Page 92 of Kiss the Dawn
The voice was familiar, drawing me up out of the depths of oblivion and back to consciousness. It took a moment for my eyes to work, to focus on my surroundings. Gray stone and candlelight. I was on my back, a domed stone ceiling above me painted in crimson lines to make up a strange arcane glyph.
I tried to sit up and came up against restraints. My torso and limbs were bonded to…to some kind of metal contraption.
“What is this?”
“Orina! We’re here. You’re not alone!”
“Merry?” I strained my neck, twisting to find her, and my heart skipped several beats when I did.
She was in a cage fixed to the ceiling by thick chains, and she wasn’t alone. Holly and Padma werewith her, and behind them…Oh God. Bodies, so many bodies lining the walls, pressed to stone and held there somehow. Thick silver pipes jutted out of each chest, one end vanishing into the wall.
“Get away from her!” Padma growled at someone out of my range of vision.
I tried to twist to see, but it was no use. Whoever it was was behind me. “What is this? Show yourself.”
The contraption I was on swung away from the cage, and light singed my vision for a moment. I blinked to adjust and stared at the effigy before me. A figure made of stone and metal woven together, it had to be at least ten feet tall. Gems and crystals gleamed across its surface, connected by abstract glyphs and symbols. The face was that of a woman—serene and beautiful—but the body was that of a beast with claws and powerful haunches.
“Do you like it?” the man asked, and I suddenly knew who it was. I recognized the voice of the head of the House of Spirit, even though we’d met a handful times.
“Christian Constrange?”
His boots clipped on the ground as he rounded my chair to stand in front of me. “You recognize my voice.”
“I have an excellent aural memory. What is this? What are you doing?”
“A little ritual,” he said. “To free Loviator.”
A chill wrapped around my spine. “You can’t. The curse is broken.”
“Oh, I know. But it hardly matters when we have the power to tear a hole in the fabric of her prison and drag her out.” He smiled smugly. “It took some time, feeding her souls through the cold ones and gathering fuel for the ritual.” He waved a hand at all the bodies, all the missing people. “Souls are power, after all.”
“They’re alive?”
“They’d be useless to us dead.”
Us… “The new gods?”
His eyes lit up in delight. “I’m impressed. Not just with you, but your friends too. Although they only found my lair because I wanted them to.” He lifted his chin up to the cage. “Jacqueline Hyde works for me. Among others…”
That bitch. I knew there was something off about her. Okay, think, Orina. Think. Information. I needed more of it. “Okay, so you kidnapped a bunch of supernaturals, and you want to use their souls to set Loviator free, but why wait till after the curse was broken?”
He looked a little put out by this question. “You weren’t meant to break it just yet. A few more days and we’d have been ready. A ritual of this magnitude takes time. Every aspect must be perfect. And tonight, it is. Perfect. We have everything that we need.”
There was a fizzing sound, and Christian looked over my head at someone. “Ah, just in time. Do you have it?”
“I do.”
Two words, and my heart broke because those two words were said by someone I’d trusted with my life, all my life.
I took a shuddering breath, gritted my teeth, and spoke. “Hello, Micah.”
He appeared to my left, soundless and stealthy, just as we were trained to be, and looked down on me with beautiful brown eyes, warm brown eyes, kind brown eyes, eyes that had laughed with me, cried with me, consoled, and encouraged me.
There was so much I wanted to say to him. So much I wanted to ask, but there was only one question that mattered right now. “Why?”
He pressed his lips together. “This world is broken, Orina. Beyond measure. And only the power of gods can heal it.”
“You think Loviator willhealour world? You’ve got the wrong god.”
