East of Ecstasy (Hearts of the Anemo)

by Laura Kaye

  I can’t hold them! Aeolus shouted.

  I have an idea, Devlin said to the others. The three of you, take turns at skirting south around that last funnel. It will track your movements and block you. I’ll shoot north around it. Just distract it however you can. And hurry.

  The three took off to the south.

  With Aeolus luring the first two to the north and the Anemoi tricking the third one to veer southward, that left Devlin a needle to thread right up the middle.

  Devlin shot like an arrow, straight and true between the storms. And, of course, they noticed. The two tornados Aeolus had been holding broke free, slingshotting across the sky toward him. The southern tornado had noticed his movement, too, and reversed its course back in his direction. Ahead of him, the two were closing in, converging—oh, damn it all to Hades, he wasn’t going to make it.

  Come on, you bitch, came Zeph’s voice as he feigned breaking south again—really damn close to the heart of the funnel.

  Watch out, Z! Chrys shouted.

  As if torn by who posed the bigger threat, the more southerly tornado faltered.

  Mentally cringing against the probable impact, Devlin darted through a gap so small he was surprised he’d made it without being sucked into one vortex or the other. A sharp cry sounded out from behind him. Zephyros? But Devlin couldn’t stop to check, because the storms chased him, bearing down like their existence depended on halting his progress. Until they suddenly stopped as if they’d crashed into a glass wall and could come no farther. Triumph shot through him at the realization he’d crossed some invisible boundary beyond which they couldn’t travel. Eurus couldn’t have them tearing up the compound itself, after all.

  Safe from the tornadoes, Devlin turned. Dread whipped through his psyche. The three existing storms had spawned two others, and now the Anemoi and Aeolus were trapped in between, unable to find a way forward to him, and blocked from returning into the roiling black clouds behind.

  Go on, Devlin! Go! Aeolus called. If we can’t get through we’ll backtrack to the boundary of the realm and wait for you there.

  Hating to leave them in such a precarious position, Devlin knew the best thing he could do was hurry his ass up.

  Up ahead, the craggy mountain came into view with the dark, forbidding hulk of a castle rising up at the top. The flora of the mountain itself was mostly brown and gray and dead, a perpetual state of decay resulting from Eurus holding the place in stasis as if every day was the last day of autumn. “Bleak” and “uninviting” were generous ways of describing the home in which he’d grown up.

  Devlin bypassed all the obvious points of entry into the fortress, as well as the ones that seemed more subtle but which he knew were in fact well defended. He flew around to the back of the curtain wall where the cliffs were steepest and most deadly and searched until he found a tiny rough-hewn hole he’d once as a very young god spent two months hand-drilling through the thick stone. He had half a dozen of these scattered throughout the castle walls, emergency points of ingress and egress about which Eurus didn’t know and therefore couldn’t magically seal off.

  He whizzed through the opening and inside a dank, dim hallway. Up ahead, a single burning torch threw off the only light. There shouldn’t be anyone here—the lesser Anemoi of the East had all deserted Eurus and fought alongside the Cardinal Anemoi. But Eurus’s dark magic would more than make up for their absence. And he had no idea what kinds of spells and enchantments Eurus had added recently.

  Still in his elemental form, Devlin surveyed his surroundings to get his bearings. Eurus had cast spells over the building to confuse and entrap anyone who acted against him, so the hallways and stairs shifted and disappeared, especially when the dwelling felt threatened. Therefore, things never looked exactly the same—which was why Devlin had long ago devised a faint system of markings on the stone walls to help him identify his location. You’d see them only if you knew to look for them, but the various symbols he’d chalked low on the walls indicated what part of the castle he was in and where a particular door or passage led. The markings he was most interested in were the forbidding X’s, because those were paths that led to Eurus’s private suites, something Devlin generally tried to avoid, not seek out.

  Hovering just above the stone floor, Devlin kept his eyes peeled searching for the X’s and his ears trained for the sound of any movement. The place was quiet as a tomb—a fitting analogy given the lack of life that had ever taken place here. He passed a circle with a hash mark through it, indicating a dead end if he continued that way, two lines pointing upward indicating that the passageway led to stairs going to the upper floor. And then finally he came to the two lines next to an X. Bingo. The stairs here would go to the upper floors that housed his father’s suite. Devlin was almost to the top when the staircase filled with stone in an effort to trap him within the wall.

  Devlin bolted, just squeaking through the crack before the last of the space became blocked off. At the next marking of two lines and an X, Devlin wasn’t so lucky: the stairs swung sideways fast, dumping him into a dead-end hallway and trying to strand him there. Backtracking, it took him two more tries to make it up another floor. Now he was close.

  And now he could go no farther in his elemental form. As a security precaution, Eurus’s magic would force anyone who tried to approach his apartments in the more stealthy elemental form into their physical form, and the magic by which he did it wasn’t averse to breaking some bones in the transformation. He’d had enough bones broken today, fuck you very much.

  Especially with no Zephyros here to fix him this time. Even though, holy Hades, letting the god be that close to him and touch him had made him feel a whole lot like he might crawl out of his skin. At least the massive wave of relief that washed over him immediately afterward helped beat back the worst of his anxiety.

  Forcing his mind to the task at hand, Devlin skirted away from the anteroom into which the stairs had dumped him and toward the ceremonial center of the compound. A door there would provide the most direct route to Eurus’s office, so he was gonna make a play for the time-saving front door since the Anemoi were out in the open waiting on him.

  However, that door meant going into the Hall of the East Wind, something that Devlin absolutely loathed doing. It was where Devlin had most often been punished—and, more horrifically, where Farren had been murdered.

  Screams, from up ahead. Back against the wall, Devlin froze. Real or a trap? And if real, who the hell was screaming and why? He crept along the wall, glancing behind him every so often just to be sure his senses hadn’t failed him. You never knew, here. But everything was drab, foreboding, gray, stone walls and preternatural firelight. No decoration, no creature comforts, no natural light. And luckily no company, that he could see.

  Closer still. The screams became more desperate. Then: “Devlin! Devlin, help!”

  Devlin’s whole body went ice cold. He recognized that voice. Farren.

  Instinct had him taking off at a dead run, even as his rational mind caught up and questioned the logic of what was happening. Farren had been dead for well over a century. Devlin could not possibly be hearing him. And yet, a voice Devlin would know anywhere was screaming out for him to help.

  By the time he stood with his back to the wall outside the arched entrance to the ceremonial hall, Devlin’s heart hammered out a fast, shattering beat against his breastbone and he’d broken out in a cold sweat. Absolutely no idea what he was about to walk in on, Devlin counted to three, peered over his shoulder, and, finding it clear, plunged forward.

  Empty. The great circular, domed Hall of the East Wind was empty except for him.

  Yet the screams echoed around the cavernous space. The sound slithered into his brain and set him on edge, like nails on an emotional chalkboard. He crossed the room, doing a couple of 360s to make sure the room remained empty, until he came to a large black E tiled into the floor at the head of an inlaid compass rose. Blood spread in an oozing puddle at the bottom
of the E, pushing up from the floor as if it was a living, breathing thing.

  He stared at the bright red, so stark against the white and black tiles. The exact spot where Farren had died.

  Nausea washed through Devlin’s gut as rage and anger heated his own blood.

  But if this was supposed to scare him? Not even close. Farren had idolized Devlin—which had made his death and Devlin’s inability to prevent it so much fucking worse. So if Farren’s spirit still roamed this place, it would mean him no harm. In fact, it would mean his little brother had been a silent witness to everything that had transpired since his death. No doubt Farren’s ghost self would be up for a little ass-kicking itself.

  The thought almost made Devlin smile even as Farren’s screams played on an unending loop of misery from somewhere behind him.

  I miss you, brother, Devlin thought as he pressed his fingers to the floor and allowed the spreading crimson to kiss his fingertips. He smeared the blood in stripes over his cheeks, a fuck you to Eurus in the form of fraternal war paint. And then he crossed to the door behind Eurus’s thankfully empty throne—but the X wasn’t there. Crouching, he searched again, but…there was no mark at this door at all.

  And then, as he sat there, the room spun—the dome in one direction, the floor-level wall of doors the other, and the floor itself rotated counterclockwise like the dome but at a much faster speed. So, this was new. Not sure what to expect, Devlin stayed low until the movement finished, grimacing against the screeching grind.

  Finally, everything came to a stop—and the room had been totally reconfigured. The throne now sat at the bottom of the compass rose rather than the top, and no door existed where Devlin crouched.

  He was going to have to go door by door. To all eight.

  Round and round the circle he went without finding the one he’d marked as the direct route to his father’s office. Dread and anger blossomed in equal proportion inside his chest.

  There! He’d almost passed the door by when his gaze caught the X carved into the rock. Devlin reached for the handle…and the room started its presto-change-o routine again. No!

  Devlin dashed after it. But running one direction on a floor moving the other and all different from the wall right next to you felt pretty much like a one-way ticket to vomiting. The floor sped up, as if the room were aware of Devlin’s effort and was equally intent on thwarting him.

  He lunged and grabbed the doorknob. When the walls stopped moving, Devlin used the forward motion he already had to crash his shoulder against the corner of the door. It exploded open, making Devlin glad there was no one here to hear it.

  He hoped.

  Bolting up the stairs, Devlin pushed hard for the top, but beneath his feet the steps grew higher and higher. No matter how many stairs he climbed or how fast, he never got any farther. Not real, not real, not real, he said with his eyes clenched tight. Not real! When he opened his eyes, he was nearing the top of the staircase and an ornate black door stood in front of him. He was half surprised it’d worked, but it was one of the things he’d learned as a child trying to cope with living in a place that terrified him.

  Devlin burst through the door before it disappeared. He nearly fell into a stark rectangular room with two wooden chairs—the waiting area for Eurus’s study. The desire to celebrate the victory of getting this far tempted him, but so much could yet go wrong that it would be a mistake. He could never get complacent in this place. Ever.

  He gripped the interior door’s handle. Locked.

  He ran at it, shoulder braced for the impact. And ricocheted to the floor after an unsuccessful, bone-bending impact.

  When his eyes stopped rolling around in his head, he found himself gazing at the ceiling—where a movie of sorts played clip after clip after clip from his life. The happy pictures of him and Farren and Alastor stole Devlin’s breath. Gods, had they really ever laughed so freely? For long moments, Devlin lay there, mesmerized. The remembered happiness was such a balm, he never wanted it to end. He could just stay here forever, couldn’t he? What did he have in his life that would make him feel any better than this?

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  So he could totally just stay right here.

  Anna, a tiny voice whispered.

  Devlin blinked.

  Anna is real.

  Devlin narrowed his gaze at the ceiling, where the happy memories played on and on. “This is a trap,” he said, loudly. “Get up.”

  Crawling to his feet, Devlin’s back screamed in achiness from not having moved for a while. How the hell long had he lain there? No way to tell, but Devlin would bet his ass it wasn’t the five minutes it felt like.

  Sonofabitch.

  He couldn’t open the door, break it down, or unlock it, since he didn’t have the key. What did that leave?

  Fire. He could burn it down. Assuming he could control the fire inside him.

  He needed rage. One more image pulled from his mind more than did it: Eurus stabbing Farren in the back over and over as his brother attempted to crawl away on his stomach. Sparks flew off Devlin’s hand at the memory of Farren’s screams calling out to Devlin, who’d been blocked just outside the open door to the ceremonial hall by some unseen force. Flames flickered over Devlin’s palms at the recollection of the soul-shattering frustration of being unable to help a brother he’d promised to protect. The handheld blazes grew and the flames rippled up Devlin’s arms.

  Shaking from the heat and the gathering energy of his new powers, he extended both arms toward the door and focused all his concentration and will upon it. He projected the fire outward, trying to find a balance between something that would be strong enough to be effective and not torching the whole place.

  Damnit, work!

  Trembling now, Devlin struggled to hold his focus and not go nuclear. His teeth clenched, bones rattled, and head throbbed at the effort. Fire licked outward, forming a ball around him he wasn’t going to be able to control.

  Watch me. Focus on me. Anna. Her words from before he’d submitted to Iris’s test. The image of her beautiful pale face, so fragile and delicate in appearance, filled his mind’s eye. She’d believed in his ability to rein in the fire in her backyard. If she were here now, she’d believe in him still. He could do this. He mentally tugged and pulled and wrestled the fire back into himself and concentrated it in the palms of his hands.

  A giant ball of fire formed in front of him. With a yell, he threw it and it exploded against the door. Shards of wood and jagged bits of rock rained down around him, but the door still stood. Again! More heat, a bigger fireball, a harder projection.

  This impact was so big that part of the wall crumbled in an avalanche of stone. When the smoke cleared, the door was half gone, the rest engulfed in slowly consuming flames.

  That would have to do. Devlin kicked a thick, broken board inward, and then carefully climbed through the tight opening, silently thanking Anna for helping him keep it together.

  Eurus’s office. Behind a massive carved wooden desk stood an equally massive floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with chests and boxes and trunks. Hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands.

  How the hell am I going to decide which one?

  Chapter Twenty

  Devlin hadn’t been in this room for years. Bad memories of verbal tirades and painful punishments for a variety of mostly imagined slights and infractions echoed between the stone walls and filled Devlin with remembered dread.

  The fire popped.

  He turned and watched as the flames climbed up the molding around the doorjamb. Just one more reason to hurry the hell up.

  Crossing the room, Devlin studied the massive bookshelf, his gaze jumping from a golden chest on a pedestal to a carved mahogany chest to a little silver keepsake box. It was just as Anna had painted it. And the only thing that kept Devlin from freaking out at the impossibility of this task was the fact that her painting had depicted him with Eurus’s key in hand.

  Question was,
did how he was positioned in the painting tell him anything about which box?

  Standing immediately in front of the bookshelf impressed him with just how hard this would be. Shelves stretched way above his head, so high he couldn’t even see all the boxes and chests they held. He grabbed the heavy, ornate desk chair from behind him, swung it toward the shelf, and climbed up. Then he counted.

  Ten shelves in all, each eight feet wide. All packed with boxes.

  What Devlin most hated in this moment was the need to put himself in his father’s shoes and mind. Eurus’s ego would argue for the most ornate of the boxes, but he wouldn’t want to be that obvious. And his father’s quest to always be clever meant there would be some irony or twisted joke about his choice of box. The irreplaceable nature of the key and its life-and-death value argued for a box that locked in some way. Beyond those considerations, the size of the key in Anna’s painting seemed to rule out the smallest of the boxes.

  So where did that leave him?

  A silver box with a compass rose inlaid with jewels caught his eye—not because of its ornate nature, but because the compass rose oriented the East at the top of the rose. Certainly represented Eurus’s belief in the way the world should be. A small lock hung off the front, meeting that criterion, too. Reaching behind two smaller boxes on the fifth shelf, Devlin grasped the silver rectangle so he could examine it closer.

  He turned it around in his hands and shook it, but the box made no noise and had no mechanisms on the outside that might release the lock. Here goes nothing. He grasped the little lock, melted it into a puddle of molten silver with his fire, and flicked the clasp upward. Muscles braced for anything, Devlin took a deep breath and opened the lid.

  Nothing. Nothing inside and nothing happened.

  Unsure what to make of the lack of consequences, Devlin frowned and dropped the box to the floor. It hit the stone with a clank as he turned back to the shelves. Next he chose a shiny, lacquered wooden box with a golden crown carved in the top. Understated and subtle, with something within that rattled when Devlin shook it. He melted the little lock and opened the top.