Page 9 of House of Gilded Nightmares

It doesn’t feel like the soft, steady glow of the magic we practice during our ceremonies, our humble offering to the goddess each moon phase. This is a storm of midnight flame, the hot flare of lightning, and the earth-shaking rumble of thunder, all wrapped in raven’s wings and black steel. It hits me forcibly, making my knees buckle. I can even taste it in the air around us.

Through my shock and fear, something in that wave of magic speaks to me, to something deep inside. To that part of me that slays monsters and thrills in the victory of bloodletting.

And that deep, dark part of me feels the swell of this new magic, and it answers.

The room shifts again, but this time it’s not the incense. There’s a tug in my gut and my heart flies up into my throat as if I’m falling. My body crushes against the warrior as the cathedral falls away. For several long moments, we are a cyclone of heat and ash and lightning with no discernible hold on the world. We exist without location; we are everywhere and nowhere.

Until, very abruptly, we are flung to the earth, somewhere that is hard and strewn with rocks.

What little air I had in my lungs leaves in a rush when I hit the ground. I roll several times before hitting a large boulder. Pain flashes through my body, and my vision goes in and out. I blink slowly, trying to stop the spinning. Everything hurts. Slowly, after several long moments, I push myself up onto my elbows.

Mist covers everything, swirling across the ground and around the rocks, making it impossible to see very far. Are we somewhere in the mountains above the Amethyst Palace? How did we get outside the cathedral so fast? The warrior lies several feet away from me. He’s already climbing to his feet, shaking his head as if to clear it. He rotates his gaze, and when it lands on me, his silver eyes narrow and he stalks toward me, anger radiating off of him.

That’s motivation enough to scramble to my feet quickly. I’ve gone from one perilous situation to another in the blink of an eye. I grab a small rock in my hand as I do, holding it up near my head in a threatening stance as he approaches.

“Stop!” I command, putting as much force as I can into my voice. “Who are you and why did you bring me here?”

The warrior doesn’t slow in the slightest. I hesitate a half moment before letting my rock fly, but he easily dodges it, grabbing me and heaving me over one of his shoulders. He turns and strides swiftly into the fog. A patch of dark trees emerges ahead, not far off, and he makes for it. So, I do what anyone would do in my circumstance. I scream as loudly as I possibly can.

“Quiet!” he growls, jostling me with the arm wrapped around my waist, holding me across him.

“Put me down!” I shriek, pounding my fists into his back. Blood rushes to my head and my panic is overwhelming.

Another growl, I feel the rumble of it through his chest where I’m slung across it. “The only thing you need to know right now is that if you don’t shut up, we’re both going to die. Do you understand me?”

As if to punctuate his statement, an unearthly shriek rises from the rocky field behind us.

My body goes rigid in my panic. “What in the name of the goddess was that?”

“Be quiet unless you want to find out,” the warrior snarls.

We make it to the trees. The warrior doesn’t pause, heading straight into them and weaving in and out between the thick, gnarled trunks. They’re covered in strange protrusions, and some ooze a thick black sap. Even the branches have strange knobs and knots. They hang low to the ground, crisscrossing like vines in some places and tangling overhead, too. So thick they nearly blot out what little light there was to begin with.

And that’s when I realize something that makes my blood freeze in my veins.

There’s light, which means there’s sun. And if the sun is out, when back at the cathedral it was after midnight, moon full in the sky…

“What is this place?” I whisper, my throat suddenly hoarse with panic. When the warrior doesn’t respond, I repeat louder. “Answer me right now! Where are we?!”

“I do not take orders from you, princess!” he snaps, jostling me on his shoulder again. “And I’m not sure what part of my earlier statements you’re not understanding.”

“You have abducted me, and now you think you can silence me?” I pound on his back with my fists again. “Just answer the question!”

“You’re in your rightful home. That’s all you need to know right now.” A low growl. “If we survive the next five minutes, I’ll—”

Another horrifying scream rises up behind us, closer this time, and a moment later, an echoing scream answers it. Branches snap, very close by. We’re being followed. Something has entered the forest behind us. And then, from up ahead, another shriek and more branches snapping, as if something huge is heading toward us.

“I hope you learned how to climb in that palace of yours,” the warrior says, and then he shoves me up into the V of branches formed by the nearest tree.

I catch a flash of those pewter eyes as he turns away, not waiting to see if I have a firm grip on the branches. My fingers scrabble for a hold on the rough bark, the earthy smell filling my lungs. I have, in fact, climbed a tree before, many times, though it’s a bit difficult to climb when I’m barefoot and have nothing on but a nightgown. Once I get my balance, I pull myself higher and then turn around so I can see what’s happening below.

I’ve just gotten myself settled in the tree when monsters swarm the forest.

Chapter Five

From my vantage point above the forest floor, I watch in horror as a dozen creatures charge the warrior. If he hadn’t tossed me up into this tree, I’d be right in the middle of it. A hundred conflicting thoughts and feelings reel through me as my mind tries to catch up with everything that’s happened in the last few minutes.

I’ve clearly been abducted. How is it possible that the man from my dreams is real? Who is he and why has he taken me? And more importantly, how in the name of the goddess do I get back from wherever this is?

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