures of gnashing jaws, claws, and torn flesh. The wolf was there, hunting through the story told through black and red shapes. But there was more. A woman, a Queen, stalked across the panes, her lengthy hair trailing off to the edges of the window frame. Sumptuous curves graced her form, along with a set of large horns protruding from her head.

Deer? No, no. Antelope. How strange.

Something about seeing her there made my blood warm, a feeling of unprovoked excitement winding through my veins. That was who spoke, the woman whose voice rang through the gargantuan hall, and a part of me…knew her.

“Of course, you know me. Now, come, little seed. I grow impatient.”

A yanking sensation dragged me forward, twisting me around the curve in the hall and pulling me into the depths of this foreboding castle. I could not fight against the momentum that propelled my legs onward, and before I knew I was in a new chamber, the unseen throne of before now present in the center of a massive pool.

The water of the fountain ahead of me, the throne, was glass-still, wholly unmoving, with not so much as a single ripple. There were stained glass windows here as well, dozens of them stacked one on top of the other, reaching up into the stratosphere. In the center of the massive circle—the liquid reflecting the ruby light still omnipresent in this new chamber—sat a throne of black iron and obsidian.

Upon the seat, I could just make out a humanoid shape, though the details were impossible to discern. What I could tell was that the long black locks that had been illustrated in the glass frescos extended out from their head.

It was Her.

“Don’t just stand there. Come close, pet.” Her voice knifed into my brain, compelling me to step up to the very edge of the pool.

It was then that I realized the liquid did not reflect the red light. It was red.

Blood .

Before my eyes, the woman appeared to solidify, black tendrils of substance coagulating into the throne until she rose from the chair and stepped down onto the central platform. The trails of her black hair twisted in upon themselves, weaving into two thick braids that dragged behind her as she continued to walk forward. Their ends were still impossible to determine, but still more of her came into focus as I watched, utterly enraptured.

She was nude, each inch of her glowing skin revealed. It was a deep yet pale gray, and the contrast of highlight and shadow was woefully stark. Sensuous curves created the shape of an hourglass, and she was inches taller than I was.

And those horns were even more striking in reality. They stretched at least two feet up from her head, and yet she carried herself like they weighed nothing.

It felt somehow wrong to look upon her like this, and my pulse fluttered against my neck as I fought to avert my eyes from her full breasts, the soft V created by the juncture of her legs. I didn’t want to confront the way her very presence elicited ravenous thoughts in my mind, forbidden inklings of what she might taste like against my tongue making my core clench.

This woman, this Queen, moved achingly slow as she approached me, and I was unable to do anything more than just stand there, hungry for her to reach me and unsure why. My eyes began to roam the space, looking for something to distract myself from the need firing up through my blood.

“And what do you see, little seed?” That deep purr of her voice forced me to answer, and the words tumbled from my mouth like stolen confessions as I described the scenes portrayed in the stained glass.

“Shapes, intimate and raw. They are…” I swallowed, my throat suddenly parched. “...entwined in each other. I can make out your form, imperfectly shown in the black curves of iron running through glass: your breasts, your hips. You are savoring another, unclear and indistinct. They are…erotic.”

Echoing chuckles filled the room, from shining marble floors up to the rafters meters and meters above my head. I shivered, too much sensation pounding in my chest. I could feel The Queen right next to me even as I looked at her, still a handful of feet away. She crossed the slick pool, walking on the surface as if she weighed less than a feather. Only her toes showed the effect of trodding through the red liquid, and my eyes burned for how I had yet to blink.

“And what do you think of them, sweetness?” My stare was fixed to her swaying hips, the way the full curves of them moved as she approached me. “Tell me what I can already see in your mind.”

She still stood at the edge of the pool, but somehow, The Queen’s hands were touching me, tracing lines down the sides of my neck, my arms, across my chest. The touches were like icy tendrils that lingered in my skin like a subtle burn. My breath came in shuddering attempts to get air, and I trembled, goosebumps rippling over my flesh.

“You…How are you…” My words were lost on me, the enormity of these strange reactions overtaking me. “You are beautiful.”

It was the truth, and it was all I could manage to say. The Queen laughed once more, and then she was behind me, leaving me to stare across the crimson pool at the empty seat of obsidian. A massive arch sat behind it, a glowing red light creating the backdrop to her throne.

Soft lips hovered over the crook of my neck, sliding upward until I felt them brush over the shell of my ear. My nerves flared at the intimate touch, my mind calling out for more even as I could not understand why I should want such a thing from someone who could surely kill me with a flick of her wrist.

“Flattery,” every syllable she uttered was perfumed with raw sensuality, “will get you everywhere, little seed. Unfortunately…”

The Queen let the word hang there in the air. I could see it, sense it with every fiber of my being. I was so wholly on the edge of sanity, waiting for her next utterance, literally hanging on her words as I leaned backward into the feeling of her breath on my skin.

Gods, what is happening to me? I feel as if I’ll lose my mind if she does not…I don’t even know what I want from her—except…everything .

Suddenly, her true hand was upon my shoulder, her fingers idly playing with the long waves of my hair. Her nails were viciously sharp—long and menacing—as I turned to look at them.

“You have a task that you must tend to first and foremost, Cerridwen.”

I shook my head, my skull ringing with the melody that still loomed in the background. “I don’t understand. I’m just some girl, a witch, yes, but what could I possibly do for you?”

Tangles of black strands surrounded me—a fly caught in the spider’s web—and I was lost to the disorienting matrix of The Queen’s unique form as she circled around me. I was bound up in her black sea of inky waves, and she used them as ropes to hold me in place.

Standing before me, The Queen put the point of her nail to the underside of my chin, forcing me to look up into the incomprehensible beauty of her face—luscious full lips of ruby red, lidded dark eyes that peered into my soul, and a pristine construction of features that radiated with an unearthly brilliance.

“Oh, little seed, there is so much that you could do for me.” Her sly smile was framed in short fangs. “Still, another time. You have a task , after all.”

She said it as if the words were the sentence passed upon me by a higher power—her power.

“W-What task?”

I was a meek rabbit in her hold, a tiny bunny who’d hopped into the wolf’s den—a wolf who was somehow this woman as well.

“Darkness—unnatural and fiendish—has invaded the World of Below. I can sense it at the fringes, and yet it is shielded from my true sight. It disrupts the balance. You, sweet Cerridwen, must remedy this.”

I balked at the implication, my jaw dropping as I stared on in absolute horror. “Me? I am no match for something so detrimental. Surely, The Queen of Summer’s End is the fit for this. She has true power. She had defeated a corruption before, becoming the Queen we know now.”

The Queen stepped forward yet again, hovering her lips over mine like ghosts determined to haunt my every breath.

“No, little seed. The Queen tends to her realm, and now you must tend to yours .”

“Did you say…” My mind reeled, frenzied panic crawling up the back of my throat to choke me. “My realm?”

This was wrong, so very, very wrong.