Keeper of Storms (The Fallen Fae #3) - Jenna Wolfhart Page 0,112
don’t know, but I don’t want to wait around in case it decides to pack its bags and go. I’m ready to kill a king.”
41
Reyna
The castle was quiet. Almost too quiet. Their footsteps echoed off the black stone walls as they crept down the corridor toward the throne room. They’d passed a few more bands of warriors in the streets, but they’d managed to fight through them. And yet, no one had been there to stop them when they finally strode through the yawning castle gates. The place felt as still as a graveyard and just as free of life.
“This is creepy,” Reyna whispered, glancing at a statue of an ancient shadow fae king. He hunkered in the shadows like he was ready to spring to life at any moment, stone sword raised high. “I feel like he’s going to morph from one of these statues and start hacking at us with a stone blade.”
Lorcan’s lips twitched. “You sound like you’ve been reading too many of Eislyn’s books.”
“What I would give to see my sister’s face again.” There had been no reply to Reyna’s letters, not that she’d expected them. Even if Thane had sent back a bird, it would have had no way of finding her. Being locked up in a cell suspended above a river of molten lava had seen to that.
“I’m certain she’s fine. Thane—and your father—would never let anything happen to her,” Lorcan murmured.
She wanted to believe him. Desperately so. But neither of them had any idea what the hell had been going on up north. Had Thane attacked Tairngire? Did he have the castle again? Where had Eislyn gone? Was she with her father? Had Cos Darragh marched to war for Thane?
And where were they all now?
Surely Aengus’s meager army he’d left behind inside the capitol city hadn’t been enough to fight off two powerful armies.
But then why hadn’t they marched south? Thane had promised.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lorcan whispered. “I’ve been thinking it, too. Where’s Thane? I can only hope the battle took longer than hoped, and that’s the only reason he’s late.”
“Optimism,” she said with a sigh as they inched further down the dimly-lit corridor. “Impressive you can still cling onto it when we’re walking straight into what appears to be a trap.”
He cut his eyes her way. “So, we’ve had the same thought.”
“Great minds think alike,” she said with a smile that was part-grimace. “This has all been far too easy. There were no guards at the gates. We haven’t seen a single living soul since we stepped inside the castle. Ulaid Molt is a hell of a lot of terrible things, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t sit in the throne room unguarded during the middle of a war.”
“Do you think he’s even in there at all?”
“Oh yes.” Her gaze locked on the looming doors at the end of the corridor. “I think he got word that you arrived with your army, and now he’s waiting in there for you to show your face to him. He wants to be the one to kill you.”
“And curse himself.”
“He doesn’t care about being cursed.”
“Nollaig didn’t either.” Lorcan frowned, slowing to a stop a stone’s throw from the door. “She said she’s already cursed.”
“Truth be told, Lorcan, most of us are.” She sighed, trying to imagine a time before the war, but found nothing in her memory, not even from the Ruin. She’d been born after the Fall when the courts had already been warring for decades. She did not know peace, not truly. There had always been the threat of battle hanging over her head.
What must it have been like before all of this? A quiet calmness. A steady existence day-by-day. Light and laughter. Feasting and dancing. Travelling the entire continent without the ever-present fear of others who were not like yourself. Reyna could only hope that when all of this was over, whether she survived this fight or not, that Tir Na Nog could find a way to come together again.
“What should I expect?” he murmured. “What will he try to do?”
“I don’t know,” Reyna whispered, which was the terrifying thing about it. The wood king was unpredictable, and he had power on his side that she knew she didn’t truly understand. “He’ll find a way to use his magic. And he’ll definitely want to drink your blood. He also has a crazy sword that you don’t want to get anywhere near. It looks like a saw. A massive one.”