A Kingdom of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 3)

“Wait.” Micah grabbed my arm before we reached the top of the stairwell. “We need to make sure this lock hasn’t been engaged either.”

“Right, yes,” I said, flattening to the side of the wall.

It was Calia and her sister who stepped up this time. Leaving their hands at their sides, they closed their eyes.

“Nothing,” Calia said, opening her eyes and moving down a stair to give me room again. “No magical lock.”

I took a deep breath and pushed forward, the others moving aside to let me go first. “Moment of truth.”

It was time to see if I’d actually killed the officers, and if so, if Denski had realized it and told someone.

Hadriel

I followed Finley and the others as we surged up the stairs. Leala ran beside me, both of us waiting with bated breath to see what awaited us at the top. I hoped to hell the officers were dead. Guards weren’t a concern—if there were guards anywhere up there, the dragons would massacre them in zero seconds flat and smile while they did it. But officers were tricky fuckers. I couldn’t even smell them when they were using their magic.

Finley reached the top floor and sprinted forward without hesitation. We followed her into the glow of the large hall. More officers than I’d ever seen lay sprawled out on couches and pillows.

It took exactly one glance to gauge that they were stone dead. Not just that, but they’d died grotesquely.

Been killed grotesquely, more like.

Arms dangled. Heads lolled back. Tongues stuck out. Some had grimaces even in death.

“Ugh,” I said softly, feeling a strange desire to grab a strand of pearls. I didn’t even wear pearls!

Micah knelt next to the first officer, putting his fingers on the other man’s throat.

“But do they have pulses under normal circumstances?” I asked softly. “Like…do they have hearts?”

A couple people huffed out shallow laughter, but I was actually serious. These things definitely weren’t human, and they didn’t seem like the other demons. In fact, they were a little like the creatures they made. I wasn’t sure if their anatomy operated the same way as ours did.

“We’re good. Let’s go. Hurry,” Finley said, motioning everyone forward.

Unease swam in my guts. Something wasn’t right about this.

Actually, that wasn’t true. Everything was too right about all this. There was no way a guard had passed through here without noticing these creatures were dead. No one was that oblivious.

Pieces started clicking together. The whole picture materialized.

Suddenly I wanted to throw up.

Finley had been taken up to the king, but the meeting had fallen through at the last minute?

Sure, that was plausible.

Then she’d gotten better clothes with boots, of all things?

Maybe. After a big party, it was possible they were short on spare garments.

But that, paired with the guard’s lack of reaction to the obviously dead officers…

It set off every warning bell I had.

Sweat broke out on my brow.

Cuntpuddles, was this a trap?

But I didn’t say any of that to Finley. I didn’t want to spread doubt, because the reality was that we couldn’t waste this opportunity. If we didn’t get out now, quite a few of us would be killed. Of that I was certain.

There was only one silver lining. If it was a trap, and the guards or whoever were waiting for us somewhere, they didn’t know that most of us could shift. They didn’t know the level of firepower—literal firepower—the dragons could rain down on them. They would learn the hard way that you did not ever fuck with dragons. It just wasn’t worth it. They were crazy, and proud of it.

Still, the puzzle in my head looked pretty complete, and adrenaline raced through my body. I took deep breaths and tried to focus on something else.

“Can you actually use that thing?” I asked Leala as she snatched up one of the officer’s whips and jogged after the others.

“Of course I can,” she whispered, squeezing the leather handle. “I’m not an expert, but I can get the job done.”

“I thought you liked getting the whip rather than using it?”

“We do what we must. Now shh.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I hoped I never had to learn. I was ready to leave all this sexual bullshit behind. I was ready for demons and curses and strange magic to fuck off. I had hit my wall on this trip, I really had.

The strongest of the wolves stripped down before stashing their clothes to the side in one of the little cubbies that held torture devices. They shifted into their wolf forms, the first time I’d ever seen them do it.

The breath left me when I felt a rush of power from the alpha, immediately followed by the brush of his awareness against my wolf’s consciousness. It had been a long while since I’d felt that draw—urging us to connect to our new pack. Reeling us in, almost, the alpha’s expectation that we should join him overriding any desire we might have to be contrary. The second we gave in, though, his grip on us as pack members would be complete.