Page 39 of A Throne of Blood & Vengeance

“Yes!” Desmond pumped a fist in the air. “That means we’re off the hook for at least a decade.”

Roth sighed, and I caught their eye.What the fuck?I mouthed. They just gave me a pitying look and turned to move down the tunnel in the direction we’d been headed.

We all started walking again, and Draven grumbled something under his breath when he had to step aside to make room next to me for Severen. A second later, Alaric did the same when Celestina took his spot.

“How do you feel about a summer wedding?” Severen asked.

Before I could answer, Celestina cut in. “You’re good with a little pain, right? Our wedding vows are . . . intense.”

“Don’t worry,” Severen said, again cutting me off from responding. “We have a little more time before we get to a safe place to rest. Plenty of time to hash out a plan to take care of this crown nonsense, kill your aunt, and coordinate a wedding.”

“Maybe we should worry about the first two things before getting to the wedding bit,” I suggested lightly.

Both of them slowed their pace.

“Are you trying to get out of marrying our youngest?” Celestina’s voice was lethally quiet.

“No!” I cast helpless looks at both Draven and Alaric, who looked like they were trying to hold back their laughter.

“Excellent!” Severen slapped me on the back, causing me to stumble forward. “Which do you prefer, wildflowers or . . .”

Chapter Eleven

Samara

We madeit to our destination in just under an hour, and true to their word, Roth’s parents had alternated between plans for how to retrieve the crown, murder Carmilla, and coordinate an epic wedding. Honestly, it was the wedding part that sounded the most complicated, as both the crown and Carmilla plan were basically “stabby stab.”

Roth’s family was insane. I now understood why they had fled to Drudonia.

I wasn’t entirely on board with killing Carmilla. She absolutely had to be stopped—of that I agreed wholeheartedly—but my plan was to strip her of power and imprison her somewhere where she couldn’t cause any harm. Nothing else was going to happen tonight though, so I decided to leave that argument for another time.

Because right now, I was tired. So damn tired. I just wanted to hopefully clean off and crawl into bed . . . with company of course. Suddenly, some of my weariness faded as lust slid into its place.

Yep. Still riding the tail end of the lust haze.

“We’ve found other places like this,” Desmond explained as we all piled into a large, cavernous room. We were stillunderground—something I still found amazing—and the Fae had clearly planned on occasionally having to stay here because there were a dozen entryways off this main room. Several chairs and tables were organized around the room too, with shelves lining the walls. “All the rooms should have bathing chambers. This is our first time in this particular hideaway, but all the previous ones we found still had working water. No food though.”

He pulled a few small containers from his pack and tossed them onto the table, and not a hint of dust rose. Despite not having been used in probably centuries and surrounded by dirt, the place was spotless.

Would I be able to do things like this once I understood my earth magic better? We didn’t even understand how the Fae had done half the things they had. The glyphs to heat the water made sense because they were literally just a combination of the glyphs for fire and water. But how had they even gotten the water to run into the bathing chambers in the first place? And the bathing chambers’ setup, much like the Fae lanterns, still worked all these centuries later, even though the Fae hadn’t been here to maintain them.

Occasionally, we had to use our blood to activate glyphs or replace the gems and stones that stored magic, but the actual infrastructure was still working flawlessly.

“There’s a room beneath House Harker that is similar to this.” I looked around curiously. “How many of these places have you found?”

“We’ll tell you”—Desmond grinned at me—“as a wedding present.”

“Even take you on a tour of them,” Taivan offered.

I rolled my eyes.

“Ignore them.” Roth cut their brothers a scathing look before grabbing my hand and pulling me into one of the rooms.

“Get some rest!” Celestina ordered. “We’re going to find the exit from this tunnel system and do some scouting above.”

I was still shaking my head at the ridiculousness of Roth’s family when I came to a sudden halt just inside the room.

“Wow. Not what I was expecting . . .”

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