Page 69 of The Curse of Eternity
Something reassuring flickered at the corner of my consciousness. Like a word I knew but couldn’t remember for the life of me. Deep magick created this place, and I didn’t understand a lick of the mystical mumbo jumbo, but if I could keep these shackles from falling off after two long staircases and several dark corridors, I had to believe there was achance.
Because nothing would make me throw away my life anymore—or his.
The hallway gradually widened, until the ceilings high above strewn with chandeliers indicated that we’d crossed from the residential area of the fortress into a social political space. Marble floors shone underfoot, like they’d been freshly waxed. My boots squeaked on our approach to the enormous double doors at the centrepoint of the grand entryway. There were no actual exits leading to what would have been the outside in our reality, just unbroken stone walls and tapestries that would have taken a human lifetime to manually weave.
Two massive winged gargoyles stood on either side of the bejeweled doors leading to an equally unlit room beyond. A shiver danced down my spine when we passed their stone faces, chiseled into a depiction of pain and contempt.
The circular throne room inside was surreal, with a long rug woven with blues of every shade and cream colors for accents. Stylized stonework climbed the walls, drawing my gaze to the high vaulted ceiling before my focus shifted to the six silhouettesat the center of the space. Each of them were dressed in lavish robes or gowns, as different from one to the next.
Before their chilling gazes could set off my instincts through their bloodlust, I couldn’t help but notice that nobody sat on theactualthrone in the great room. Built into the floor like a fixture of the fortress itself, a dark throne rose like a pillar behind the six smaller versions of it set onto a spacious flat step, a mere foot above my own standing. Its emptiness felt strange, like a second heartbeat tugging my middle closer. An urge that would only be satisfied by sitting atop the royal seat.
Power emanated from it, practically rippling outward in waves reminiscent of a mirage in the desert. I didn’t get a chance to stare because the asshole guard behind me grasped my shoulder in one gauntlet, shoving me downward. Pressure clamped over my collarbone, and I grimaced when my knees hit the hard floor. Drake’s familiar voice turned savage, his words foreign, but their meaning obvious.
With a harsh inhale, I glanced to where Drake had also been forced to his knees. Panic iced the breath in my lungs. He was way too far. Maybe ten feet separated us, and the guards’ weapons could cut faster than I could move. Wild fear lit behind his eyes, his expression more readable than I’d ever seen, revealing how much he cared about what happened to me.
More foreign words were spoken, this time by an unfamiliar feminine voice. My glare settled on a woman with long black hair pulled daintily away from her pale face. Pearls and sapphires adorned her violet gown beneath the white fur-lined cloak that covered her shoulders, its hem resting at her slippered feet. All of them wore a similar version of the cape.
To her right, a much-taller man’s long curly brown hair and full beard appeared even darker contrasted to his silver suit. Next to him, making up one side of the center, was a blonde vampire. Her round face and cutting blue eyes complimentedthe indigo colors draped over her full figure. Leaned forward on his lesser-throne, the blond vampire beside her seemed washed out in golds—from his hair to his trailing lion’s fur-lined cape.
Because of how brightly he dressed, the vampire on his right appeared shorter in stature. Subdued by his hair—equally as dark as the first woman—and the heavy green suit he wore, its deep coloring contrasting his pale green eyes that stood out like some nocturnal animal. The final member of the vampire ruling class, taking the third chair on the right but seemingly the furthest spaced out of the six of them, nearly made me flinch.
Sandy hair a similar color to Andrew’s fell stringy and missing in patches over a long scarred forehead. Lines and signs of battle marked the vampire’s face, accentuated by the crimson color of his cape, flowing down from his shoulders like blood woven into fabric. While the others’ postures were haughty, displaying their prestige for all who came to worship them, the man clad in red seemed more calculating.
It was the way he watched mine and Drake’s every move with narrowed eyes, anticipating our next actions before we could think of them. Swallowing hard, but refusing to act meek, I straightened my back the best I could under the pressure of the guard’s painful grip. After another flex of their fingers, the gauntlet fell away. As the guard took a step back, my attention landed on the last unfamiliar person in the room.
Half-hidden in the deeper shadows behind the violet woman’s throne, a figure with a bent-back stood hunched over a gnarled cane. She hobbled forward on noisy footfalls, her gray eyes blinded by cataracts. Compared to the vampires, her tattered cloak was plain aside from the silver button fastening it around her wrinkled neck.
If the undead before us made up the Domnitori, then the wizened human could only have been one thing—their sorcerer. Looking smug and self-important, Lucian’s hastened stepsblurred his figure. He fell to his knees before his evil overlords, almost kissing the ground at their feet while he murmured words I couldn’t interpret.
The vampire in gold spoke, his deep voice too quiet for me to pick up the vowels on his foreign tongue. Lucian’s subservient response was immediate. Meanwhile, Drake stared daggers like he was planning out how to annihilate every single one of them.
Fidgeting to keep the shackles from slipping off from between my sweaty fingers, I whispered, “What are they saying?”
Every pair of eyes in the room was suddenly on me.
“Lucian has revealed our intrusion to the bed chambers of theirvoievod,” Drake answered, not bothering to whisper. “He remains clueless as to the ‘why’ behind it.”
Again, the Domnitori member in gold spoke. His steady light brown eyes flickered to me, but he addressed only Drake. My heart raced at the sound of his grave tone, but I jumped when the black-haired woman in violet laughed. Her high-pitched glee revealed a glint of hunger within her expressive gaze. I tensed, struggling to keep still while shivers shook my spine. Drake opened his mouth to reply to whatever they’d said, but I was done with being a pawn.
“Why don’t you just ask me why we’re here?” I squared my shoulders, wincing from my aching back. The Domnitori stared at me, the emotions crossing their faces varying from unresponsive to disgusted, but the man in crimson looked curious.Yeah, like that wasn’t creepy as shit.
The pale blonde woman in indigo narrowed her eyes with mistrust before she replied in her heavily-accented voice, “You are English.”
“I’m American, actually.” That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. The woman actually sneered.
“Doamna Milica has always loathed the New World, and its inhabitants,” Drake murmured, and Lucian’s lip curled.
“Domn Nikolai enjoys them.” The black-haired woman in violet glanced at the vampire reduced to shadows beside the golden one. Her keen gaze was intent, never leaving mine while she spoke in stilted English. “The blood of the Americans is so…thick.”
“Tacere, Doamna Irina.” When the man in gold spoke, Irina obeyed. Not even a hint of displeasure crossed her face at being silenced, and my brow furrowed. These vampires had to have existed alongside each other for centuries. Their allegiance was unbreakable, that was obvious, and once again, I struggled not to cower under the oppressive knowledge that my family and I were more than outclassed by these killers.
The gold-clad vampire paused, like he was translating his sentences ahead of speaking them. “You are a descendant of the slayer, we know this. Have you come to slayus?” He didn’t sound afraid, and by the slight smirk on Milica’s round face, they seemed to think it was a funny notion.
“No, I didn’t.” Which was true, not that they could tell my truths from lies considering how hard my blood was pumping just being in front of these freaks. I glanced at Drake to gauge his reaction, but he’d shut down anything that wasn’t pure hatred from showing on his face.
Surrounded by not only lycans with medieval weaponry, but several vampires—plenty capable of ripping our heads off in mere seconds—our only shot at survival was buying time. Which meant keeping them talking, or at the very least unsettling them. Closing my eyes tight, I made up my mind.
I opened my eyes, wedged my pinky finger into my back pocket, and fished out the ring. It fell from my fumbling hold instantly, tumbling to the carpet on its edge only to roll forward. The vibrations of its centrifugal force turned deafening when it reached the marbled section of floor.
