[THIS STORY WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2024]
He had hunted me, captured me, and locked me in a tower.
Season 3 'Of Crows and Thorns'
***
While in RISING, Tabitha discovers something peculiar that may assist Nelle in her plan to escape the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When the heaviness of Valarie's gaze left my body I shifted my line of sight to the Emporium. A shiver ran down my spine and an icy sensation crept through my limbs like frost. I possessed truesight and I saw exactly what was before me, what this Gentleman's Club looked like.
The Emporium was for those otherworldly beasts my kind served, the Horned Gods, and ruled by Zielenski, the youngest son of Dimitre, head of their Upper House who oversaw the brothel arm of our empire.
Those Horned Gods who patronized the Emporium either arrived by car, dropped in from beneath the cover of dark clouds, or crawled up from the earth and entered from the dungeon. This place was a bordello. It was the Horned Gods' playground, where they could fuck to their hearts' content or gnaw on flesh and bones to fill their bellies. And many of them were famished, especially the ones who awoke from hibernation to attend the Witches Ball.
I swallowed, my eyes rounding and peering through the thin veil of magic that enshrouded the castle like mist blanketing a bleak moor. In awe, I skimmed the flying buttresses to the stained glass windows set within elaborate tracery and pointed arches; the flamboyant facade and its dahlia patterns with curls and counter curls that were woven like delicate lace, right up to the bell tower and the series of enormous spires that sliced through the sky like lethal blades.
It was deceptive in the way it almost seemed as if it were a crumbling castle that had been restored to its former glory. But the Emporium was much, much older and I suspected it to have once belonged to Sirro himself.
The eerie shadows whorled along the bones of the building like smoke pluming upward to stain the sky in a swirling midnight vortex. A deep glamour, the kind the Horned Gods wove around themselves, had been sown around the Emporium. It hummed, the vibration against my skin like the drone of bees. The ancient stone had a pitted effect that reminded me of snake skin, and the building itself seemed to breathe as if it were alive. Indeed, I felt as if it had turned its mind's eye upon me and was staring downward, wondering if we were fashioned from the same fabric of darkness.
The vibration against my skin intensified. The loud, thrumming pulse emptied my mind of every single thought. All I was left with was a deep craving to stare back at the Emporium.
Like sang to like.
Both of us were forged from ancient power and it wanted a closer look at me.
My hips swayed forward and I almost stumbled toward it as if a silken thread connecting us had been tugged, the darkness urging me to step inside its yawning mouth.
The jarring sound of high heels cracking against brick awoke me from my trance. I snapped my spine ramrod straight, shocked at how quickly I'd fallen prey to the wild magic. Mentally, I braced myself against the probing curiosity of the Emporium. Shoving back at it. Sloughing it from my skin. It could go fuck itself. Along with the Crowthers.
