Page 186 of Wolf Caged
I nodded.
She looked over her shoulder. “So how did the Shadow Court survive unscathed? If this explosion was big enough to be called a cataclysm and wiped out everything, how did it not affect the surrounding courts?”
I glanced back in the direction of my court too, my voice growing softer as I thought about the stories I had been told, and the one responsible for saving that court. “My father… he took measures to protect the border of the Shadow Court using magic—at great expense to himself—and so the mountains only bear scars.”
She looked at those scars, great curving cuts into the faces of the mountains that formed sheer walls of rock.
“What happened to him?” she said quietly, as if sensing my shift in mood, the sombreness that welled up in me as I thought about him.
“I am told he was unconscious for weeks, that the court feared he would not recover. He had no heir at the time. Itwas before he met my mother. My uncle was poised to take the throne and had been acting as steward, closing in on it. The day before he was due to be crowned king, my father awoke. My uncle went back to the legions, returning to acting as his general.”
I teleported with her again.
When we landed, she said, “Was your uncle a good man? Would he have made a good king?”
“No.” It was easy to answer that question as I thought of the days following my parents’ deaths, as I recalled him closing in on my throne, challenging my fragile hold on it as I grieved.
“What happened to him?” That question was cautious, as if she already knew the answer.
“He is dead.”
She did not press me to expand on that, to tell her the bitter truth—that my first act as king had been to order his death as punishment for failing to protect my parents.
I should have executed myself for the same reason.
But Vyr had needed me.
And so I had moulded myself into a blade sheathed in shadow, one strong enough to cut down anyone who sought to hurt her again.
I teleported with Saphira, managing to shift us further this time, and stilled as we landed, immediately drawing her closer to me and down into a crouch behind the thick bleached trunk of a fallen tree. She peered over it at the tower that loomed ahead of us.
A tower of bones.
It looked as if some dark power had raised all the bones buried in the sands and drawn them here, constructing this grim monument to death. Bones as big as dragon femurs formed columns on each level, smaller bones laid horizontally between them to fill the gaps. Around the windows, skulls had beenplaced, fae mostly around the curved sides, but at the peak of the arches, they were the skulls of horned beasts. At the top of the three-storey tower sat a crown of huge fangs, each taller than I was.
“That looks inviting,” Saphira muttered beside me. “You should be taking notes. You could make some serious improvements on how formidable your castle looks if you cherry picked aspects of this tower. Wouldn’t want to be outdone by a lich.”
I chuckled low at her humour, a weapon she often employed when nervous, and studied the tower, covering all the angles and looking for a sign of life. Power radiated from it, one unfamiliar to me, but it was strong, coming in waves.
Like a beating heart.
A cold sense of dread spilled through my veins as I felt that beat, as I looked at the tower, and felt the warmth of Saphira beside me.
This was too dangerous, and not only for myself and Saphira.
Neve and this dragon stone were connected somehow, in a way she refused to tell me, and taking this crystal to her might place her in danger, might change everything in a way I did not want, drawing the gaze of the one who hunted her towards my court.
Exposing her again.
But I had to take it.
Neve herself had asked me to go through with it and bring her the stone. If she was prepared to face whatever happened when it was back in her hands, then I could be too.
I just needed to get my hands on it.
A breeze kicked the sand up around me as I studied the tower, cataloguing the entrance and the piles of bones that encircled it. Guards. This lich was strong enough to command a creature to rise and do its bidding even when it was only bones.
That was not good.
