Page 104 of A House of Fangs & Deceit

She blended into the shadows perfectly as if she was a wraith herself.

Looking at her scared the shit out of me. Not because I was scared of her, but because I was scaredforher.

Whatever was happening to Cali, I knew frightened her too, because she was watching the wraiths below with a quiet intensity, like they held all the answers she sought.

Which they likely did. They held all our answers, and we couldn’t understand a moons-damned word they were saying. While we’d been listening to them the past hour in vain, I realized what was bothering me about their words.

They seemed to be twisted somehow and reminded me of the sounds they made when in their pure shadow forms.

What the fuck are you saying?I thought in frustration. We’d risked our lives coming in here, and aside from seeing with ourown eyes what Cali had already told us, we’d gotten no new information.

Suddenly, the wraiths stopped talking. I couldn’t see anything from my vantage point, and Vail cut a glare at me which clearly stated to not move. As much as I wanted to see what was going on and further piss off Vail, I didn’t move an inch. My preference was to not die, and that was more pressing than anything else.

“Apologies for the delay,” a strong, masculine voice announced in our common tongue.

It felt like my heart froze for a moment before painfully starting to beat again. I knew that voice, but it couldn’t be him. There was no fucking way someone that important would be meeting with the wraiths.

Vail and Alaric seemed rooted in place before they both swung their heads to look at me and I saw the shock in their eyes. They recognized the voice, too.

The footsteps slowed, and we all very quietly moved forward enough so that we could confirm with our eyes what our ears had already told us. That the son of the Moroi Sovereign had betrayed us all.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Samara

Prince Draven Nachtlooked exactly as I remembered him. Sinfully gorgeous. Which, considering how many attractive Moroi I had surrounding me these days, was saying something. But Draven always held a presence about him. Even the dark, loose-fitting clothes he wore tonight did nothing to diminish his tall, muscular build. His black hair with its unusual silver streaks was contained in a tight braid that fell midway down his back.

My fingers tightened around the railing from where I now peered down as Draven closed the distance between him and the wraiths with languid strides. He was even wearing the same easy, confident grin that he always had when he greeted me, as if meeting wraiths in a forgotten Fae temple was just another day in the life of a Moroi prince.

Because of how close my aunt was to the Sovereigns, I’d grown up knowing Prince Draven my entire life.

While I didn’t know him as well as I knew those I’d grown up with in House Harker, I never would have suspected him as the Moroi working with the wraiths. He’d always reminded meof Kieran and seemed content to spend his life socializing and being a flirt.

The wraiths’ whispery language filled the room, and the charming grin slid off his face.

“You know I can’t understand you when you speak like that,” he snapped.

I held my breath as the three wraiths stopped talking and stepped back. A fourth wraith, one we hadn’t even known about stepped further into the room and I had to swallow the gasp that tried to escape.

While the other three had form, they still seemed to be at least partly made of shadow. This one only had a few wisps of shadow swirling around him.

Everything about him was bright and golden, completely at odds with the shadows trailing in his wake. The wraiths bowed their heads as he walked past them. I committed everything about his appearance to memory. Deep, golden-blond hair. Bronze skin. Tall and powerful build. From my viewpoint, I could only see his face in profile, but he seemed to have strong masculine features and tapered ears.

Definitely Fae, which wasn’t surprising since we already knew the other three wraiths were as well. I assumed Unseelie, given what we knew so far.

“Careful, Princeling,” the Fae said in a dangerous, low tone. “The shadows pull to us still, and they are not yet strong enough to speak without the shadows intertwining with their words.”

“My apologies, Erendriel,” Prince Draven said stiffly, the confident mask he wore slipping slightly. “The ride here was long and arduous.”

The Fae, Erendriel apparently, studied Prince Draven the way a predator would study passing prey and debate whether they were hungry enough to go for a hunt.

“Of course. The forests are treacherous these days,” hesaid with a sly smile.

Prince Draven’s shoulders loosened just a fraction. These two clearly knew each other, but Draven was definitely wary of whoever this Fae was.

Not that I blamed him. I was terrified of him, and he didn’t even know I was here. The only things we knew about the Fae were what we had been able to piece together in the books and scrolls that we found, along with what we were able to reverse engineer from the spell castings they’d left behind.

I was intimately familiar with what wraiths could do, though. A shiver ran through me. Did Erendriel possess his Fae magic or wraith magic? With our shitty luck, he had both now.

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