Page 119 of Fated In Ruin

“You’ve got it, my queen.” He brushed his lips across mine, and for the strangest reason, tears pricked my eyes. “Now for some ground rules. No charging off alone after our enemies, no matter what we find. You stick with Blake, or me, or Nash, unless one of us is injured, then you get your ass to safety. Can you agree to those terms?”

“As long as you don’t make any heroic, yet badly advised decisions.” I narrowed my eyes at them, daring either of them to disagree. “As you males are so wont to do.”

Oh God, this was really happening.We were heading to some strange country to face a monster and we might not be coming back and all of a sudden, all I could think about were the dwindling minutes we had left.

And all the time we’d already wasted.

I’d missed my last chance with Malachi, I wasn’t squandering this one. A few minutes could mean the difference between a lifetime of regrets…or an opportunity seized.

“Well, you know us.” Rohr’s grin turned crooked. “Alwayswontto do something stupid, but we will try our very best to think with our heads, not our cocks.” Outside the door, Nash shouted at his guards to regroup outside for final instructions.

No, we weren’t leaving like this. I wanted more. Ineededmore. I palmed him through his pants, and was rewarded when he surged forward into my touch.

“Fuck, Evie.” Rohr dipped his head into the crook of my neck and yanked my hips into his, grinding against me. “If there was somewhere private for me to drag you off to…”

Blake’s gaze was fixed on us, his eyes as hard as flints, hands clenched at his sides, an equally impressive hard on straining at the front of his trousers.

“How long before Nash has his men ready?” I murmured. “And Eldric returns with Fiona? Because I’m not leaving here without something I need. And I think you and Blake need it, too.”

52

MALACHI

The ruins emerged from the layer of mist like hulking sentinels merging from craggy outcropping. The castle was still hauntingly lonely, having managed to hang onto the side of the mountain despite all these centuries of neglect.

A rusted iron fence surrounded the property, posted with weathered warning signs in French. The decaying metal was partially collapsed in places, barely visible beneath tangles of thorny brambles and wild roses that seem unnaturally robust and dark-leaved.

Nothing like the ones I’d left for Evangeline.Not even close.

Resolve hardened my spine, chasing away any lingering doubts.

The castle's most distinctive feature was its central keep, a partially intact hexagonal tower rising five stories. The upper floors had long since collapsed, but the lower three remained sound, their thick walls defying the passage of time, punctuated with arrow slits and narrow windows, like watchful eyes.

Crouched on a flat surface of gray, lichen covered granite, I drew a breath of the rain-soaked air, thick and heavy and cool, at this altitude.

Ravok was here, deep beneath those tumbled stones. Romulus was inside as well, guarded by a handful of lesser presences. Thralls, perhaps Dante and Alistair Silverwood, or what was left of them.

This castle had once belonged to a pompous, foolish High Lord, long since dead, but his secrets were about to spawn a monster our world was not prepared for.

What truly made Château des Ombres unique was the labyrinthine underground, an extensive natural cave system that had been expanded over centuries. Some passages allegedly descending so deep they reached the underworld itself.

The main entrance lay in the castle's former great hall—a stone staircase spiraling down two hundred feet deep. The first level contained traditional dungeon cells, but deeper levels hid chambers guarded by strange carvings, natural caverns with underground pools of steaming, poisonous water, and traps ready to devour the weak and unsuspecting.

I closed my eyes and probed the bond between Ravok and myself, that hideous tether I would have severed with a spelled silver athame, if I thought that would have freed me. My Maker was deep inside the mountain, deep enough I’d have to fight my way to him, deep enough I couldn’t dematerialize inside, for fear of reforming inside a wall of solid granite.

I didn’t know how long I’d survive something like that, but I had no desire to endure that kind of horror, or that kind of pain.

I’d been here once before, a guest of Lord Aurelius de Noct.

That craven bastard had been the model upon which every vampire nightmare was founded, with alabaster skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones, eyes that shifted between obsidian black and blood crimson depending on his hunger, and long spiderlike fingers; his very presence was cultivated to inspire terror.

In reality, he was a weak, tiresome male, adorning himself in the finest Byzantine silks beneath Renaissance velvet cloaks, even crowning himself a king of sorts, with a circlet of blackened silver set with garnets dark as coagulated blood—his vanity demanding he appear as nothing less than the immortal royalty he believed himself to be.

But he’d built a castle that had survived a millennia, ruling the surrounding regions through calculated brutality and supernatural terror, collecting the most beautiful mortals, whose minds he would break, establishing bloodlines of thralls, and maintaining a greedy, ruthless court who competed viciously for his favor.

With the layout fixed in my mind, I dematerialized closer, landing on the slippery, broken shale just below the castle. Romulus would know I was here, he’d be making preparations, with his limited resources and the passages were a tangle of hand-hewn disorienting tunnels that shifted and changed at will, trapping the unsuspecting.

If Dante and Alistair were in the same shape as Silas, I doubted they’d offer much resistance, but knowing Rom, he had something up his sleeve. A hideous surprise I would never expect, forces lying in wait to swarm me, some wicked trap, ready to spring.

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