Alric’s eyes widened, knowing who Eva meant, but he said nothing to his daughter. He simply turned and spoke with the sentries, stationing two outside the room and having two follow us to Illara’s room.
I moved without thinking, allowing Ciena to usher me out of the destroyed room and down the corridor to Illara’s room. She and Alric spoke around me in whispers. I was hardly aware of what they were saying, the noise in the background blurring together until I couldn’t hear anything at all, and tears silently fell down my cheeks.
We had fought, and though I knew it wasn’t rational, I couldn’t help but feel that I was responsible for his missing presence. Perhaps if I had heard him out before leaving, had let him apologize, then he wouldn’t have left.
Or perhaps something more sinister happened, and he’d been taken in the middle of the night.
We stopped in front of Illara’s door, a strange sulfur smell hanging in the air. Ciena and Alric quickly shared a glance, one full of apprehensive energy that they didn’t realize I’d seen.
Ciena stepped up first, knocking quickly. “Illara?” she called. “Are you in there?”
There was no answer.
One sentry stepped up this time, placing one hand on his sword and the other on the doorknob. He twisted it open and looked at Eva, who gave him a terse nod.
My stomach dropped as he opened the door, and I saw the havoc that lay before us.
Illara’s room had been destroyed similarly to Kalen’s, though the center of the room looked as if it was set up for some kind of ritual. Tall black and white candles littered the ground, the melted wax sticking to the wood. Strange symbols were etched around them, ones I had never seen before in my life. And then there was the strange array of smells lingering.
The sulfur was the strongest, but beneath it all, I caught the faint hint of copper.
Blood.
Ciena’s skin had gone pale, all color leached from her as if she’d been hidden away from the sun her entire life. She placed a hand over her chest and took in the surroundings. “My gods,” she whispered. “It’s a summoning ritual.”
“A summoning?” Alric asked sharply, turning toward the witch queen. “A summoning for what?”
I closed my eyes against the onslaught of images running through my mind, trying not to lose my lunch all over the floor.
“It can be used for many things, some good and some bad,” Ciena began, crouching to examine one of the runes. “But summoning spells were outlawed by many of the covens over a century ago because they found that those who partook in them were inclined to draw from the darkness, rather than the light. This one in particular,” she said, nodding at the floor. “It summons portals.”
“Portals?” he asked, brows furrowing.
Ciena nodded. “Think of them as a way to step from one place to another—similar to the way Matthew shadow-walks. It takes a tremendous amount of power to summon one. In fact, I only know of a handful of people that could have done this and gotten away with it.”
“Who?”
Ciena and Alric turned to look at me, frowning at whatever they saw written on my face. I already knew who would do this, but what I didn’t understand was why. What purpose did this serve?
“Arabella,” Ciena whispered, looking around at the room. “Lachlan’s already made his first move.”
Chapter31
Matthew
The humid summer air was near sweltering as we approached the outskirts of The Horde’s encampment. The stupid bastards were easy enough to find, hardly taking the time to cover their tracks or be discreet. Thick smoke rose into the air. Remnants of the small village they’d decimated were nothing more than ashes on the ground and half-standing structures. I could hardly breathe without inhaling the scent of burnt corpses and the sour tang of the horde’s body odor as they sifted through the air, keeping away even the foulest of animals with the stench.
Their black tents were scattered across the small plot of land that remained unburned. The men and women walked around, laughing and cheering at the atrocities they’d just committed. Considering his forces, it was a relatively small battalion—no more than fifty souls in total. We were out in the open, ten miles from the outskirts of the city.
We’d smelled the smoke on the raven when it delivered their message, an omen of destruction. The outpost it came from now lay in embers mere feet from where we had hunkered down.
“Fucking bastards,” Luka sneered, the grip on his dagger turning his knuckles white. “They all deserve to burn for what they did here.”
He glanced over his shoulder at where three bodies had been hanging when we arrived. We had cut them down, laying them next to one another. There was no way to identify them, but I swore if we made it out of here alive that I would ensure they were given a proper burial. It did not sit right with me, leaving them as we had. It was risky to even attempt to cut the bodies down, but given the drunken revelry taking place around The Horde’s fires, they would never know.
“Are there no sentries on patrol around the grounds?” Trystan asked.
I shook my head. “Branwen has not alerted me of anything, and we should have encountered them if they were conducting a proper patrol.”
