Page 115 of The Rose in the Shadows

The sun had already set over Hyrax estate leaving shadows as the only guests. Looking over the manor left me feeling oddly conflicted.

This was my home. It was the only place I’d been that truly felt like it wasmine, but it wasn’t. This manor belonged more to Hyrax than it did to me.

The God of the Underworld.

The God who hadn’t accepted that realm as enough.

The God who’d started wars because of his desire to rule the Mortal Realm.

And according to that prophecy, he wasn’t finished in his quest to gain control of this realm. AndIwas the one who would free him.Iwas the one who was going to stand by him as he brought death to the people who lived here.

Without glancing back, I commanded Dimitri to wait outside for me as I lifted my skirts and ran into the house and made my way to the door Clay had pointed out as leading to the library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of books stood nearly ten feet tall and sported literature of all forms. Sighing, I chewed on my lip as I glanced over the space. There had to be hundreds of books in here.

“Mythology,” I whispered to myself. I needed the mythology books.

I found them in the back corner, five shelves up. Grunting, I pulled the ladder across the room and hiked up my skirts again to climb. I wrapped one arm through the ladder for balance and started tearing off the books one by one, flipping through the pages.

There.

I crawled off the ladder slowly, unable to tear my eyes away even as I felt my heart beating in an uneven rhythm. A soft sob escaped as I sank to the floor and ran my fingers helplessly across the worn page before me.

I had once asked Hansel why there were no illustrations of Hyrax in the palace. I had partially wondered if I looked like him at all. Hyrax was absent from any murals and paintings at the castle, though, and not even the history and mythology texts depicted his likeness. Hansel had said that years ago, the Descendants of Zion had burned away any image of him as a punishment for his crimes.

But Hansel hadn’t been here. He hadn’t been to this temple of a house built by Hyrax’s Descendants.

Turns out, we had kept our pictures.

And in the center of this book was a single illustration of Hyrax, King of the Underworld, seated on his throne of bones in the caverns of the underworld. In his right hand, he lifted a chalice of red wine in a silent toast to the painter.

A painter that, from the angle, had to have been seated at a long dining table.

I knew because I’d sat at that table myself many times. I’d joined him in that toast. I’d witnessed him sit on that throne.

I’d sat in that very position in my dreams.

The dreams that had started as nightmares and had somehow, over recent months, turned into the guidance I had needed most. Dreams that provided me the insight I needed on that battlefield that had saved my life. Dreams in which I had spoken to a man who referred to himself as my friend but who refused to share his name.

He insisted I had already known who he was. Maybe at some level, I had always suspected the truth and refused to acknowledge it.

I could deny it no longer, though.

Since the moment I had awoken in this Gods-forsaken palace, I’d been unknowingly convening with Hyrax in my dreams.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Camilla

Camilla had never known agony like this. She was no stranger to pain. She’d taken plenty of beatings in the years since her father had died in the war and she’d gone to live with her grandmother. And there was, of course, the summer she’d turned nineteen when The Dragon had made her his own personal plaything. She’d never told anyone about that; she doubted she ever would, but needless to say, the physical pain of withdrawal wasn’t necessarily worse than anything she’d felt before.

But the emotional pain was something else.

The shadows had a way of climbing into your skull, warping everything you were into what they wanted you to be. It was like she had been wholly possessed, unable to stop herself from shedding more blood in their name. The grimoires had warned her that the shadows gained their power from the Underworld. She should have known how dark it would all become.

If she could go back, she would have done things differently.

If she could go back and do things differently, Lorelai would still be alive.

Iris would never forgive her; she knew that. None of them would. That hardly mattered, though. The Dragon would have her publicly executed. He would make her a demonstration of the power of the Athenian government and what would happen to anyone who tried to disrupt it. She likely only had days left in this realm.

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