The idea of it petrified him, but it would have to happen; it was as inevitable as the tide. If they were going to find out more about the connection between the arach and the dragons, she would have to get near one.
He didn't know how they were going to pull that off, but he would figure out the safest way to do it.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the man who went up the hill sprinted out of the palace and onto the bridge. Cole kept his face impassive and heart rate calm as the man ran down the hill toward them.
At least the Lord didn’t kill the messenger. But then, to that monster, this was a happy message to receive.
When he finally reached them again, the man skidded to a halt a few feet away. He rested his hand against his side as he bent over and wheezed out words.
“The Lord… would like to… see you… and the bodies… immediately.”
Cole smiled at the one with the broken spear; the man scowled back. Without another word, he turned and strolled toward the open gates leading into the palace’s courtyard.
He passed through them and into the bailey beyond. It was teeming with immortals looking to trade their wares and purchase things, but the crowd was abnormally subdued. None of the familiar shouts of merchants looking to hawk their wares filled the air.
Instead, immortals went quietly from one worn-down booth to the next. Some of them scurried around the bailey, and none of them made eye contact for long.
After the arach killed each other, Dragonia became home to an assortment of immortals. They all lived peaceably together, but none of them seemed happy. Despite that unhappiness, most stayed because they were outcasts from their realms.
He barely felt the weight of the bodies he carried, though they must have weighed the same as Orin and Varo. Everything else about them was so realistic, he doubted this detail was overlooked.
Feeding on Lexi again had bolstered his strength once more. And this last feeding had empowered him more than any of the others.
When he arrived at the top of the mountain path, he turned toward the rocky bridge and strode onto it. Cracks zigzagged across the rocky surface. With every step he took, pebbles broke away.
They clattered as they bounced against the rocky walls of the mountain before spiraling into the river. Once he was further out on the bridge, those pebbles stopped knocking against the sides of the walls, but he was certain they still broke away to spiral into the rushing water far below.
Cole ignored the quaking of the bridge beneath his feet. If it fell apart now, there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, this bridge had been here for more than a few millennia; it would last a little longer.
He was almost to the silver portcullis, with its lethal tips hanging above the front of the open gates, when he spotted a slender, stoop-shouldered man standing in the shadows.
“Hurry, hurry,” the man encouraged as he waved a hand at Cole.
Chapter Sixty
Cole strode past the golden gates shaped like dragons and into the palace. The man’s feet thudded heavily against the stone floors as he rushed toward the hallway leading to the Lord’s throne room.
At least, unlike the last two times he was here, he wouldn’t have to wait to see the Lord.
Before they got to the hallway leading to the throne room, the man turned left and walked across the foyer to a set of glass doors. Cole had to shift his step away from the closed doors of the throne room.
Where was this guy taking him? He’d never seen the Lord outside the throne room.
He continued onward as if this didn’t faze him, but he wasn’t expecting to go anywhere other than the throne room. The man opened the glass doors and scurried into the large, beautiful room beyond.
The only light filtering into the room came from the windows all around it. There were more windows than golden walls here, and the combination cast only a few shadows across the well-lit floor.
Sunlight spilled across a white marble floor. The colors swirling through the floor reminded him of the different hues of the dragons’ scales. As he walked, this pattern shifted and changed in such a way that he had the disconcerting notion he was actually crossing dragons.
Trying to reorient himself, he tipped his head back and looked at the sky as a dragon soared overhead. When he felt more centered, he lowered his head to take in the room again.
It was empty now, but he doubted it had always been that way. After seeing the way Lexi reacted to light, he suspected this room was once a place where the arach would come to relax.
A place where they would bask in the sun and possibly moonlight as it shone through the windows and lit the floor. It was probably once opulently furnished and filled with things that made the arach happy.
This Lord, or one of the other lunatics before him, had changed all that. And now, it was nothing more than a barren, beautifully lit space.
As he walked, the shadows shifted around him. They didn’t move to touch him, but he sensed the power they possessed, and something inside him stirred in response. There weren’t many of them here, but if he needed them, they would come.
Across the way, another set of double glass doors were set into the wall. The man pulled one of them open, but this time he stepped back and gestured for Cole to go through alone.
Chapter Sixty-One
Cole stepped through the doors and into a massive, open space. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at as the barren trees bowed beneath the weight of the sunlight beating down on them, but then he realized it was a garden.
More remains of dead plants spilled across the red, stone walkway that twisted through the acres of dead foliage surrounding him. The deadened tendrils of plants, shrubs, and trees stretched out as if they were seeking life from those who passed, but there was no life here.
Whatever beauty used to lay in what he was sure was once a magnificent, vast garden before the arach died, was gone. This was a garden for the dead; it was only fitting he brought the clones here.
Through the broken remnants of gnarled tree branches, Cole spotted the Lord. He stood a thousand feet away, near a fountain.
On either side of him were two guards; they each held a spear and had swords strapped to their backs. More guards moved amongst the dead plants and the endless acres of land.
Overhead, a dragon roared as it swooped across the sky, but none of them were on the ground in the garden. Cole ignored the circling beasts overhead as he strode toward the Lord. Rocks clattered beneath Varo’s clone as Cole dragged it along the pathway.
Most of the guards watched as he approached the Lord, but some kept their attention focused away from the fountain to search the land. These men and women were better trained than the ones by the portal.
Cole didn’t know if the Lord always had this many guards to protect him when he didn’t have dragons near or if he’d called them to him when he heard of Cole’s arrival. Either way, the Lord was making it clear no one was going to get at him.
Which meant the Lord had a very big false sense of security. He had no idea what was coming for him, but Cole did. Even if he’d never learned about Lexi’s true heritage, he would have found a way to kill this man.
He looked forward to the day it happened.
However, the Lord was also making it clear Cole would not escape here. As if to reinforce this, the shadows of two dragons swept across him as they circled overhead.