“Why not? If it gives you a chance at a normal life?” She thought of what Senka had asked. For the name of the one he loved but could never have. What did she mean by that? Whose name had he given?
“If it went wrong—I couldn’t do that to Dez. I’m all the family he has left.”
“What about Fionn? And Cyrilla and Soren?”
“Again, it’s complicated.”
Emmery watched Destonne for a long moment. “I keep telling myself he’s a bad man but … I’m not sure anymore.” His brows creased and he curled in on himself, his face pressed into the crook of his arm, like he hid from whatever horrors haunted his mind. Was he having a nightmare? Emmery palmed his crystal still hanging from her neck.
“None of us are all bad or all good. Life is not that simple. There’s light in everyone, no matter the darkness they’re cast into.”
As Brennen settled down, Emmery laid on her back and studied the starless sky. She wondered what this place was like before Deimos fell in love with Kahlia and she trapped him behind an icy wall of his own magic.
Destonne mumbled in his sleep and made a small, sad sound, his arms outstretched, like he reached for something out of his grasp. Carefully, Emmery removed the crystal from her neck and with great stealth, clasped it around his. She figured, at this point, he needed it more than her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EMMERY
At the edge of their temporary encampment, Emmery glared at the sky-high wall of the strange stone fortress, but even as they pondered, shared ideas, and spouted theories, the entrance to the structure remained a mystery. They quickly ruled out climbing since no foot or hand holds existed in those impossibly tall walls. The only way had to be through.
Emmery fumed, so damn frustrated from the lack of answers. She wanted to stamp her feet like a child and throw a tantrum. As she scrubbed a hand down her face, her poor night’s sleep weighed on her. The bruises under her eyes could attest to that.
At her side, Destonne stood quietly, his arms crossed over his chest. He stroked his chin, tapped his foot, acted as if he hadn’t been torn to pieces the previous day. And between how quickly he’d healed and the new shirt that had manifested out of thin air, only the scabs remained as evidence.
Brennen sat several paces away and studied them like he catalogued each shared look, intentional touch, and accidental brush as they manoeuvred around one another and sought an entrance.
After he’d caught Emmery that morning with her hand stretched across the campsite, her fingers woven through Destonne’s after unknowingly reaching for him in the night, the wolf’s assessing gaze picked away at Emmery’s already frayed nerves. She blamed her fatigue, and her gurgling stomach nearly feasting on itself. But they were all hungry and thirsty and downright miserable.
Destonne skimmed his fingers over the intricate wall etchings before he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid my Calmalian is a tad limited,” he said, his tone lousy with frustration. “But this word is ‘blood’. And this”—he dragged his forefinger across the letters—“is ‘fear’.”
Emmery’s stomach clenched. Combined, those two words couldn’t be good. “Are you sure?”
His gaze slid to her. “Would you care to take a crack at it?”
Her less than polite response brought the tiniest tilt to Destonne’s lips. A hint of a smile. She nudged him aside to read the script herself, not that she had a damn clue how. But her eye snagged on a symbol. “What does this say? It evenlookslike a door. In Deimos’s Mausoleum when I slotted my pocket watch into the wall, it opened. What if this is the same? That outline,” she said, and waved at the grooved rectangle around the carvings, “could be a door.”
“Hmmm.” Mischief glimmered in his eyes as he gestured to the spot between him and the wall. “Stand here.”
Her heart slowed as she studied the narrow gap. “Why?”
He answered with an arch of his brow. Too tired to fight, Emmery sighed and stepped to him. His heat bled into her back as he leaned his hands on either side of the wall, caging her in. His warm breath tickled the back of her neck and her skin prickled. She tried to focus on anythingbutthat. Anything but the strange stir it coaxed in her belly.
“You may be right. And this outlinemaybe the door,” he said, his voice low, thick with something that sent a flutter through her chest. “However, that doesn’t solve our predicament of getting through, does it, Emmery?”
“Since you seem to think you know everything, what do you suggest?” She snuck a glance at him over her shoulder and found his face impossibly close. Her breath stuttered, but she met his gaze for a brief moment before his eyes fixed on the crook of her neck. In fact, he stared at the length of exposed skin with something akin to hunger.
“I want to know what you think,” he breathed, his lips at her ear.
Her heart sped, but even as she cleared her throat, her thoughts jumbled with him this close. “You said that word is blood, right? What if…”
“We offer blood?” he finished for her.
Emmery nodded.
“My thoughts exactly. If I’m correct, and I’m rarely wrong”—he punctuated his statement with a smug quirk of his eyebrow—“I’ve read about similar enchantments that work just the same.” He tapped a divot in the wall beside the door-like symbol. Without further explanation, he pricked his finger on his crown until blood welled, and pressed it into the groove. Hisbreath quickened, his lips impossibly close to her neck. Emmery shivered and glanced at him though his eyes remained shut.
Seconds ticked on. Grew into minutes.