CHAPTER 98: NINETY EIGHT

Turns out Lucien isn’t so weightless after all.

Heaving him onto the horse takes half an hour of grunting, slipping, cursing, and praying I don’t rip open the holes already leaking black blood through his shirt. By the time we ride out of the forest and leave the bodies behind, the sun is high and blinding, and I’m shaking with exhaustion.

He slumps against my back, heavy and limp, arms hanging loosely around my waist. I barely breathe, afraid to jostle him, whispering to the damned horse not to gallop. It doesn’t matter. Every time the wind picks up, Lucien groans, complaining about something or nothing, and then goes quiet again, his head dropping against my shoulder.

His skin is clammy. His pulse, weak. His breaths, uneven. Each one feels smaller than the last.

I can’t stop glancing back, afraid that one time I’ll look and he won’t be breathing at all.

The mountains refuse to appear. I keep riding north--or what I think is north--but everything looks the same. Endless white. The same cliffside. The same twisted trees. The same gods-damned boulder. When I see it for the sixth time, I realize I’m lost. Hopelessly, impossibly lost.

"Luke," I whisper, brushing his arm where it’s wrapped around my waist.

No response.

"Lucien." My voice trembles. "I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know where home is." My tears freeze on my cheeks. My throat burns from the cold. "I don’t know the way."

Then, something shifts in the air. A faint tickle ghosts past my ear, and every hair on my arm rises.

I turn sharply and find nothing. But then I see it. A ridge of snow shaped too perfectly to be nature, carved into the roaring head of a dragon.

Something pulls at me. Instinct, magic, or madness, I am unsure, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m tugging the reins, steering the horse west toward the roaring cliff. My heart pounds, a strange, aching familiarity building in my chest as we begin up the slope. It feels like coming up for air after being underwater too long.

The fog on my mind clears slightly and I forget myself completely as I take in the view, the trees on either sides of here, the crisp, clean air, the utter lack of movement, the stillness of the world, like everything had come to a complete halt here, and this is the very top of the brilliant world.

But there’s nothing else here. Just... snow and emptiness, and we’ve drawn precariously close to the cliff’s edge.

However, just as the horse takes another lurch forward, we... rebound, for the lack of a better word for it.

The horse neighs a harshly cry, flinging us off it’s back and we hit the snow, rolling.

"Lucien!" I call out, catching his wrist before he can roll off too far. He’s still unconscious, his chest rising and falling too slowly. I rise to my feet, making a beeline for that invisible demarcation, and sure enough, I slam into what feels like a hard wall of air.

Confused, I raise my hands to punch the air in front of me, only to hiss as pain reverberates through my arm. I glare at whatever it is, but it looks rather silly as I seem to be glaring at nothing but horizon.

Recalling what Lucien had done when we’d entered Ebonheart for the first time, I raise my hand tentatively, placing it against that invisible wall.

I feel something scrape against my mental shield, a voice old and cunning and rather playful, reminding me of Lucien’s. "Good of you to return home, little liar," the voice says, and I yelp, scrambling back from it.

"Who are you? What are you?" I echo, wondering how many levels of crazy I have become, talking to nothing but thin air.

"I believe most would call me a door? As to who... I don’t exactly exist. Sometimes, wards take on lives of their own. I’m not a person. I am a few words casted into a spell that earned sentience. I protect my liege’s keep from intruders and outsiders." I feel it once more, staring at me with eyes I cannot see. "You both look worse for wear."

And with that, the earth trembles, growling silently, and out of nothing, something appears at the the top of the cliff, stretching wider beyond my imagination.

The building is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of a small castle, its walls a smooth obsidian black and grey, sleek like polished glass. Tall windows climb from floor to ceiling, framed in goldleaf and etched with faintly glowing runes that hum with quiet power.

The roof is made of interlocking metal tiles that shimmer beneath the late afternoon sun. Elegant gargoyles guard the edges, winged lions and robed maidens carved with unnerving precision.

It looks less like a home and more like a monument from the future. Opulent. Lush. Private.

Two guards rush out of the side building, a woman in blue between them and I nearly sob when I see Nath among them.

"Hurry," I say, throat tight with I shed tears that I’d somehow found here. Found help. Nath lowers his head in deference, lips parting to offer greeting, but I brush him off, returning to Lucien’s side. "Please help him."

The woman, clad in a pair of blue up and down, falls to her feet by the snow beside me, nodding in deference, before lifting both layers of clothes on Lucien’s body. All four of us suck in a sharp breath at the state of the wounds. The blood leaking from him has turned black, and black veins seem to stretch from the wound.

"Bring him to his chambers and fetch more blankets," the woman says, and Nath nods, lowering to grip Lucien’s arm, and he hedges his elbow under the king’s shoulder, the other guard who I’ve never seen before, taking the other.

I follow them across, the snickering horse, as though it had been waiting for permission, following me across. I fidget as I enter the main house, finding a few maids moving about, all stopping to bow, not just to Lucien, but to me as well.

Both men struggle with Lucien’s weight as they begin up the staircases. Thankfully, there’s only one floor, and the room they seek to bring him to is the first door.

They tumble in, heaving Lucien into the bed, and just as I start to walk past the threshold, I am blocked by the woman in blue. Her eyes are a light shade of green, fierce yet empathetic as they meet mine. "I’m afraid, I must ask you to stay outside, Your Majesty. The extraction process is quite painful and equally dangerous to those who stick around it for long enough."

"But I brought him here. I want to see--"

"And you will, I promise." The woman smiles tightly, but not unkindly. "After. If you stay now, I’ll have two patients instead of one."

I bite down on the ache in my chest and nod, though it feels like swallowing glass.

My gaze drifts to where now lays on the bed, thrashing, silver brows pulled together in discomfort and I can’t look away. His brow creases, his lips twist in pain. I want to help, but the woman closes the door and the sound of him disappears.

I turn on my heel and stomp off, in an attempt to find something to cool my heart that’s been aching all day. Yearning. Needing him to be okay.

I much prefer him annoying the shit out of me than him looking like that and not being able to do a single thing about it.

I move through the house on unsteady feet, loosening the tunic at my throat, pulling my hair free from its braid. I don’t even know where I’m going until I stumble into what looks like a Great Hall, though this is significantly smaller, and has more flat surfaces and easel around.

"My lady," a voice calls out, and I turn to find a beautiful woman with the softest honeyed gaze I’ve met. She is dressed with an apron tied around her waist, and she smells like donuts, her hair dusted with flour.

I frown as her lips break into a smile and she crosses the distance, gripping by my cheeks, implanting kisses against each one soundly. "I see that you have returned. The House wasn’t quite the same after you left."

I blink, pointing at myself to ensure I’m losing my mind. "Me? I-- You know me? I’ve... I’ve been here before?"

The woman gives me a strange look and makes it a point to look behind me. I follow her gaze to the portraits resting against the walls, draped in an ivory, silk tarp, but the edge of it is lifted slightly, revealing...

My limbs tremble as I take one step after the next, until I’m crouching by the dusty painting, lifting the tarp off completely. My heart hammers against my ribs as my fingers trace over the face, the neck, the hair. So long, it flows down her back, teasing the curve of her bare ass.

Me.

The painting... it’s of me.

Breathing hard, my nails tear at the painting, felling the first frame, and the next comes to view. And the next.

They’re all me, delicate paintings of me. I’m laughing, cheeks flushed red, pearl white teeth arching from ear to ear. I’m hopping on one foot to the next. I’m eating grapes. I’m sleeping on the couch in one of Lucien’s shirts, riding obscenely up my thighs, barely covering my ass. I’m reading by the shelf, overlooking the window outside. I’m naked. My eyes are crossed back in my head and there is paint on my cheeks, in my hair, on my naked breasts, on my navel, and between my legs, is a silver head.

Gods... Fucking... gods...

Fear nips at me with every single frame. In some of them, I have fangs, and they’re bloodied. In another, my ears aren’t round. They’re pointed.

"What..." Shortness of breath. "What is the meaning of this? What is this? Why are these here?" I whirl, staring at the woman like whatever she says might keep my world together or take it apart.

There’s an even stranger look on her face, though fleeting. Genuine confusion.

Something tight strikes me in the chest and suddenly, I can’t breathe.

"The portraits," the woman says, mistaking the look on my face as something else. "we took down because they stood collecting dust. But you liked them hung up. The rest are where you left them in the study."

My hand clutches the skin above my heart tightly. "I... lived... here?"

She shakes her head. "No, Your Grace. You own the house."