Page 176 of Crown of Darkness
“To serve the Darkness, I am ready,” Finn replies.
“To serve the Darkness,” Eris says with a nod.
“To serve the Darkness,” Baylor growls, reaching over his head to draw his massive broadsword.
Grimm leaps up on my shoulders. “I only serve myself,” he sneers. “But I’ll accompany you to the end, if need be.”
“Let’s go then.” Thiago reaches out and smears his blood across the glyph that will take us to the Black Keep. The Hallow hums, the earth staring to vibrate beneath our feet. The Hallow snaps shut around us, spinning me into nothingness.
An instant that seems like forever.
And then I slam back into my body as we finally arrive in the foothills above the Black Keep.
Right into the middle of a pack of unseelie warriors armed with banes on leashes.
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Chapter Thirty-Five
There’s blood on the snow. Blood on my clothes.
I can feel it hot on my cheeks and wet in my hair.
And even though they’re dead—even though they’re all dead—something inside me howls for more blood.
There’s no way directly inside the Black Keep—the Hallow there is on an unconnected ley line that doesn’t cross any others besides this one—so the nearest Hallow is here, in the foothills of the Dragon’s Teeth mountain range. It’s the main source of transport for Angharad’s troops, and there were over twenty stationed here before we arrived.
I didn’t know that until Eris tortured it out of one of the guards.
Thiago slowly lowers his sword, breathing hard. “Are they all down?”
Eris moves through the snow, stabbing her blade into bodies with ruthless efficiency. “Down and dead.”
Blood still hums through my veins. It was a short and brutal fight. We’d caught them by surprise, and by the time they’d drawn their weapons, we were upon them. The leader barely had time to scramble for his horn before Eris drew her sword behind her head and then heaved it at him from across the clearing.
She puts her boot on his head as I watch and yanks her blade free. The horn remains silent in the snow.
“Do you think anyone heard?” Thiago demands.
Baylor scans the hills, his nostrils flaring. “There’s no sound of anyone nearby. And I can’t scent anything.”
“None of them are loaded with equipment to stay out here for the night, which means they’ll be due to check in sometime in the next half day,” Eris guesses. “Or another company will be coming to replace them, but I don’t know how soon. And the Black Keep is only an hour away. There will be patrols out and about.”
“Drag them out of the Hallow and strip them of their armor,” Thiago says, “then cover their bodies with snow. We need all the delay we can get.”
And then he turns and uses a blast of wind to stir the snow so that it covers the blood.
* * *
The Black Keeplooms below us in the valley, a central spire soaring toward the heavens. Thick walls guard it, and steep cliffs slide away from it like skirts. There’s only one way in; a long narrow bridge that arcs over nothingness toward it.
Now I know why Thiago insisted upon bringing the armor.
We strip off our outer clothes and fit ourselves into the bloody assortment of armor we stole from the Unseelie. Everything is black—which hides the blood well—but there’s a soaring white wyvern emblazoned on my chest, and another one on the shield I can barely lift. It’s taller than I am.
“This isn’t going to work,” Baylor mutters. “Iskvien’s too short to be mistaken for one of Angharad’s warriors.”
Thiago considers me. “He’s right. Get dressed again. You can be our prisoner.”
