Page 47 of House of Gilded Nightmares

My churning thoughts harden to black rage, and my skin alights with magic, both gold and shadow mixed. Heat and friction press against the ropes binding me, and a curl of power stretches toward Avonia.

“There you are,” Avonia says, mouth twisted in a cruel smirk. “I knew the last of the line of Otreyas couldn’t just be some spoiled princess raised in a palace. That’s why I had you brought here. I don’t trust anyone else to finish what I started.”

“You will not be my end,” I growl. “Not tonight. Not ever.”

Something flickers in her eyes. “You almost have me convinced. I believe that you believe it.”

“Do you really think the nightmares will share power with you any more than the ruling houses did?” I ask. “You chose the wrong side, Avonia.”

She cocks her head to the side. “That’s where you’re wrong. I made sure of it.”

Avonia looks down at her belly and rubs one hand across it. There is the slightest of swells there, unnoticeable before my attention was drawn to it. My eyes widen.

“Growing within me is a new line, and as this baby grows, I change with it.” She locks gazes with me, and lines of black bleed across the brown.

I think of Riya, and how Zyren said there are those who possess the blood of both Valaron and the nightmares.

“It’s ironic,” she says, “that you came back here a scant two weeks before the Obsidian Moon completed its cycle and merged our worlds, freeing the nightmares forever. I would still have hunted you down, of course, but you would never have seen it coming, never have known the truth of your heritage. Tell me, are you happy you know? Or would you rather have lived the last of your days in blissful ignorance?”

I think through the last two weeks. My travels beyond the palace walls for the first time, the adventures, the battles. Living close to the earth, riding each day until my body was tired and worn. Bathing in snow-cold rivers and seeing the stretch of the mountains all the way to the sea. Feeling my true magic for the first time. And Zyren. A star ignited within my soul, a passion unlike anything I’d ever known.

I do not regret any of it.

“I have lived a lifetime since I came here,” I say, meeting Avonia’s cruel gaze. “I will choose truth over ignorance every time.” I pause, feeling magic glowing in my eyes. “Another truth, while we’re sharing: if your men killed my companion, I swear to you I will have vengeance. I suggest you pray to whatever deity you worship that he is unharmed, or you will regret ever setting eyes on me.”

“I learned long ago not to waste my breath uttering a single word to any so-called higher being in this place. If they exist, they do not care for us, or our fate.” Avonia makes a gesture with one hand. “But if it comforts you to think of them when you die, far be it from me to stop you.”

She claps, and the guards standing outside the tent push through the flap, awaiting instruction.

“Speaking of your death, it is time. I have waited far too long for this moment.” She smiles before turning her attention to the guards. “Take her to the ceremony site. Summon the others.”

Chapter Eighteen

They stride forward and grasp me under the elbows, one on each side, and drag me from the tent. My heart beats itself to a pulp inside my chest. I’m fairly certain Zyren is dead, or he would be here by now. Anguish threatens to wash through me like black ice, but I push it back. I can’t afford to feel that right now. I have to keep a clear head if I’m going to get out of this.

Looking around as I’m dragged through the campsite, I see nightmares scattered throughout. I can feel their auras, a viscous darkness like oily smoke. Their eyes follow me as I’m led to the canyon wall, where a cluster of winged nightmares stands at the back of the camp. A chorus of low growls and snarls rises through the trees when they see me. I may be their queen, but I am also their captor. I am the one keeping them from freedom.

“It’s time,” one of the guards says.

Two nightmares step forward, one with wings like a wasp, shimmering blue-black in the night, and the other with bat wings and yellow eyes. The bat-winged one grabs me under one arm, along with one of the guards, and before I can draw breath, we catapult into the sky. We whoosh between the tree branches, far above the perimeter fence, hugging the canyon wall. The stench of the creature holding me is nearly unbearable, and its clawed hands cut into my shoulders. But we don’t have far to go. The monster makes for a plateau just on the other side of the canyon.

Without warning, the thing drops me when I’m still a dozen feet above the earth. I hit the flat-topped rock with bruising force. The air knocks out of my lungs and my cheekbone smacks into the ground. Warm blood wells up there, and at the back of my head, too. Everything spins as I try to get my bearings.

The plateau is perhaps a hundred feet across at the top, a spike of rock that juts from the earth as if it had once tried to be a mountain and given up. There are no trees, only a few boulders scattered across the surface. A sheer drop of two hundred feet on each side ensures we won’t have any visitors. Only the moon and stars watch me.

I am completely on my own.

The nightmare offers me a blade-edged smile as it lands beside me, plucking me from the ground and jerking me upright like a puppet. Its hand is so big that it can wrap its claws around my torso, which it does as it moves toward a boulder in the center of the plateau, dragging me so I bump into its leathery thigh with each stride. When we reach the boulder, it tosses me down again. I roll across the ground and manage just barely to keep from smacking my head against the rock, catching myself with outstretched palms.

With a switch of its tufted tail, the thing saunters off as the two guards approach me. They pull me to my feet and fasten me with iron shackles to the boulder. As they do, more winged nightmares fly up to the plateau, carrying the warriors of House Septarus with them. They fan out around me, pacing with bright eyes. One of them sends a ball of black flame from his throat into the bonfire stacked before me, and the flames instantly climb the dry wood, reaching for the sky. Avonia had planned every detail of my execution ahead of time, so sure that she would find me.

I try to keep my terror in check as the crowd grows, dozens upon dozens of warriors and nightmares pressing in around me. Beyond the crush of bodies, I hear someone begin to beat a single sonorous drum. Their fervor for my death grows to a fevered pitch, a writhing mass of sweaty skin, glistening teeth, widely-stretched maws. And then, as the excitement seems to reach a climax, the crowd parts, and Avonia strides slowly through.

She carries a single silver dagger in her hands, the hilt in her right, the tip of the blade resting lightly in her left as she holds it aloft for all to see. The screams and howls and drumbeats grow even louder until Avonia stops before me, knife falling to her side, the fist of her other hand raised above her shoulder to signal silence.

Just like that, silence falls, so complete I can hear the sound of the wind along the tops of the nearby rocks.

“Blood kin and fellow warriors, long have we awaited this night,” Avonia says, her voice matching the darkness of the sky above, the cold glitter of the stars. “Tonight, we will end the line of House Otreyas and forever break the magic that rules this land. This magic that keeps all of us prisoners in our own home!”

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