Beneath the arc of stones and etched emblems, a small, round disk rose up slightly, its metal worn down by countless hands and paws and fins and any other manner of limb.
A sign beside it read: Touch at your own risk. Do not use between sundown and sunrise. Violators will be fined.
The people in line, waiting for access to the disk, seemed to have no problem with the risks.
A pair of giggling teenage male shifters—some kind of feline from their scents—goaded each other forward, elbowing and taunting, daring the other to touch the disk.
“Pathetic,” Danika said, striding past the line, the ropes, and a bored-looking city guard—a young Fae female—to the very front. She fished a badge from inside her leather coat and flashed it at the guard, who stiffened as she realized who’d cut the line. She didn’t even look at the golden emblem of the crescent moon bow with an arrow nocked through it before stepping back.
“Official Aux business,” Danika declared with an unnervingly straight face. “It’ll just be a minute.”
Bryce stifled her laughter, well aware of the glares fixed on their backs from the line.
Danika drawled to the teenage boys, “If you’re not going to do it, then clear off.”
They whirled toward her, and went white as death.
Danika smiled, showing nearly all her teeth. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
“Holy shit,” whispered one of them.
Bryce hid her smile as well. It never got old—the awe. Mostly because she knew Danika had earned it. Every damned day, Danika earned the awe that bloomed across the faces of strangers when they spotted her corn-silk hair and that neck tattoo. And the fear that made the lowlifes in this city think twice before fucking with her and the Pack of Devils.
Except for Philip Briggs. Bryce sent a prayer to Ogenas’s blue depths that the sea goddess would whisper her wisdom to Briggs to keep his distance from Danika if he ever really did walk free.
The boys stepped aside, and it only took a few milliseconds for them to notice Bryce, too. The awe on their faces turned to blatant interest.
Bryce snorted. Keep dreaming.
One of them stammered, turning his attention from Bryce to Danika, “My—my history teacher said the Gates were originally communication devices.”
“I bet you get all the ladies with those stellar factoids,” Danika said without looking back at them, unimpressed and uninterested.
Message received, they slunk back to the line. Bryce smirked and stepped up to her friend’s side, peering down at the dial pad.
The teenager was right, though. The seven Gates of this city, each set along a ley line running through Lunathion, had been designed as a quick way for the guards in the districts to speak to each other centuries ago. When someone merely placed a hand against the golden disk in the center of the pad and spoke, the wielder’s voice would travel to the other Gates, a gem lighting up with the district from which the voice originated.
Of course, it required a drop of magic to do so—literally sucked it like a vampyr from the veins of the person who touched the pad, a tickling zap of power, gone forever.
Bryce raised her eyes to the bronze plaque above her head. The quartz Gates were memorials, though she didn’t know for which conflict or war. But each bore the same plaque: The power shall always belong to those who give their lives to the city.
Considering it was a statement that could be construed as being in opposition to the Asteri’s rule, Bryce was always surprised that they allowed the Gates to continue to stand. But after becoming obsolete with the advent of phones, the Gates had found a second life when kids and tourists began using them, having their friends go to the other Gates in the city so they could whisper dirty words or marvel at the sheer novelty of such an antiquated method of communication. Not surprisingly, come weekends, drunk assholes—a category to which Bryce and Danika firmly belonged—became such a pain in the ass with their shouting through the Gates that the city had instituted hours of operation.
And then dumb superstition grew, claiming the Gate could make wishes come true, and that to give over a droplet of your power was to make an offering to the five gods.
It was bullshit, Bryce knew—but if it made Danika not dread Briggs’s release so much, well, it was worth it.
“What are you going to wish for?” Bryce asked when Danika stared down at the disk, the gems dark above it.
The emerald for FiRo lit up, a young female voice coming through to shriek, “Titties!”
People laughed around them, the sound like water trickling over stone, and Bryce chuckled.