Page 160 of Vicious Is My Throne

I carried Tristan’s keystone and clothes, the iron key to the tower, and kept the sword strapped to my back with a leather harness of Raz’s creation. My leathers were stiff and uncomfortable from the cold, and somewhere, somehow, Tavion had managed to secure me a pair of boots that pinched in all the wrong places.

Hiking up the side of a mountain tomorrow would be miserable.

Besides my footwear situation, things were going better than I could have hoped.

“Look up,” Zor whispered, his wings outlined by so many stars the sky looked like it was on fire. Gold and white and red danced amongst the darkness, not a single cloud in the sky, last night’s crescent moon brushing the mountaintops ahead of us.

“Wow. They’re so beautiful,” I breathed, leaning back in his arms, his legs tangled around mine. “Close enough I could touch them.”

“Beautiful, indeed.” He burrowed into the hollow of my neck, lips nibbling, my fingers curling into his shirt as heat built inside me. “When we land, you know what to do.”

I buried my face in his chest so he wouldn’t see me roll my eyes. “Stick close to Tristan until everyone arrives. Then we all go in together.”

“I mean it, Anaria. There is no guarantee this place is safe. Even Bella doesn’t know for sure, and neither does Bexley. And that key might not work. And you can stop rolling your eyes at me any time now.”

“You can’t even see me. How could you possibly know I’m rolling my eyes?”

“Trust me, by now I can feel those eyes rolling, princess.” He nuzzled against my throat again. “Like I can practically hear you thinking what an overprotective, fuss budget I am.”

I smothered my chuckle. “I was thinking no such thing,” I said, even though I totally was.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into, and I won’t apologize for keeping you safe. You can think anything you want. Princess.” He nipped my ear. “Unless you know something I don’t.”

It took every ounce of willpower to suppress my grin.

Because I most certainly know something you don’t.

Sylvi built this watchtower three centuries before she forged the knife. Not only was the watchtower safe, we’d definitely be getting inside. But I chewed my lip as Zor dropped lower.

Bexley…Sylvi—I really needed her to pick a form and stick to it—had given us a brief explanation of the stones. At least, his theory of what the stones were. He’d long suspected they were linked to the Old Gods, something our visions confirmed.

On our home world, they may have been little more than good luck charms, but here…here they became lodestones, reservoirs of latent power that we could access at will.

Or use to control and track others.

That’s how the Oracle always knew where you were, Bex informed us regretfully. The energy in the stone answered only to her. All those times, I only thought I’d accessed the power, but it had always been her.

I’d never experienced the true power of a keystone, not like the others, and even though I didn’t care about fancy boxes, I felt a little left out.

“Well, I’ll be damned. There it is.” Zor turned us slightly so I had a better view of the mountains and the small, dark pillar shooting up from the base of the Ironhearts. If you weren’t looking for Darkspire, you would never spot the black spike built from the same dark slate as the surrounding craggy mountains, their slopes streaked with red.

Legend claimed the hearts of the mountains bled, and looking down, I wouldn’t disagree.

“We’ll make two passes before we land, making sure the area is clear. If we timed this right, the others should arrive soon after we set down.”

I gripped Zor’s shirt tighter, the mountains rising up to meet us.

Rivers of blight flowed like creeping fingers across the flat gray of the Pale, smaller tendrils fanning out across the plain. Likewise, the rocky slopes were solid black except for the untouched, perfectly delineated circle around Darkspire.

Dry grass crunched beneath our feet. Tristan curled around me like a bad-tempered, overprotective watch dog while Zor prowled the building’s perimeter.

Darkspire was bigger than I’d imagined, at least eight floors high and as wide as two houses. Part of me was desperate to get inside and look around. The other part wanted to turn tail and run, because once we went in, I had this terrible feeling there would be no turning back.

Raz landed with Tavion and a half-frozen Bexley.

I rushed forward, swinging off my cloak and wrapping it around the mage. “Why doesn’t he have a cloak? He could have frozen to death, Raz.”

Raz scratched the back of his neck, his head cocked. “He said he was ready to go. I didn’t think I needed to dress him. He’s a grown arse male, for fuck’s sake.”

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