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“We come based off your offering. What is the truth you seek? And remember, dragon, you only have one question.”
Damien nodded. I watched him, his face as unexpressive as the Huntress. Like both of them were made from the same ancient marble. “There has been a curse placed on the dragons. It’s bringing us down from the skies and taking us out one by one.”
“I am aware,” the statue replied. The stag leopard flexed its front paws, long and vicious marble claws slipping out and scratching against the pedestal. I wondered if it was capable of leaping off that platform and having a late lunch.
“Good,” Damien continued. “Then the answer I seek is in regards to the dragon fall.”
Damien was doing exactly what we had talked about back in his castle. He avoided asking any kind of question until he gave enough information—or gleaned enough information—from the statue to know that her answer would be relevant and accurate. It would be very simple to ask an open-ended question that landed us with an absolutely useless answer, and then our one shot at solving this would be gone.
The Huntress tilted her head. I could hear kids screeching and laughing from a nearby playground, completely oblivious to the scene playing out only feet away from them. “Would you like to know who called the curse?”
Damien shook his head. “No, we already have a good idea as to who is responsible.” The ruby-red scales on his chest peeked out from under his button-up blue shirt, the top three buttons left open. A bold reminder to the power he had swirling inside him. “We want to know how to end the curse.”
“Is that your question?”
“Yes,” Damien said.
“Then ask it,” the chorus of invisible voices said. Her lips were definitely curling into a smile now.
Damien cleared his throat. “Huntress Aliana, how can we end this curse before it’s too late?”
There was a moment of worrying silence before the Huntress spoke again. “If a cure is what you seek, find the place where sunsets on the boulevard gleam. There, you will attend the dance of the world’s end dream. The cure to the dragon’s fall is behind a hidden door inside of the mirrored hall you’ve walked before.” With the answer given, the statue of the Huntress and her stag leopard shifted back into its original position, her mouth closing and the smile disappearing into a neutral expression, the curved bow held at her side and at the ready for another silent eternity.
I looked expectantly at Damien, but the confusion on his face worried me. Same with Dawn and Maddox. Even Claire appeared to be left at a loss. “Um, did that answer help at all?” I asked Damien.
He blinked, clearly thinking over the possibilities as he chewed on the inside of his cheek. Dawn looked down at the piece of paper she had jotted the answer on. Claire leaned over her, resting her head on Dawn’s shoulder as they read it over.
“Shit,” I said, sensing the growing dread seeping through the group. Had we wasted our time? Did we chase another dead end?
Dawn rubbed at her forehead, ran a hand through her brown hair, worn in her natural loose curls falling down past her shoulders. “The answer is here; we just have to figure it out.”
“Let’s take it piece by piece,” Claire said. “This first part, ‘where sunsets on the boulevard gleam,’ that must be talking about Sunset Boulevard.”
Maddox narrowed his eyes. “Great, so the statue sent us to a major road that cuts through the entire city. That really narrows things down.”
“What about this line?” Damien asked, ignoring his brother’s frustration. “About a dance for the world’s end?”
“Sounds like a Britney song,” I said under my breath. I had the sudden urge to time travel back to being a teen, dancing and singing in my bedroom to a crowd of zero but imagining the stadium in my head being sold out. Life was so fucking simple back then.
Another memory rose up from my past. Multiple memories. Of me going to work with my mom when school was out. It was during her time as a maid at Marmont’s Chateau. He was an eccentric old dragon who’d bought out a huge property in West Hollywood, tucking into a sloping hill that made up the private residences of a bevy of famous people—along with being a couple of their last resting places. It had opened up as a hotel in the 1960s and brought in disgustingly rich visitors from all over, but the dragon had never left, staying in one of the Spanish cottages that surrounded the property.
It also had one of the most interesting hallways I’d ever seen.
“A mirrored hallway… I know where that is.”
Everyone’s gaze snapped in my direction.
“I used to go with my mom when she would work at Marmont’s Chateau. I remember being a kid and thinking his hall of mirrors was always really weird. I’d never forget it. Made me really fucking dizzy.”
