Buildings rose from the cavern floor, cobbled together in impossible shapes—towers that were built to resemble the spirals of seashells, domes that gleamed with some kind of metallic sheen even under the purple glow of the vines that grew in the space, twisting and tangling together overhead.
Bridges arched between structures at dizzying heights, elegant, arched things made of whatever the fae could find. She could see the dark mouths of tunnels burrowing into the cavern walls at every level.
But everything was overgrown. The vines hadn’t just encroached on the city—they had consumed it, threading through windows and doorways, splitting stone and metal alike as they claimed the structures for their own. Trees with luminescent bark grew from the rooftops, their branches laden with fruit that glowed softly in shades of amber and violet.
The architecture, though. The buildings that had clearly predated the arrival of her people? They were just…wrong. She didn’t recognize when or where they were from. They had passed a few of them before, but not like this. Not in this measure. They were cut into the walls—carvedfromthe walls, more precisely. Soaring facades of glistening stone columns, overgrown with the ubiquitous vines.
But the windows still had glasswork in them. It didn’t look ancient. It hadn’t been abandoned for thousands of years.
“Whatisthis place?” Raziel’s voice was barely a whisper.
She turned to look at him and saw something she’d never expected to see on his face.
Confusion.
Genuine, undisguised confusion.
“I don’t know these buildings.” He pressed closer to the window gap, chains rattling as he strained to get a better look. “I’ve studied every architectural style in Runne. Human, vampire, even the old fae settlements from before the wars. But this…” He shook his head slowly. “This is something else. Something older.”
Nadi felt a chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the cool air of the cavern. If Raziel didn’t recognize the architecture—Raziel, who hoarded knowledge like other vampires hoarded gold—then what were they walking into?
“The Grove,” she said quietly. “But I was a child when I was here last. I don’t know.”
The caravan began its descent into the city, following a path that wound between the overgrown towers. As they drew closer, Nadi could see figures moving among the buildings—fae and humans alike, going about their business in the shadows of structures that apparently predated everything Raziel understood about Runne. She had no answers for him. And that bothered her more than she liked.
Kalo’s wagon pulled ahead, leading them toward a central structure that rose from the heart of the city like a great tree, its walls encased in vines so thick they seemed to have become part of the building.
Somewhere in there, Grandmother Ebiti was waiting.
And she had questions.
Nadi glanced at Raziel, at the vampire in chains who claimed to love her, who had promised to burn the world down at her side. At the Serpent, who looked, for the first time since she’d known him, genuinely uncertain.
Good, some part of her thought.Let him be off-balance for once.
But another part—the part that had rested her head on his chest while the wagon rocked them to sleep, the part that had let him drink from her wrist and felt the strange intimacy of his fangs in her skin—that part felt the first cold tendrils of fear.
Because if Raziel didn’t know what this place was, then they were both walking blind into something far bigger than either of them had anticipated.
The wagon rolled to a stop before the great vine-wrapped tower.
They had arrived at the Grove.
And Nadi had the sinking feeling that nothing—not her revenge, not her love, not even her life—would ever be the same again. Whatever Ebiti planned for them, it would change their course. And she knew it wouldn’t be for the better. With things like this? It never was.
SEVEN
Nadi had expected to walk into some grand hall. The venerated and sacred realm of the fae elders. To feel like she had finally, once and for all, comehome.It wasn’t as though she had expected opulence. She knew quite well her people were still hurting, dwindling, and starving.
But she hadn’t expected a derelict building with a ceiling that was half-caved in. Puddles on the floor revealed that it was actively leaking water from the cave structures overhead. But it wasn’t just the fact that the building was in ill-repair that was the problem. She could have overlooked that.
It was the piles of garbage that joined the dried leaves, detritus, and chaff along the walls. The room smelled vaguely of stale food waste. Humans and a few rare fae sat hunched in corners, most clearly in various stages of drug highs, judging by the dark marks on their arms and the needles she saw strewn about on the ground in the flickering firelight.
It was a drug den.
The elders’ gathering place at the Grove had become adrug den.
“How…resplendent,” Raziel muttered under his breath from beside her.
