Page 92 of Lore of the Wicked Wood
“Hoop dancer,” he repeated numbly. “What does she look like?”
“I hear she’s absolutely stunning,” Valaina gushed, her frosty blue eyes warming with delight. “Positively ravishing.”
“She’s fae.” Davorin nodded and scraped his fangs along his bottom lip, crimson bleeding into the gold of his eyes. “Long, wavy hair. Dark like the wicked woods, easy to grab a fistful. Eyes the color of the Ladova Bay. Slender, elegant neck.”
Atlas damn near exploded. “That’s Everinne.”
His Everinne.
Davorin looked like he couldn’t wait to sink his fangs, and possibly something else, right into her.
“Everinne?” Valaina whipped around to face Atlas, her lashes fluttering back in shock. “As in the future Princess of Prava?”
When his mouth fell open to deflect, she offered an innocent lift of her shoulders. “Rumors spread fast in the Golden City, Your Highness.”
“What’s your future wife doing working at the Mystic Obscura?” Davorin asked, his brows lifting in silent challenge.
“It was a mistake.” His gaze cut to Veros. “A lapse in judgement. She’s going to quit as soon as we’re wed.”
Whether she wanted to or not.
Valaina stared at him, and though she was usually rather pale, right now it looked as though death had her by the neck and was refusing to let go. “Atlas, darling. It will not be so easy. Everinne won’t be able to just walk away. Not from the Mystic Obscura, and certainly not from Reine.”
His gut turned acidic. There was something ominous about the way Valaina spoke, something that filled him with a sensation he had not felt in many years.
Fear.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, alarm needling its way down his spine.
Davorin shook his head once. “There’s no way out.”
“Those who work at the Mystic Obscura never leave.” Valaina’s expression softened into one of sympathy, and her eyes shone with regret. “If Everinne has given them her blood, she belongs to them.”
Atlas’s heart lurched. Bile scalded the back of his throat. “How do you know this?”
Valaina shared a look with Davorin, squeezed his arm, and when she glanced back at Atlas, her face was solemn. “Reine told us.”
Fucking skies.
There had to be a way to get her out, to break her free from the Mystic Obscura’s clutches. This was all Jarek’s fault. That damned demon summoner had lured her in, appealed to her reckless nature, then snared her in his web of deceit. Worse, if they had a single drop of her blood, they wouldknowwhat she was capable of, they would know about her power. Atlas clenched his fists, his nails biting into his palms. If they used her for her magic, if they harmed her in any way, he would kill them all.
Atlas pushed up from his chair, pacing. He shoved his hands through his hair, his boots clicking soundly against the hardwood of the room. “There has to be something I can do.”
He wouldn’t leave her there. Not with Jarek. Not with Reine. Not with any of them.
“There is only one way.” Valaina’s voice was too soft, too quiet. He barely heard her over the erratic beating of his own fucking heart.
“Name it,” he growled. “Whatever the price, I’ll pay it.”
The light in Valaina’s eyes dimmed as she said, “If you want to get Everinne out, you’ll have to bargain for her life.”
Twenty-Nine
Everinne danced upon the hoop high above the stage of the Mystic Obscura. She let it cradle her like the moon as she balanced with pointed toes and outstretched arms. She arched her back, stretching her legs into the opposite direction as the tips of her fingers grazed the glamoured, barren tree limbs reaching for her. Magic rippled through her as she spun and twirled, moving like a wraith above the skeletal branches. Dramatic chords of an evocative harmony pulsed all around her, tempting her to perform one harrowing feat after another, pushing her to risk more with each perilous act.
Reine’s chosen theme for the Mystic Obscura closely resembled that of the Deszvila Forest, so similar that it left Everinne’s palms clammy and her stomach tangled in unforgiving knots. Her stage was encircled with spindly trees that groaned and swayed in time to the chilling cadence of music. Though it was nothing more than a complex use of glamour, she felt the scrape and snare of the prickly branches on her thighs and arms with every pass. Below her, the menagerie was designed to look like a labyrinth of darkened woods, a forest that shifted to close off and reveal different paths, leaving those who wandered in search of revelry to become disoriented andconfused. Free-flowing fountains gurgled with blood red wine and ominous silver faerie fire rained upon the tiered seating and balconies like beams of fractured moonlight. Female performers were dressed as dryads and forest sprites, wearing little more than swaths of fur or glittering leaves to lure unsuspecting patrons into sordid bargains. The males stalked about, taking on the appearance of the ganglybaukvist—they wore fabric in varying shades that clung to their muscular frames, embellished with fire rubies and onyx to appear like bloodied, decaying flesh.
The entire atmosphere left Everinne unsettled.
