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Shadows spiraled around cracked stone pillars, a few crumbling statues, as though stone sentinels once stood watch here. Mist and tangled ivy swirled over cobblestone pathways like moving water. The grounds were different than the grime, soot, and reek of Raven Row. This was as though I’d stepped into a new world.
A dream.
I didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, and with every step the voice strengthened. I dipped my head beneath a few low-hanging branches onto a covered pathway. Tangled boughs shaped the archway overhead, and along the edges were black tallow candles lighting the way.
“Hello?”
A whistle of wind responded. I wasn’t a fool. To seek out the haunting spectral meant my world would change when I came to the other side. I’d told this to my bleeding queens more than once. Follow the nudge of fate, it was bound to upend their worlds. Did they listen? Not a damn one.
I’d always told myself I’d never be the reckless one. I’d never blindly go where my path unfolded. Like a constant thorn in the sides of the Norns, I planned to resist. To refuse.
Perhaps I owed my queens a bit of grace. In this moment, the desire to taunt fate with my refusals waned, and I yearned to follow the call forward. Warm as fire in the frosts, soothing as berry teas on the throat, I craved to discover whatever awaited me at the end of this path. I closed my eyes, pausing for a moment, simply reveling in the calm.
Some sort of tricky power must’ve soaked the soil of Hus Rose, for I could not recall the last time my pulse was so . . . peaceful. Like returning home to kind words and gentle, loving arms.
The longer I walked, the more the mist thinned and revealed a sprawling world of unseen darkness. Rune totems were broken. Trees were bare. Across the gray soil, dried leaves covered brittle stems of dying flowers.
Beauty once lived here. Through the somberness, I could see a world that might’ve been.
My fingertips were numb from the lingering gusts of wind by the time the pathway opened at the base of a wide staircase. My insides overturned. Hus Rose was deceptively large. From this angle of the grounds, the palace was like a dark beast. Black stone made up the walls, and across every arched window, dark drapes shielded the inner walls from the outside.
Iron sconces held torches as the only light, and I froze in place when two arched doors creaked, then swept over the landing at the top of the staircase.
Cast in a touch of gold from the torches, a figure emerged. Tall and imposing, the silhouette was masculine with strong shoulders. I licked my lips when the shadow paused before his full form became clear. A fleeting concern that Davorin had found me kept me quiet for a few breaths. But he didn’t feel like Davorin.
He felt . . . familiar.
“Who are you?”
No words, merely a deep, raspy laugh answered. A sound I absorbed to my bones, to the damn marrow. Such a simple thing, but it pulled me a step closer.
The way he stood, he was still concealed enough I couldn’t make him out fully. Truth be told, it was as though he strategically hid his features out of sight.
“Will you show yourself?”
“Show myself, she says.” He laughed again, his long legs paced in the darkness, the eerie moon casting a bloody outline of his body. “Why should I when you have run from me all this time?”
Run from him? He was on the grounds of Hus Rose. I had to be speaking to the Mad King.
“Do you know what it’s like?” His voice was gritty, unkind, yet flowed over my skin like a forgotten memory, as though my blood could not help but heat under the rough, burdened tone.
The sound burned through my veins like a rush of new blood, awakening some dormant light that radiated to my damn soul. I knew this voice. A voice that voice aided me in writing the steps to wake my Golden King from a fae sleep. A feat I couldn’t do alone.
Like a fool willingly walking toward slaughter, I took a step closer. “Whisper?”
“Do you know what it’s like?” he asked again, low and distant, like he hadn’t meant to speak.
This couldn’t be a dream. It was too tangible. Even his scent was real, a tantalizing combination of woodsmoke and mist.
In my cell at Castle Ravenspire, I’d always pretended the voice of the whispers in the dark belonged to another being, someone who might understand the burden of using seidr. A friend in the madness.
But I’d long ago convinced myself the words were mine alone; the way I’d convinced myself the spectral in Ari’s dream hadn’t existed, not really.
Until now.
Chapter9
The Storyteller
