Page 70 of The High Mountain Court

Chapter Eighteen

Carys and Remy neared the townhouse in the human part of the city. Remy’s fingers twitched with a sudden urge for magic. Her senses prickled at the silence. It was too quiet. They had walked through streets filled with equinox celebrations, but when they turned down this alley, it was dead. Every door was closed and every window on the street had shut their curtains. It was early in the evening still, the following day would be a day of rest, and yet the street seemed frozen.

Remy followed Carys warily back to the door of her sister’s house. Morgan opened it before Carys could knock. The halfling looked agitated but otherwise fine.

“All well?” Carys asked, adjusting her chest in her emerald dress for the hundredth time to keep anything from spilling out.

“Yep. Just as you said.” Morgan opened the door further and allowed Carys and Remy to enter. “Three of them came, nothing I couldn’t handle.”

They turned to their right, into the sitting room where they had slept. The room looked ransacked. Their packs lay emptied on the wooden chest, clothing and trekking gear strewn about the floor.

“What happened?” Remy gasped, looking to Morgan. The halfling stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe.

“Eastern soldiers said they needed to search the house for an unknown reason,” Morgan said with a long-suffering sigh.

They had come for the Shil-de ring. They wanted it that badly.

“I’m so sorry.” Remy set her jaw to the side. This was her fault. She brought this chaos into Morgan’s life. Her eyes whizzed up to the ceiling. What about her children?

“It’s fine,” Morgan waved her hand, following Remy’s silent thoughts. “Carys warned me. I’ve been dealing with fae assholes my whole life. I sent Magnus and the kids to his parents’ house for the night.” No one would blink an eye at a halfling’s home being raided. They would all blame her for it, anyway. Morgan slid her blue eyes to Remy. “They found nothing.”

Remy felt the talisman’s magical pulse against her chest. She had brought her totem bag with her, tucked between her breasts and her corset. She thought about Belenus’s wandering black eyes. He had kept looking at her chest. Remy realized far too late that he was not admiring her figure but sensing the magic of the ring.

“I’m sure they’ll come back once they notice you’re not at the ball,” Morgan said, eyes boring into Remy’s chest. Remy wondered if the halfling sensed the ring’s magic, too, or was simply perceptive.

“That’s why we’re not staying,” Carys said, shimmying out of her dress. The fabric pooled around her ankles as she unabashedly stepped out of the circle of emerald. Picking up the dress, she laid it over the armrest of the couch. “Sell these dresses, Morgs, it’ll be a good bit of coin. Sorry about all this.”

“Anything for you, little sister,” the halfling said, that motherly warmth edging back into her voice. “Especially if you leave me with dresses that cost more than Magnus makes in a year.”

Carys looked at Remy. “Get changed—we’re going to Lavender Hall.”

* * *

Remy had assumed Lavender Hall was the name of a bar or restaurant, but as Carys led her further into the shadows, she realized they were heading into an abandoned part of town. The surrounding buildings had fallen into complete disrepair: shingles missing off the roofs, doors bashed open, windows smashed. In the center of this derelict part of town was a looming dark temple.

Not a single brazier was lit, but in the moonlight Remy could barely make out the giant edifice. Built like a five-tiered cake, it poked above the line of houses. Black stone columns held up the raised entryway of the structure. The two giant wooden doors displayed elaborate flower carvings that were painted in violet and gold.

It was an old violet witch temple, Remy concluded upon seeing the door. The violet witches, natives of the Eastern Court, had made astonishing perfumes and exquisite scents that did all sorts of magic: ensnare a person’s mind, bring money or fame, and even cure ill health. Like all the covens of witches, the magic often passed through the female bloodline. Female witches were the ones who had more magic, and the violet witches lost sight of that balance of things. They created magical scents that encouraged the womb to produce female heirs, thus creating more magic for their order, but within a generation there were so few male witches that their numbers dwindled even with polygamous pairings becoming common. It was rumored that the High Priestess of the violet witches cast a spell on her coven in an effort to control them, though Remy knew of no such spell. The younger generation of violet witches resented the mandate from their forebears to produce more witchlings and bucked against their overbearing predecessors by refusing to reproduce. And so the violet witch numbers shriveled into near nothing. They abandoned their temples and scattered like the wind across the east.

That was over eighty years ago. This temple was an old relic now.

Remy climbed the stone steps and followed as Carys pushed her way inside those enormous violet doors.

Moonlight beamed in through the high arched windows. The illustrations of flowers and Mhenbic symbols on the vaulted ceilings seemed to dance in the glowing light. Marble icons of the long-gone witches looked down upon the stone floor. An amethyst-colored rug split the room in half from the doors to the pulpit at the far end. Rotting, rectangular banners draped from either side of the raised, carpeted platform. A shrine covered in dusty candles and smooth stones sat in the center.

The temple remained untouched, unlike the surrounding area. Remy wondered if the humans misinterpreted the runes painted on the doors for curses. Humans feared witch magic and didn’t know how to read their Mhenbic symbols.

Remy followed Carys down the long aisle between the wooden pews and past the pulpit into a small back stairwell. Carys moved like she had done this many times before. They climbed five flights of creaky, steep stairs. Remy groaned, adjusting her pack, wondering again why she had to bring her heavy load when Carys had left hers behind.

“If you think this is challenging, you’ll never make it up the Rotted Peak,” Carys jeered.

Remy frowned but didn’t reply. They reached a small landing where a ladder rose into the ceiling hatch, already open to the night sky.

Remy said nothing as she followed Carys onto a circular roof. Waist-high stonewalls surrounded the rooftop, and beyond them . . . the sight of the city took Remy’s breath away. The view was even more spectacular than from the palace. Remy went to the edge of the wall, leaning over as she looked down all five stories of open air to the ground. Her legs felt wobbly again when she realized how high up they were. But her racing heart calmed once she looked at the glowing lights of Wynreach. The celebrations of the equinox ball seemed to still be going strong at the castle far on the hill. It was lit from every side by giant fires, and the colors of the glass windows seemed to glow with the firelight from within the castle itself.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a male voice rumbled next to her.

She hadn’t realized that Hale was beside her. So entranced by the flickering lights of the capital, she had not noticed that the Twin Eagles and Hale were already on the roof.

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