Page 20 of Lifeblood

We rode the rest of the way to the palace in silence.

CHAPTER7

Despite the silence between Tristan and me on the ride out west to Cornwall, it wasn’t uncomfortable. The time passed as quickly as the fields and softly rolling hills outside the car window. I spent a lot of it wondering what it might be like to have spirits around you all the time as Tristan apparently did. I wondered what they said to him to make him look so concerned and serious and thoughtful.

Did they ever leave him be? Or was he hounded constantly by the spirits of so many who’d come before?

Or was it just a few that stayed around the most?

I didn’t know much about necromancy or necromancers. Theirs was a rare magic, often taboo throughout time, and so they tended to keep to themselves. And the Court of Undeath was certainly not the court I’d pick if I had to go to one of them.

As for which I’d pick now… That was certainly the question of the day, wasn’t it? At least according to Lance and Tristan. I guess allowing me to decide gave me some autonomy I was greatly desiring in this situation, but how was I to pick just one demon king to be lifeblood to?CouldI pick just one, look the rest in the eyes, and say, “Oh well, tough luck?”

I wanted to sayyes. A few days ago, I might have.

But the thought of leaving any of them behind or without equal share in things cut straight to my gut.

Would I ever get used to that? I barely knew these kings. I’d liked some of them at first meeting, but this mate bond was overriding all sense and logic with its own rules. These men were veritable strangers to me, and yet not at the same time. It was like hearing your favorite song for the first time—by the end of that first meeting, you knew there was just no going back.

No going back now.

The thought was cemented by a low-cut road coming into view between smaller streets in Tintagel. I’d personally never been out to the castle ruins in my life, but I was pretty sure there was no actual palace here.

I was about to ask Tristan about this very thing when he lifted his palm and a green, softly glowing rune that looked like a backward Z appeared. It flashed brighter for a moment and then a towering structure appeared out of thin air and morning sunshine.

Sitting just beside the Tintagel Island peninsula, out over the sea on its own little island, was a truly impressive concentric castle fortification. With stone walls rising into the sky protecting fortifications and other buildings inside, stained glass windows catching the Cornish sun, and gorgeous waves crashing against rocky outcroppings, the very sight of this place stole my breath away.

“It’s hidden for our protection,” Tristan said. “The Demon Courts are a bit more west, but we choose to rule from here most of the time out of a respect for more neutrality.”

I blinked as I took it all in—the demonic High Palace—and Tristan’s explanations. “Humankind had no idea that this was here.”

Tristan inclined his head. “We’d prefer to keep it that way. The humans don’t need to know the full extent of our courts. Cornwall’s been ours from the beginning, but even this many centuries on, there’re things better left unknown to them.”

“I’m assuming you mean whatever you’re so afraid of that you’re going to split me between the four of you instead of starting a war,” I said dryly.

The corner of Tristan’s mouth cracked in a small smile, but it was a bit hollow. “Precisely. The location of the High Palace is also a direct statement. We’ll explain once we’re all together.”

And just like that, as soon as it felt like I was starting to get answers, Tristan shut down again. I knew it was because the kings wanted to talk to me all at once. But I also saw the crease in his brow return that I now understood as spirits hounding him. I wanted to ease his discomfort away, to hear them, too, if that’d help alleviate what was so obviously a burden. But only necromancers and those attuned to death could hear spirits.

We turned down Castle Road and into a tunnel that someone in the motorcade ahead of us revealed with more magic. That tunnel swept beneath the edge of the coast and beneath the bit of ocean between the shore and the High Palace’s island.

My mind was a flurry of thoughts. Between trying to wrap my head around the knowledge of this hidden castle and all of the ways the kings could use magic to not only hide it, but to presumably imbue themselves with power, I couldn’t help but think that maybe humans had been right to sign any peace treaty they could’ve. Even with the support of the rest of the supernatural community, demons had more power, more magic, moreusesfor both of those things than I’d ever before experienced.

The motorcade quickly pulled out of the tunnel on the other end and into a wide semi-circle at the entrance to the castle. Tristan exited the car before the demonic guards and opened the door for me as I sat, jaw hung open, gaping at the sight of the High Palace up close. There were four towers, and each of them and nearly every wall on the main building connecting those towers were adorned with stained glass windows and sun-catching buttresses. In some places, the structure looked more like a cathedral than a palace.

By the time I got over the view for now and also got out of the car, Mordred, Lance, and Gareth had joined us, each adjusting their suits and jackets and looking into the late morning sun. For a moment, no one said anything as demonic attendants in human form—denoted by the dark auras seeping from them—appeared and the motorcade drove off. It was just a flurry of quiet chaos and the sounds of sea waves and seagulls flying overhead.

“Come,” Mordred finally said with a wide gesture toward the palace’s sweeping, wide-arch entrance. “There are chambers for you on the first floor of the main keep. You can clean up there, then someone will bring you to the great hall to meet with us.”

I raised an eyebrow. “We came all the way here to talk. Why not talk now?”

“There’s a matter to set up,” Lance said simply, as if that explained everything. “We need some time for that, to make the choice easy for you.”

“I already suggested an alternative to two of you this morning,” I pointed out. Lance included. If we followed the path fate had laid out for our mate bond, sharing me, sharing us, sharing whatever this was turning into, was the best solution.

I glanced at Gareth quickly, afraid to see what I’d find there after such tense confrontations before. His jaw was locked hard beneath his thick, red beard and bags under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much last night. Gareth wouldn’t want to share. He’d be at least one rejecting vote. And in some ways, I couldn’t blame him. Fate had put us on each other’s paths all on her own, and she’d done so before I’d met the others.

But that hollowness in our mate bond—the clue indicating missing links and mates—had been there from that very same beginning.

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