Page 44 of Promise of Darkness
He’s watching me as if to ask what I can hear, but I merely shrug. Maybe I’m imagining it. Or maybe it’s the beat of my heart drumming in my ears.
Soon we’re in what remains of the city. Moonlight gilds the stone, highlighting silver glyphs in the Old Tongue, which must have been painstakingly carved into the stone many years ago. Mistmere worshipped the Mother of Night, if I remember correctly, and there are half moons carved into every available surface.
I’m fairly certain Queen Abalonia alone refused to condemn the Old Ones to their prison worlds when the alliance banded together to trap them.
A snuffling sound echoes through the ruins ahead, and my hand leaps to the hilt of my sword. It’s not the first time, but this time, I’m fairly certain the threat is real.
Thiago pushes me into a rubble-strewn alleyway, where I barely dare breathe. Every little noise—even the barest crunch of my boots on gravel—seems to echo hollowly in the fog. He’s pressed against me, a solid wall of muscle between me and the threat. If his head wasn’t cocked to the side, listening intently, I’d almost suspect this was deliberate.
To take my mind off the danger, I follow the cords of muscle in his throat with my eyes. Every day I brush a kiss against those chiseled lips, and every day he sits there and waits for it, hunger barely restrained by the clench of his knuckles around the arms of his chair.
It’s the restraint that affects me the most, I think.
He never says a word, though his eyes hold the heat of a thousand unspoken promises. All the things he’d like to do to me, if I let him.
The snuffling sounds drift away slowly, and I can finally breathe again. Shoulders slumping in relief, I realize my hand is pressed to the prince’s chest, and he’s no longer focused on the creature. Instead, his gaze drifts to my lips.
We’re standing too close together, and with the chill of Mistmere pressing against my skin, I can feel the heat of his body radiating like a furnace. Evening is falling, and I still owe him a kiss.
And for the first time, I almost want to give it.
“Later,” he whispers, his breath ghosting over the soft hairs that curl at my temples.
A shiver runs through me. He’s very, very good at what he does. And he knows exactly how easily he’s getting to me. I can see it in the faint creases that line his eyes when he’s amused.
“Never,” I whisper back.
Thiago leans closer, his lips tracing the curve of my ear. “Then stop looking at me like you want to eat me alive.”
I jerk back from him. “I do not—"
A hollow throb pulses through me, breaking my gaze from that dangerous mouth. It echoes through the earth beneath my feet like the first vague trembling of an earthquake. Stronger this time, leaving ghostly shivers over my skin.
“Iskvien?” Thiago asks sharply.
I rub my arms. All is forgotten. “Whatisthat?”
“What is what?”
It comes again. Stronger this time. Not an earthquake’s tremor, no, but something akin to sonar. It ripples over me and locks hold for a second, as if sensing me amidst the carnage of the city. Then the sensation sluices down my skin like warm water, leaving me trembling.
I stare at my fingertips. There’d been a hint of golden light rippling beneath my skin that time, as if my veins absorbed the… sensation.
Thiago grabs my forearm, staring intently at my expression. “Tell me what you feel.”
So I do.
His frown only notches deeper between his eyebrows. “You’re sensing the Hallow. It’s stronger than it should be. You should only be able to feel a faint quiver by now. The circle focusing its power inward was warded by wyrd stones, which lock the power of the ley line within it. The stones fell over two hundred years ago, during the goblin incursion.”
“That’s the Hallow? Wait. Why can I feel it?”
And you can’t?
“Some fae are sensitive. Come on,” he mutters. “We need to see the Hallow. It shouldn’t be active.”
The Mistmere Hallow lies in the heart of the city, and all the main boulevards lead toward it. Carved owls stare down from each avenue, their endless eyes staring right through us. The owl is the symbol of the Mother of Night, the Old One that Mistmere and its queen once revered. I can’t escape the sensation that she’s somehow watching us, even though she’s trapped in the Underworld.
More banes hunt the rubble-strewn streets. I dart down an alley on Thiago’s heels, and he bends to cup his hands, gesturing his chin toward the roof. The second I step into his cupped hands, he tosses me high, and I drag myself on top of the roof. He follows, hauling himself up a stone balustrade with the lithe grace of an acrobat and enough arm strength to make me jealous.
