“Should we head to the wall now?” Ixana was all business, her white robe trailing down her body as she stood before us. Her hair was out of the braid, styled up today, with a different silver crown.
She looked very put-together and I would have guessed she’d made a true effort to dress up for her mate. Couldn’t blame a chick for that. Shadow was a catch, that was for sure, but no one would “catch” him with fancy clothes or hair. That wasn’t how he rolled.
Not to mention, girlfriend had the most advantage of all, being his true mate. Fucking fate wanted to push those two together, and they would feel a bond and craving for the other, based just on a quirk in nature.
It was kind of a no-brainer, and yet, there was a distance between the pair that she hadn’t managed to lessen. At least not yet.
No one answered her, but we all moved closer, which was an answer in itself. Angel and Midnight remained right at my side, and while Inky was with Shadow, the pair didn’t walk with Ixana. She was out front with her two main guards.
Once we left the room, it was again into the mindfuck of a house. “It’s ingenious,” Angel said, her eyes alight as she catalogued every twist and turn.
“Ingenious or insane,” I muttered. “Jury is still out.”
She just shook her head at me but couldn’t answer because the queen was talking. “Once we reach the highest point in my castle,” she called back, having just stepped onto a rather steep and winding marble staircase, “we will have to fly across to the wall. My guards can arrange transport for those…” She paused. “Lacking the skills to get themselves there.”
In this group, that was probably only me. But if she thought I was allowing Birdy to fly me anywhere, she was out of her mind. I’d argue at the top, though, because I was currently busy trying to walk up the longest, trippiest—literally—set of stairs in the worlds. There was no handrail, and they were shiny with zero traction, and a very narrow lip on the upward curve. It was the sort of stairwell that could have been the end of me if Midnight and Angel weren’t there to keep me on my feet. For a shifter who was not usually clumsy, it was an odd experience to be unable to gracefully ascend.
“Step closer to this side,” Ixana said, appearing in front of me so fast, I was fairly sure she’d instantly transported. She leaned over to point to the side closer to the spiral, which looked way too small for my feet to fit. I mean, surely she knew that, since she was near a foot taller than me and had bigger feet. “It’s another illusion to make the journey harder,” she explained as I narrowed my eyes on her.
She then let out a nervous chuckle, turning and hurrying away. Staring after her, I really wanted to disregard her advice and move to the farthest spot from where she’d told me to step, but I also knew the value of not cutting my nose off to spite my face.
With that in mind, I decided to swallow my anger and pride, pretend I was the bigger person, and try what she suggested.
Almost immediately, it was easier. She’d been right about the illusion, which hid small grooves, allowing me to find the traction previously missing.
Damn her.
I had no idea what her game was, but she was playing well.
“Almost there,” she called back a moment later. “You’re doing great.”
She might as well have given me a pat on the back and a “Nice work, honey.” I could hear the condescension in her tone, but since I was being a bigger person, I didn’t reply with equal sarcasm. My wolf let out a howl of annoyance in my chest, and I had to remind her we were above such things.
All class, baby. We were all class.
By the time we reached the top, I was almost convinced this was a devious plot to kill us through hours of stairclimbing, but apparently, it was just how high the damn snowflake was.
When we exited onto a platform, the views were beyond spectacular. Or at least the initial view was, with Ixana’s snow-touched kingdom spanning out around us, white and wintery, with snowflake houses, furred beings milling in the streets, and what looked like a… garden in the center. It was huge, and the entire setup reminded me of the images I’d seen of Central Park in New York City.
“This is Landor,” she said, waving her hands around, and the icy breezes that had been buffeting us faded. Everything here obeyed her command, and I wondered if it was the power of Shadow’s stone that allowed that. He’d said it was fairly useless until it bonded to the Supreme Being, but somehow, she’d figured it out.
I hadn’t seen the stone again since that first time. She knew that keeping her leverage hidden away was her best chance of getting what she wanted. That in itself, was triggering all of my red-flag warnings about the queen, and her end game here.
“I have about five thousand of my Clangors here,” she said proudly. “The beings made of my creation. It has taken more than a thousand years, but they’re perfect now.”
I held a hand up, and everyone looked at me like I was a fucking bug. Ignoring this, I said, “I have a question.”
Shadow’s lips twitched, and he shook his head, like he’d been expecting that all along. “Uh, yes,” Ixana said.
“Is everyone in the Shadow Realm immortal?”
Why I’d waited so long to ask this, I had no idea. Maybe I’d just assumed because of Shadow that they were, but it had been well established he was a special snowflake—ha, ironic, considering what surrounded us—so it stood to reason that maybe there were those who died of old age here.
“It varies depending on the being,” Shadow said, the rumble of his voice doing downright sinful things to me. “Many of the creatures are, and they pass this on to the royals who bind them. But the freilds, fronds, and other races all age and die.”
Ixana nodded. “Oh, yes, the rest of the realm’s inhabitants have a lifespan of maybe five hundred cycles.”
“About five hundred years,” Shadow translated her translation.
“So, you’re immortal because of what?”
He met my gaze, and his eyes were actually sparkling in a way that told me he was amused as fuck. “Combination of Inky, the Solaris System, and… yeah, even shifters help boost my energy. Your power recharges my own.”
Torin had picked up on that weakness. Warning him that he knew how to best the beast. What had his plan been, though? Kill all the shifters?
Knowing that stupid fuck, I probably wasn’t far off.
“Okay, cool,” I said, nodding at Ixana. “Proceed.”
She blinked at me before turning back to her “perfect creation.”
“As I said, this land is mine and I control every aspect of it, from the weather to the protective fences that keep my residents safe from the outside.”
“Illusions,” Shadow muttered.
Her lips twitched, and she nodded. “It protects us. You can’t blame me for that.”
There was a history there, but neither of them delved any deeper.
We shifted our view from the white landscape, moving on to what lay beyond. Now the barrier itself was actually super impressive—until this moment, I hadn’t really seen the full effect of the snowflake fence. It was at least fifty feet high, with interlocked points on the flakes, the swirling patterns separating her land from the darker world beyond it.
A world we were about to step into.
“This is the birthplace of the shadow creatures in their purest form,” Ixana said, “and I will take you to the center point from which they emerge. The point the two mists converge. Once we reach that place, we will have gathered our army.
Shadow cleared his throat. “And how do you propose we make it to that point without being torn to shreds? Not even I can take on the wild lands alone.”
She grinned, a creepy sort of smile that made me think of a predator. “You can’t, but she can…”
Her gaze turned to me, and when it did, so did everyone else’s.
“No,” I said. “No way in fucking hell. Why would I help you two take over the world here? I’m basically ready to head back to the Solaris System.”
Shadow didn’t look happy with my statement, but he wasn’t the first to argue.
Ixana stepped toward me. “You’re in my kingdom and will obey my rule.”
Shadow cleared his throat, and ten to one, if he’d had a chance, he’d have been giving her the signal to shut up now. He knew better than any how well I took orders.
Ixana moved even closer, but Angel was between us in a flash, with her wicked curved blades in hand. Ixana was a smart little cookie, backing up immediately.
“Yeah. See, that shit doesn’t fly with us,” I told her conversationally. “I bow to no queen, and I obey no orders blindly. So unless you can give me a very good reason for why I should help you, I won’t be.”
Ixana, who had looked highly offended at those words, somehow managed to school her expression. “What if I told you that the answers you all seek to what and who you are can be discovered in this land? That, by heading to the original source of the creatures, you will unlock the part of you that’s been hidden from sight? The part that allows you to control the creatures?”
Peering around Angel so I could assess Ixana’s expression fully, I narrowed my eyes. “If you know, then just fucking tell me.”
It was Ixana’s turn to smile. “And why would I do that? As you’ve just said, what’s in it for me?”
Well, fuck. “Touché, and with that in mind, I still won’t be helping you.”
“Sunshine.”
He’d used my nickname in front of her, and even more than my need to know what this mysterious part of me was, was my need to help Shadow. Help him achieve a plan two thousand years in the making. Dammit. That was a truth I couldn’t ignore or walk away from.
I looked at Angel, who had relaxed a little, her blades gone. She tilted her head, shooting me a sad smile. “Whatever you decide, I have your back. If you want to leave right now, we will…”
That would be the smart thing to do. Leave, never look back, and forget about the near perfect year spent with the shifter god. Only, this part of me screaming louder than the rest, wouldn’t let me walk away.
“I promise nothing. But for now, I’ll stay and see what’s up.”
“‘See what’s up…’” Ixana repeated. “How gracious of you.”
“I know, right?” I smiled sweetly.
She had no fucking idea how gracious it really was.
