A Court of Bones & Sorrow (Lunaria Realms #2)

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Samara

“There you are.”

Startled, I jumped slightly where I’d been sitting on the low balcony wall, but a strong hand grasped my arm, steadying me. My heart beat painfully, as it’d practically leapt into my throat as I glanced to the ground far beneath us. I looked over my shoulder and scowled at the prince. “I thought you were trying to court me, not scare me into falling to my death.”

His lips twitched, and I had the sneaking suspicion he was trying not to laugh at me. “Sorry. That wasn’t my intention. I’ve been sneaking around for the last hour looking for you, trying to avoid the other Heirs and everyone else who ‘ just wants a moment of my time .’”

Slowly, he released his grip on my arm, trailing his fingers down it as if he wanted to prolong the contact before stepping back.

“Fair enough. I was just coming to find you anyway.”

Roth wanted to do some research in the library, and Alaric was going to help them while Kieran chatted up the rangers who had traveled with the Heirs to see if he could glean anything useful. I was responsible for distracting Draven and keeping him out of everyone’s way.

I spun around on the balcony wall to hop down. Demetri had left early this morning, but Ary and Aniela had stuck around. I’d already met with them both over breakfast and was growing more confident that they were not allied with the Sovereign House and the wraiths. Even if I trusted them though, it didn’t mean someone in their House wasn’t our enemy. We’d have to tread carefully if we wanted to bring them into the fold, and I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

“It’s not every day the Moroi Prince graces us with his presence. You can’t blame them for trying to get your support on whatever their latest scheme is.”

“They’re welcome to schedule time with me in the mornings while you’re busy with House business.” He extended an elbow to me. “But I’d prefer to spend time alone with you for the rest of the day . . . and night.”

I did my best to ignore the flicker of excitement that raced through me. Mentally, I knew Draven could not be trusted. He was clearly working with the wraiths, which made him our enemy, but I’d known him for so long, and he was an attractive bastard, and when he said things like that, my body practically screamed, Yes, please! I gave him a bemused grin instead and slipped my arm around his. “You can have me . . . for the day.”

“We’ll see.” His eyes roamed over the scenery. “Quite the view up here.”

“It is,” I agreed. “My study has a good view of the beach, but nothing beats this.” I swept my free hand out towards the vast forest that covered the lands before us. “It’s one of my favorite places to come and think, and play with the strikers of course.”

A low-pitched trill filled the air, and I made a clicking sound with my tongue, keeping my hand extended. Seconds later, a bright red striker landed on my hand, its long talons wrapping around my fingers, the sharp points pushing against my skin but not breaking it.

“Good boy,” I cooed. The creature shook its narrow, elongated head, a forked tongue darting out from its blunt beak. “You’ll be flying further around here in no time.”

Draven reached out and scratched the striker’s back, and it flapped its leathery wings before releasing deep chirps of pleasure. “They’re cute little monsters.”

“I adore them. This one struggled a bit early on. I had to hand-feed it after it hatched because the others kept bullying it, so he’s gotten rather attached to me.”

“Something he and I have in common it seems.”

I rolled my eyes. “Smooth.”

“Thank you.” Draven grinned.

“Come on.” I tugged him towards the large, open-air structure we’d built to house the strikers. “Let’s get him settled, and I’ll take you on a tour of House Harker.”

He groaned. “Did I not mention how I’ve been trying to avoid talking to people for the last hour?”

The striker hopped off my hand onto a free perch, and I gave him one more scratch behind the head before heading towards the stairs, dragging Draven with me. “Don’t worry about it. I have a plan.”

“Alright.” He gave me a sly look. “But for every person who stops us, you have to spend an hour with me after dinner.”

“Deal,” I said confidently.

The winding stairwell was too narrow for us to walk side by side, so I slipped my arm free from his as we made our way down. It didn’t take long for voices to reach us. This was one of the busier towers and where most of the advisors and courtiers spent their time during the day.

“Given the amount of people we’re about to run into, I think you’ll be spending all night with me, Samara.” The way he said my name was indecent, and it sent a shiver down my spine, but I could play this game too.

I stopped and whirled around. Draven froze as I placed my hand on his chest, a coy smile twisting my lips. His eyes were locked on mine as I raised my other hand to my lips and used my fang to slice the tip of my index finger. A few drops of blood swelled, and Draven’s nostrils flared. Without looking, I stretched my bloody finger to the wall, the dormant magic of the glyph engraved on one of the stones calling to me. As soon as my blood touched it, a portion of the wall simply disappeared, revealing a hidden stairwell.

Surprise flickered in his eyes, and I let out a husky laugh before licking the remaining blood off my finger. The red threads in Draven’s eyes widened at the sight, and I was pretty sure he had stopped breathing. I licked my lips and leaned forward, one hand still on his chest. “Looks like you won’t be getting that night with me after all, Draven.”

“Fuck,” he muttered as I slipped into the darkness. As soon as he crossed the threshold, I pushed on another glyph, and the wall reappeared, plunging us into absolute darkness. Our night vision was excellent, better than the Velesians or Furies, but even we needed some light to see by, and there was none here. “No Fae lanterns?” Draven asked.

“No.” I shook my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see it, and reached for his hand. My fingers bumped into his arm, and I slid them down until our hands were clasped. The contact was both intimate and innocent at the same time, and I was suddenly acutely aware of how warm his hand felt in mine. How right it felt. “They don’t work anymore, and I never bothered to fix them, but I know the way. Trust me.”

His fingers tightened around mine. “Lead the way, Heir.”

I started carefully walking down the steps. Draven followed, not slipping once despite not being able to see anything or having my familiarity with the hidden stairs .

“How did you find this?” he asked after a few minutes.

Silence filled the air as I thought about how to answer. What truths to reveal and which to hide. Finally, I decided it was easier to go with the truth when possible—fewer lies to keep track of.

“After my parents died, I started to spend more time visiting the strikers. It became my safe place, especially since I wasn’t old enough to leave the House grounds on my own. A week after”—the words caught in my throat—“their death, I was coming down, and I heard Carmilla talking to Alaric’s parents. They were discussing the future of the House and their concerns about how I was handling things. I didn’t want to face them, so I spun to run back up the stairs and tripped. It was pure luck that I noticed the glyph on the wall.”

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I don’t think I ever told you that, but I’m so sorry about how your parents died. They were always kind to me.”

For the first time since we’d entered the darkened stairwell, I felt off-balance and had to concentrate on where my feet fell, despite having walked down these steps dozens of times before. I rarely spoke about my parents. The wound left behind by their deaths hadn’t healed, it’d just festered in my soul over the years. I didn’t know what to make of Draven’s words. There was a raw edge to them that felt genuine.

But my parents had been killed by wraiths, and now Draven was working with them. Was that why he felt so guilty over this? He was only a couple of years older than me, which meant he’d been a teenager when they’d died, so I doubted he’d been working with them then. The urge to turn around and shake him until he told me what the fuck was going on was overwhelming, but I shoved that feeling down.

I had another hundred steps to get my emotions under control. Too much was riding on this for me to stumble now. The others were doing their part, I needed to seize this opportunity to carefully question Draven.

“Thank you,” I said tightly. “My parents were excellent rulers of House Harker. I only hope to live up to their legacy someday.” Clearing my throat, I redirected the conversation. “Speaking of living up to legacies . . . it’s been a while since I visited the Sovereign House. How are things between you and your mother these days?”

His fingers loosened around mine, and for a moment, I thought he would release my hand. But then they tightened once more. “Same as always. She’s delighted about our engagement— sorry —potential engagement.” He’d slipped back into his charming prince mode.

We continued our trek down, and I listened while Draven recounted some of the events that had transpired over the past couple of years at the Sovereign House. About how he was bored and had very little to do these days.

I listened to him lie to me for one hundred and eight steps.

Our footsteps echoed across the large, empty room we’d entered after leaving the hidden stairwell. Dinner was still hours away, and I needed to come up with something to do with Draven during that time so the others could continue their work unhindered.

Maybe we could go for a ride or something. Although, if Vail found out I’d left House Harker alone with the prince, he’d probably strangle me.

“What is this place?” Draven asked as he glanced around curiously.

“We’re right beneath the main tower.” I pointed to an iron and wood door across the room. “That leads to the kitchen. We’re not sure what the Fae originally built this room for. When they abandoned this place, they took almost everything with them except the furniture. We use it for storage now.”

“Hmm.” Instead of heading towards the door that led upstairs, he started aimlessly wandering around, studying the walls. “Seems weird they went through the effort of building a secret stairwell only to have it lead to the kitchen pantry, right?”

There was more than one secret passage that led to this room. After stumbling across the one in the upper stairwell when I was a kid, I’d made it my mission to find others. I’d found six in this tower alone, plus another dozen short ones that linked the hidden staircase together. There were more in the other buildings and towers that made up House Harker as well. I didn’t understand why they’d done it. There was nothing special about this room, but the Fae had spent an awful lot of time planning a way for anyone to secretly get to this place.

I wouldn’t be telling Draven any of that though. I probably shouldn’t have even shown him the room we were in. It’d been careless of me, and I couldn’t afford to be like that around him. The prince was not my friend, despite our history and how I felt about him. He was our enemy, and he’d hurt Kieran.

I should have pushed him down those fucking stairs. The sensation of his hand in mine and how right it had felt came rushing back. The way his voice had sounded so sorrowful when he’d said he was sorry for the loss of my parents. I ruthlessly grabbed the feeling and shoved it into the same box where I stored my grief for my parents’ deaths.

“They built everything out of stone despite wood being far more abundant and easy to move. Paintings of places that don’t exist around here adorn the ceiling of every bedroom, and the vast majority of books we’ve found written by Fae hands . . . is poetry ,” I said in a bored tone as I walked towards where Draven was standing and staring at the dark grey stones of the wall. “Not where they came from, how they ended up here, or why there was such hatred between the Seelie and Unseelie. And then they vanished practically overnight, never to be heard from again.”

“Your point?” Draven didn’t so much as look at me as his eyes continued scanning the stone surface. Was he looking for something? I started skimming the walls to see if there was something here I had missed this whole time.

“My point is that they did a bunch of shady shit.” Nothing stood out on the smooth stone surface, but I kept searching. “The secret passages are just another thing on that long list.”

“Passages?”

Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that.

I felt his gaze on me and turned away from the wall I’d been studying to meet his stare. He cocked his head, causing his long hair to fall over his shoulder in a shimmering curtain. “There’s more than one?”

“I hate you.”

He chuckled. “I think that’s the first truthful thing you’ve said to me all day.”

“Exaggeration,” I muttered and turned back to the wall, heaving a sigh of frustration. There wasn’t anything here. “Let’s get out of here. I need some fresh air.”

“Wait.” Draven’s hand shot out, and his fingers wrapped around my wrist when I turned towards the exit. “Have you ever noticed this glyph before?”

All the thoughts in my mind scattered at the sudden contact. I didn’t even look at the wall where Draven was pointing with his other hand. Instead, all my focus was on where his fingers were wrapped around me. Draven stilled, and we stood there for a long moment. Then he gently stroked his thumb over my pulse, and my heart sped up.

Moonsdamn it all. I needed to get ahold of myself.

“Let me take a look.” I pulled my arm free and took a step closer to the wall. My heart continued to race, but now it was because I was looking at a Fae glyph that had been created in a way I’d never seen before.

I traced the barely visible glyph. It wasn’t all that surprising that nobody had ever noticed it. The glyph was a simple one, just a circle with a straight line running vertically through it, but normally, when glyphs were etched into stone, the lines were a lighter color and they caused a slight dip in the surface.

My finger skimmed over the glyph. The surface remained the same, there was no dip, and parts of the glyph were lighter, while other sections were darker. It was as if the Fae had moved around the natural minerals within the stone to create the glyph. I’d had no idea they could do that.

“How did you even find this?” My brows furrowed. Unless you were looking for it, your eyes would slip over it as just a natural discoloration. I mean, I was looking directly at it, and even now, it was easy to dismiss as nothing.

“Just lucky.” Draven shrugged when I glanced at him. “Seemed odd for the stairwell to lead down here, and after you showed me that glyph upstairs, I was on the lookout for another one.”

Plausible, but absolute horseshit. He’d been searching the walls as soon as we’d set foot in this room and I’d told him where it was located. He’d known this glyph would be here. Maybe not in this exact spot, but somewhere in this room. I was very curious about how he’d known about it. I was even more interested in why he wanted me to know about it.

“Do you know what it means?” Draven asked over my shoulder.

“Safe,” I whispered. “It means safe.”

I sucked in a breath as a deliciously wicked scent filled the air when Draven moved close enough for his chest to rest against my back. He reached towards the stone with bloody fingertips .

“Are you out of your mind?” I slapped his hand away before he could make contact with the glyph and spun around to smack him on the chest. “We have no idea what that spell was actually used for!”

“You said it means safe.” He grinned at me, and I wanted to strangle him . . . and kiss him. Argh.

“Forgive me for not trusting the fucking Fae’s definition of safe!” I shoved him away from me and the wall. Distance. That was the key to dealing with Draven—keeping a good amount of space between us so I could keep my unruly thoughts under control.

Unfortunately, Draven was not on board with this unspoken plan because he immediately stepped further into my space, reclaiming the distance I’d put between us. I stepped away until my back was against the wall, and a wolfish grin stretched across his lips as he boxed me in, placing one arm on either side of me. I had to tilt my head back to look at him, my heart thumping wildly as he leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Come on, Heir. It’s fun to be dangerous sometimes.”

The rational part of my brain was drowned out by the heat dancing across my skin as his lips trailed down my neck. Fangs grazed my pulse, and I didn’t know what I would do if he tried to bite me. I knew what I should do. I should push him away again. Fuck, I should be doing that right fucking now.

Draven chuckled darkly against my skin. “You overthink things, Sam.”

He raised his left hand and slammed it against the wall directly over my shoulder before I could stop him. The bastard had been distracting me. As soon as his blood made contact with the glyph, magic sparked, and the floor fell out from beneath us.