Page 106 of A Warrior's Fate

Eli leaned over, inclining his head. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said, restraining a roll of her eyes at how much Kai had tried to downplay the structure.

As she’d already taken note of, the Hall of Deimos stretched tall, its looming presence bolstered by the incline it sat upon. A network of trolleys rested on either side of the road they tread along, the cable cars seemingly fit to hold hundreds to loft them to the heights without the need of other transportation or slaving through a strenuous walk. There were people in them, Isla was bewildered to find, but they vanished behind the coal-tinged stone wall that began raising alongside them.

With her brows furrowed, she gazed forward again.

While Io boasted pillars of marble and moonstone, shades of gold and burgundy, Deimos seemed to lend itself to workings of obsidian, silver, and sapphire. From the onyx columns baring flags of the alpha’s seal to the sable lamp posts overworked by silver twinings and encasing writhing flames within clear glass orbs, everything followed the same motif. Dark, a little forbidding, and beautiful.

Eli suddenly let out a low whistle as he slowed to a stop within a line of other fine vehicles. Many of the guests here were able to afford them. This was the queue for the banquet.

“Are you serious?” Blinking, she leaned forward in her seat and craned her neck to get a better view.

There were so many people. And she could’ve sworn up ahead, there was the firing of flashbulbs. Reporters. All of this for a retiring delta?

“Who’s supposed to be here again?” Isla asked Eli.

The general shook his head as if he too hadn’t realized what he’d signed up for. “Anyone who the delta has influenced in his tenure. He’s been in service for nearly fifteen years. It must’ve been quite a few.”

Quite a few indeed. How in the Goddess’s name did Kai expect her to navigate this place?

As it turned out, Isla had plenty of time to assess her game plan as she and Eli slogged up the rest of the hall’s drive. Mercifully, once they’d passed beneath the ebony metal archway—a crafting of wolves lurching for a sapphire orb that Isla pondered if it was a representation of the moon—two attendants came to their aid. While one valet tended to Eli and retrieved the keys, the other assisted Isla, opening the door before taking her hand. Panic gripped her heart as she stepped out onto the stone, too overtaken by the commotion before her to feel proud as the attendant’s eyes tore over her.

She knew the fanfare she witnessed at home, for the Imperial Alpha, Luna, and Adrien. For her father, and sometimes, even for Sebastian with the right crowd.

But this was on another level. She felt like a whole new breed of outsider. Everyone who held any type of standing in Deimos had to be at this party.

She scowled.

What the hell did you get me into?

Isla found her gaze drawn upwards, not to shoot a prayer to the Goddess—which maybe, she should’ve—but to the stained-glass window in the hall’s high center. Even with the distance, she could’ve sworn she saw something like a speck move along the base. Outside of it. She scrunched her brows and squinted as if it would help her see any better, but as soon as she blinked, it had vanished.

“Ready?”

She felt a hand on the small of her back and looked at Eli whose face was a picture of pure political grace.

No, was her immediate thought. No, and take me back.

But she had a job to do here. Kai had given her a job to do here.

And as pissed off as she was, she’d do it.

Forcing a smile, she subtly side-stepped from his touch and nodded.

They’d gone from one line to another. Driven under one archway to walk beneath a second. However, this passage sat at the base of what Isla deemed “the Front Hall”. The facade.

It was what one could see clearest from the streets. What bore the massive pane of stained glass like the hypnotizing eye of a large-bellied beast which protected what lay behind it. Because once one walked beneath the second archway, they ended up in a wide-mouthed underpass that cut beneath the structure. And from there, they found themselves in a gorgeous courtyard.

She wasn’t sure what parts were done up for the event and what was a mainstay for the hall. There were delicate lights through trees and endless blooms of flowers—deep purples, some nearly black, and blues much like the window eye above. There was a great fountain in the center that seemed to glow. Metal structures were strewn about that seemed to move, to have meaning. They likely held a story if she could focus enough on each of them, but all she was really drawn to was that same depiction of the two wolves and the sapphire; this one more detailed it seemed from her distance, than the one on the first arch.

“The alpha’s choice,” Eli quipped from his spot beside her, and Isla directed her eyes to where his had been.

A crowd was gathered beside them in their queue. Their chatter and laughter, along with the shutter of reporters’ cameras, echoed within the open-ended cavern. Part of the group was the same band of people that had come up on the tram. Isla recognized someone’s extravagant, seemingly out-of-place, powder-pink hat. They weren’t in the line to come in. They were just standing there, watching, waiting. She’d been struggling to think of for what, when Eli’s statement answered the question for her.

Many of the women, though not invited to the festivities, were dressed beautifully. In all types of ways. Much like Davina’s trunk of cosmetics, from soft and delicate to bold, sultry, and daring.

“I swear every unmated girl in this pack is tripping over themselves to get in his eye-line and catch his attention.”

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