The towering onyx doors before us remained firmly closed.
“How quaint,” Septimus said.
“Quaint,” Ketura echoed, eyeing the road behind us—and the packs of hellhounds yipping and howling not far from us. It was rare that so many of these beasts would come so close to a town. More evidence that Evelaena was not doing much to maintain her homeland.
“So now what?” Oraya said, turning to the door. “We knock?”
“It’s your cousin, princess. You tell us.”
Evelaena knew we were coming. Oraya and I had penned a letter to her before we left, announcing our visit—a tour of all notable vampire nobles in the House of Night. Cairis had heaped sickening amounts of flattery into it. We’d ensured that she had received it, but we’d gotten no response.
That didn’t surprise me. Even my own nobles weren’t especially inclined to return my letters.
I jerked my chin towards Septimus’s companions. “You think you can take down this wall?”
“I hope you’re joking,” Ketura muttered. “Stupidest idea.”
I was half joking.
Oraya had slowly approached the door, staring up at it. Something about the expression on her face made me pause. I approached her.
“What?” I asked, softly.
“It just feels… strange here.”
She lifted her palm, as if to lay it against the door—
And then a deafening grinding rang out as the stone swung open. The sound was hideous, squealing and cracking, as if the gate protested moving at all after decades or centuries.
The curtains of stone darkness parted, and Lahor spread out before us. It was even worse than it had seemed in silhouette—the road ahead nothing but slabs of broken stone, every building half-open and crumbling, every window nothing but broken shards of glass.
Standing before us was a boy, no older than sixteen at most. He wore a long purple jacket that didn’t fit him well, once fine but now several hundred years out of style. Waves of pale blond hair framed a delicate face and wide, empty ice-blue eyes. Those eyes seemed to stare through us, not at us. And then, just as the grinding finally stopped, they went suddenly sharp, taking us in with eviscerating keenness before sliding back to cow-like vacancy.
He bowed low before us.
“Highnesses. My lady Evelaena welcomes you to Lahor. Come. You must be eager to rest after your long journey.”
19
RAIHN
The castle was the only building in this place that seemed to be—almost—in one piece. It was the tallest building in the city, which was to say, it was the pile of rubble that towered over all the other piles of rubble. It was cold and damp inside, ocean breezes flowing in through broken windows, strong enough to rustle heavy, velvet curtains that reeked of mold.
We didn’t pass a single soul as we were led through the halls, into an expansive room with tall ceilings and towering windows that overlooked the churning sea beyond the cliffs. Some of the panes were tinted red. Maybe that once had been some kind of design decision, but now it looked eerie and disparate, because so much of the glass had been shattered.
Yet, even on such a sad canvas, the view was breathtaking. There were few places anywhere in the House of Night where you could see the water like this—ocean surrounding you on all sides. A gust of wind bellowed through the room, salt so heavy it made my eyes water, the stench of Viprus thick enough to gag on. A dais sat before the windows, bearing a rotting velvet throne with only one armrest and a cracked back.
And upon that throne was Evelaena.
She was only a distant relative of Vincent’s, and much younger than him. During his bloody night of ascension to power, he’d killed most of his close family members, carving a carefully mapped path to his inheritance. Yet, she resembled him. She had the fair eyes—not the moon-silver that he’d passed on to Oraya, but the cold ocean blue favored by most of his line. Her cheekbones were high and features severe, as if made of glass. Her blond hair fell over each shoulder, so long that it pooled in her lap in dry waves.
She rose. Her white gown dragged along the floor as she stepped down the dais steps, the hem bloodstained and dirty. It, like the boy’s jacket, was an outdated style, like she’d gotten it about a hundred and fifty years ago. Maybe it had been beautiful back then.
Her gaze passed over me, then Septimus, and then landed on Oraya—and stayed there, as a slow grin spread over her face.
I could practically feel Oraya stiffen. Hell, I did, too. I resisted the urge to step in front of her as Evelaena approached.