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Tell the king we’re ready.
Chapter40
The Golden King
“Once you are granted access, send the signal.” Valen said as he handed me an additional dagger. “Move swiftly, Ari. We’ve faced men like this before. You know he will not wait long before he shows his true intent and takes your wife and Calista.”
“There isa staircase along the backside of the cliffs,” Eryka said, breathless. She was weak, but kept pushing forward through the trees.
The strain of illusions bit on the back of my neck. I stopped and crouched, one hand on the soil of the land. The others didn’t stop anymore, they’d begun to grow accustomed to my attempts to seek help from the isles.
Wind teased through my hair. Fatigue faded, but a whisper filled my mind:Look.
I’d never heard something before. More a feeling in my blood, like fury. My eyes snapped open. I faced the direction of the royal house below. Guards surrounded the place. Torches lit the pathways, but breath caught in my throat.
“Niklas. Stieg.” I called the two closest to me. “Saga’s there.”
Niklas followed my finger to where a large black coach had been parked outside the iron gates.
The Falkyn’s mouth tightened. He gripped my shoulder, shaking me, then tore after Eryka on the climb up the precarious mountain staircase. “Then we’re running short on time.”
Gods, keep her safe.
My insides hardened. Saga was before Davorin. Part of the plan. We knew it, but I could hardly stomach it now that the moment was actually here. While I slept, I’d vowed she’d never be harmed by that bastard ever again.
I quickened my steps and took the stone staircase two steps at a time to catch up.
I had no plans to break that vow.
The peak where Divination Point was built didn’t tower over the rest. It was positioned in a way that the repository where the holiest of seers spent their days perched over the top of the royal house and deciphered the heavens.
Narrow steps filed up the backside of the hill, while the main staircase was paved in slabs of gold and marble. The back door was built of heavy oak, arched and barricaded with iron locks. There were chains around the locks, and a few boulders seemed to have tumbled down in front of the door.
“These weren’t here before.” Eryka lifted one of the chains, then rapped on the door. She paused for two breaths, then knocked again.
Nothing.
My pulse pounded in my skull. In moments of stress, it felt a great deal like time sped wildly past. All I could think of was Saga placed in front of Davorin, of Valen’s warning as we plotted this step of men like him. He’d try to take Saga. She knew it. I knew it. I had to reach them first.
“High Priest Frode!” Eryka pounded on the door, open palmed, desperate. “Bid a speaker of stars entrance.”
“Is that all you must say?” I asked.
Eryka shrugged. “I never said it was some grand riddle. You need to be of a seer line and ask for entry. I told you the battle lord was a fool. He made it all rather complicated.”
“We might have to break in.” Niklas had a pouch in his hand. Doubtless a combustible powder.
I gripped his wrist. “Last resort. We can’t alert Davorin that we’re here.”
“High Priest Fr—”
“My Lady.” A whisper of a voice came from a crag in the rocks. A mousy kind of woman stepped out and pulled back a thick wool hood. She was dressed in simple clothes with stitched patterns of the constellations over her skirt. Her silver hair was shorn to her scalp, and kohl was smeared across her cheeks and chin. “I . . . I am Avian, an outer priestess.”
“Where is Frode?” Eryka asked. “We must be granted entry. There is no time to waste. Surely the stars spoke of danger.”
Avian dipped her chin, trembling. “Aye, My Lady. That they have. High Priest Frode . . . he did not grant entry to the overtaker. Lady Celeste and Lady Iris told us to never, no matter what threats were leveled, grant our enemy entry. The only one welcome was . . . you.”
Eryka’s lip quivered, but her voice was steady. “I come on behalf of the fallen ladies. On behalf of the whole of the isles. Let us in.”
