Wicked (Eternal Guardians #9) - Elisabeth Naughton Page 0,98
met her in that club, drooling over a body he never should have touched but clearly couldn’t get enough of.
She tossed her silky dark hair over her shoulder and carefully maneuvered around broken limbs and jagged rocks on the path that wound through the mountains high above the castle.
The air was thinner up here, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She was too busy taking in the surroundings—the tall fir and pine trees, the thick underbrush, and to their right and far below, the river running out of the mountains which widened to the lake before narrowing at the falls past the castle.
The lake formed a natural valley, carved out long ago by glaciers, but the path turned away from the lake, through a gap in the soaring rocks that led deeper into the mountain.
He watched her tense as the light dimmed, as they moved between the rocks and the trees thinned out, leaving gnarled trunks and limbs void of leaves. Knew she recognized the narrow canyon for what it was—a dangerous place to be ambushed. But because they were still within the boundary of Ehrendia, he wasn’t worried that would happen. He was hoping she’d notice something else, though. Something he’d decided to share with her even though he knew he shouldn’t.
Her steps slowed near a break in the rocks to her right. Most would think it a cave not worth exploring, but she turned right toward it as if she sensed it was more.
His stomach tightened as she pressed a hand against the rocks and ducked under the natural arch. She didn’t look back at him, but he didn’t need her to. He felt her excitement and followed, wanting to see her reaction when she realized what she’d found.
A narrow corridor curved to the right, then the left. The walls were uneven stone she had to feel her way along in the dark. But the passageway quickly opened to a vast room, this time not natural, but rather man or being-made.
Talisa stopped several feet inside the room and looked around. “Wow.”
Zagreus moved out of the tunnel behind her, knowing what she was seeing—the same thing he’d seen the first time he’d found this place. Smooth walls carved from granite. A cobblestone floor. Tall pillars holding up the arched, gothic ceiling. And on the far side of the vast space, a wide staircase that filled the room with light from above, flanked on both sides by twin marble statues.
“What is this place?” Talisa asked.
“What do you think it is?”
She glanced his way, one corner of her lips curling at the challenge, then headed toward the staircase. In the middle of the room, she looked down as she stepped over the seal in the floor, the one that was faded from time but still showcased the wine chalice surrounded by ivy and grape leaves.
Her bootsteps echoed through the space. She paused briefly to study the naked female statues on each side of the stairs. But her attention darted back to the light above, and she moved past the statues and up the steps. Toward the sound coming from that light.
She stopped the second she reached the upper level, and as Zagreus moved up at her side and his eyes took in the wide, round room—this one also gothic in style with a domed ceiling and five archways that looked out over the lake far below, he knew she’d already figured it out.
“Wow,” she said again, staring out at the view. “It’s a lookout.”
“An ancient lookout, built when Ehrendia was first settled by the maenads.” He watched as she crossed the space to the arch on her right and looked up at the waterfall that poured from a cliff high above and dropped down into the lake far below.
“The waterfall is close. It should be louder.”
“The walls are soundproof.”
She moved to the middle archway and glanced down. “You can see the castle from here. The village, even the waterfall at the end of the lake.”
“You can see the whole of Ehrendia from here. That’s why it was built.”
She glanced from one arched opening to the next. “It should be colder this high up. There’s no glass in these windows. But I don’t even feel a breeze.”
“Some kind of ancient magic protects it. Keeps it insulated against the weather.”
She turned and looked around the space. At the smooth floor. Over the carvings in the rock walls—the same grapes and ivy and vines that were etched into columns back at the castle.