CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 81

"Holy hellsgate," I breathed in utter wonderment, as we both swiveled around to face the enormous door. I felt like a small child against its looming height. The power originated from here, seeping through the slender gaps surrounding the door and sweeping against my skin, shivering my dress.

The wrought-iron door knob was molded into the shape of a leathery beast's head with horns and fangs and a forked tongue. As for the door, I couldn't make out the image painted on its front. A pattern of sorts. Most of the paint had been worn away over time, leaving behind a hint of blues and reds and dirty yellows.

Graysen's chest rose with a deep inhale and he expelled it on a wary note as he raised a fist and knocked on the door. It sounded ominous. We waited in the darkness, in the silence.

A sound behind the door, muffled footsteps, the rhythm ponderous. We drew back as whomever it was reached the door and the handle rattled, the beastly metal knob twisting around as it was turned on the other side. Graysen positioned himself close to me, and my fingers tightened around his in apprehension of what we were about to encounter.

The door began to open and a silver bell hanging above rang—ding, ding, ding—like it did in old-fashioned stores, letting the staff know someone had entered their shop. The door swung wide and power blustered outward like an unexpected gust of wind, making my hair fly, and my skirt billow and snap against my thighs. We were not whom the Horned God was expecting to see, because as he pulled the door open he began to say, "Did you forget something..." and the words faded away when he dropped his gaze and encountered us standing at the threshold. I craned my neck back to stare up, up, up.

Towering before us was a Horned God, almost as tall as the door. Honeyed candlelight backed his massive figure, edging broad shoulders. He was a blending of human and goat and a pinch of elemental with the thin wisps of smoke shimmering off his body. Balled in his hand was a rag that was stained dark green, almost black. Blood, I realized, maybe from a lesser creature.

I chanced a glance at Graysen, at the ghost of a smile, the awe and obvious recognition slackening his features.

So this was the Horned God his mother had befriended.

But did Florin remember Graysen?

The Horned God's long ears twitched, the movement scattering tendrils of smoke to curve around his enormous ram horns. "How did you get here?" he asked, in a deep booming voice, and the dreadful, grainy sound of it sent a shiver down my spine. Old. As old and menacing as the jagged black rock his lair was carved within.

Graysen let go of my hand to point in the direction we'd come. "From up there. From the market."

Surprise flared sharp and swift. Florin grunted, his eyes narrowing, the horizontal pupils dilating. From the wide flat nose downward, Florin's face was human with thick lips, chin, and jawline, but the upper portion of his face was goat-like with fur the same dark shade as his skin. His eyes were widely set apart with pupils slashed horizontally. Eyes that were blood-red. Eyes that sliced to where Graysen pointed up the stairs. And I swore I saw a fleeting flicker of wondrous possibility in his gaze when it returned to us.