Arching a brow, I followed him into the hall and then down it toward the back stairwell. He opened a heavy door to our right, the last at the end of the hall. I peered around him. There was nothing but a black abyss. “What is this?”
He glanced over his shoulder. Torches along the wall flared to life in a shower of sparks. One after another, they lit, casting a rippling orangey glow over narrow, steep, winding stairs. “A stairwell.”
I shot him a bland look. “You’re so helpful.”
“I don’t think you mean that as a compliment.” He started down the steps. “But I’ll take it as one.”
“You do you,” I murmured, trailing my hands along the damp walls as I descended behind him. The musty, stale scent that gathered in the cramped space reminded me of the maze of chambers beneath Wayfair Castle that led to tunnels, which stretched throughout the entire city.
“You’ll be happy to know that when you Ascend, you’ll be able to use the essence in the same way I just did,” he said, nodding at the flickering torches.
I stared at the width of his broad shoulders, my hands still on the walls. I liked how confident he was concerning the outcome of his plan. It was reassuring. “So, I’ll be able to light fires with my mind, cast light, and move super fast with little effort?”
“You won’t be able to power electricity. That is somethingonly a Primal can do, but lighting fires and moving fast? Yes. And that is not done with your mind. It is done by yourwill.” He followed the sharp turns of the stairwell with the ease that said this was a well-traveled space for him.
“Sounds like the same thing to me, but whatever.”
“But it’s not. Your mind takes thought. Time. Your will just is. It’s immediate.”
I made a face at his back. “Either way, I’m going to be so lazy.”
Nyktos chuckled. “Careful,” he warned as he turned, taking one of my hands from the wall. “The last step here is rather steep. About a foot.”
The embers gave a happy little wiggle in response to his grasp. Or maybe it was my heart. I wasn’t sure anymore. Holding his hand, I went down the last step and into the mouth of a wide, torch-lit hall.
My chest tightened as I took in the damp, shadowstone walls and the bars. Therowsof bars the color of bleached bones on either side of the hall. Cells. “Should I be worried?”
It was Nyktos’s turn to send me a bland look. “I really hope that’s not a serious question.”
I said nothing as I eyed the bars lining the cells. They weren’t entirely smooth or straight. Some were twisted, and inside the cells, I saw chains that resembled the bars. I started toward them, noticing there were things etched into them. Symbols.
“Putting you in a cell now after everything,” he said, stopping me with the hold he still had on my hand, “and especially after striking what is likely an ill-advised but very enjoyable deal with you wouldn’t make very much sense, would it?”
I slowly looked over my shoulder at him. “Ill-advised?”
His eyes glimmered in the firelight. “I also said very enjoyable.”
I started to point out that one thing didn’t erase what’d come before it, but I remembered what he’d also said. That his attraction to me, and the subsequent pleasure-for-the-sake-of-pleasure deal we’d made, was something he considered a distraction. But I was beginning to think thatdistractionwas a code word forcaring.
And I knew what Nyktos believed would happen to those he allowed himself to care for.
Part of me was also beginning to believe that was why he’d had hiskardiaremoved. Not to protect himself but to protect others.
Turning back to the cells, I stopped the rise of sorrow before he could pick up on it. “The bars? Is it just me, or do they look like actual bones? As do the chains.”
“They are.” Nyktos started walking, taking me with him. “Bones that once belonged to gods or the children of the gods.”
My lip curled. “Like the kind that entombed those in the Red Woods?”
He nodded.
“What’s carved into them?”
“Primal wards that make them very difficult to break,” he said as we continued down the seemingly endless hall of cells. There had to be dozens of them. “The bones will even hold a Primal once weakened. The only thing they have no effect on is a being of two worlds.”
“Dual life. The draken,” I murmured, remembering him saying that before. “You said your father created more like the draken?”
“He did create more of dual life,” Nyktos said as we came to the end of the hall, where it split into two more. He took me to the left, where a door was held open by a shadowstone sword speared through the wood and embedded into the stone behind it. I frowned at the blade, shaking my head. “But the draken are like the Arae. The dragons they came from are of ancient creation. What my father created after the draken are gods, and if there were ever others given dual life, they too would be godlike.”