CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 12

The elevator glided upward. It was just us reflected in the mirrors that banked the small space—myself, Jett, and our father. We didn't speak. We'd done enough of it on the ride over here. We all knew what we'd likely encounter and how to turn and twist it.

Sirro wanted answers regarding the hijacking of his tithes.

In the early hours of the morning, we'd buried our dead. My family and every single person that formed House Crowther collected around the funeral mounds and, while the sun rose in a sky still hazy with smoke, we sang laments and offered the dead our prayers, sending them to Hazus, god of Nine Hells and Collector of Souls. My family and I shared our sorrow and grieved over our fallen along with everyone else.

The lawns, which had been reduced to pitted, barren earth, smoldering with the remnants of wyrmfire, had been churned over by our staff, and already the beginning of a landscaping project to hide the battlefield had taken shape.

Now Sirro had called us to his private residence. He wanted to speak with Jett, as my brother was the only survivor of the supposed attack.

The elevator doors slid open and our reflection disappeared.

Jett gritted his teeth as we eased him into Sirro's penthouse. The tips of his boots dragged over the polished tiled floor with each stumbling step. Last night I'd hit him on the side of his ribs with the bolt, ripping through flesh, a mere graze. But the effect of that bolt, and whatever darkness it contained—fuck, just a nick would have killed anyone lesser. Only our mother's blood gift kept the cursed magic at bay.

The elevator had opened up to an atrium with a cathedral ceiling and skylights. Great planes of glass overlooked the city of Ascendria and the lake in the distance. Green foliage dripped from large baskets held aloft on tall pillars carved in ancient stone with the likeness of our Gods. Zrenyth's horned head cradled the curled leaves of hostas; fern shadowed the angular faces of mother Skalki and her brother Hazus; ivy tangled around Brangwene's wings, tucked close to the warlord's reptilian-skinned body.

It felt like I was standing beneath an electricity pylon. Power. So much raw, rampant power—it breathed through the entire penthouse, hummed, nipped at my body, raising goosebumps all over my flesh and strumming through the air in a low melodious pulse as if the whole building were alive.

There were no guards, only wraith creatures. A silky nest of wavering, ghostly webbing sparkled like spinning diamonds in the corners of the atrium's high ceiling. Scuttling across the glass, and slowly creeping downward at our appearance, were gigantic spiders. Their mirrored eyes and venom-slick fangs set my teeth on edge, while wolves, bigger than Sage—his Siberian cousins—stalked the large floor space. Their uncanny silver eyes, unblinking, tracked us as we moved a little further into the room, their half-corporal bodies and fur formed from mist wafted like a gentle breeze swirling through campfire smoke as they hunkered low, snarling in our direction.