I follow.
Chapter
Nine
The passage climbs.
Seraphina sets the pace. Mira is at her shoulder, and Maximus and I are behind them. The gold in the walls thickens with every turn, the heat of it reaching my face by the third bend.
“All four courts are present,” Seraphina says without turning. “Four leaders. Three you need to read fast.”
“Tell me.”
“Veyran. Steward of Stone. Lanthar’s right hand. He’s governed in Lanthar’s absence during the period he was with my mother in the mortal realm.”
“Syrenne. Court of Ember. She’ll test you if she gets the chance. She fights with rhetoric and heat. The first is the warning. The second is the weapon.”
“Got it.”
“You don’t, but you will.”
“And the others?”
“Maeven, Court of Tides. Doesn’t speak first. Doesn’t speak twice. Counts everything. If he asks you a question, your answer goes into a ledger that doesn’t close. Ithara, Gales. Speaks in fragments and prophecies. Be careful what you ask her in front of the courts. She tells truth that breaks rooms.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Lanthar himself. Don’t try to read him. You can’t.”
The corridor narrows.
Mira’s stride shortens at the second-to-last turn. Her shoulders pull up, then drop. The gold behind her boots brightens, holds, lingers three steps after she’s passed. She doesn’t look at it.
The corridor opens into the great hall, and I stop.
The ceiling is so far above us that actual clouds have formed beneath it, thin wisps of moisture drifting in the upper reaches of a chamber carved from the interior of a mountain. The walls are threaded with gold that pulses in the same rhythm as the roots of the great tree we passed an hour ago. The floor stretches in every direction farther than any room I’ve ever stood in.
Every head in the room has already turned toward us.
Hundreds of eyes. None of them seem human.
Right side, mid-hall. The stone darkens under the central woman’s feet as she walks and cools in a trail behind her, the heat reading like signature ink. The Fae around her step back without seeming to. Her hair is dark red and catches the light. Ember. Syrenne.
Far left, against the wall. A cluster that hasn’t moved since we entered. Mist hanging above them at shoulder height, holding shape against the air. The tall man at their center has his eyes on us without his body shifting. Not a single twitch in the line of his shoulders. Tides. Maeven.
Elevated platform on the side. A group standing on a raised section of stone, exchanging positions among themselves inslow rotation. The woman among them has her head tilted, lips moving but I can’t hear her. Her hair moves in a wind no one else feels. Her eyes are the color of a sky I haven’t seen. Gales. Ithara.
Three courts.
And at the far end of the great hall, the stone rises into a throne grown from the mountain, the gold veins converging at that single point.
Two Fae flank it.
The one on the left has deep-set eyes. His shoulders draw up when his eyes find us.
“Veyran,” Seraphina says quietly. “Be careful with him.”
“Noted.”
