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I didn’t need to insert the key to know it would fit.
“You guys need to know that Drakos sent his minions down here, and they were ground into bone dust. Whatever’s on theother side of this door is nasty and it doesn’t mess around,” I said. “Last chance to turn back.”
They all shook their heads. “We’re with you, Aella.”
“To the end.”
Thud.
I paused, twisting to see Jason enter the antechamber. “I want to help you,” he said. “Sebastian and Dimitri don’t need me. One guy to get rid of witnesses. Another to erase their memory. They’re covered. While you lovely ladies...” He smirked, leering at Nitsa. “Need me to cover you.”
“Okay, thanks.” I took a deep breath. “All right. Here goes.”
I inserted the key in the lock, and fell.
“Ahhh!”
We stumbled through the air, plummeting through dark, wind, and heat. Light suddenly surrounded me, snapping my eyes shut. I dropped down on something surprisingly soft. Peeling my eyes open, I made out two chair handles before it snapped me forward. Something rough clamped down on my ankles.
“What’s going on?”
“What happened?”
“Where are we?”
I wished I could’ve answered any of those questions. Somehow, we left the dark antechamber behind and wound up on top of a hill, seated at a stone table within a gazebo. Next to us was a grand building, supported by massive columns that made the small, wooden door leading inside even more out of place.
I twisted to see down the hill, and was gifted a view of a rolling wheat field extending out for miles in all directions. Righting myself, I took in the cornucopia resting in the middle of the table, spilling over with fruits, bread, and vegetables. Then, I flicked to exactly six place settings—ready and waiting for us.
Seven settings, but we weren’t the only ones seated around the table. Six stone figures joined us. Two sitting at the ends of the table, and four sitting next to Daciana, Nitsa, Tycho, and Jason. They didn’t have faces but crowns were sculpted on their heads.
“I don’t understand,” Nitsa said. “Are we still underneath the academy? Was that key doused in potion? Did it take us somewhere else?”
Daciana inhaled deeply. “I do not know where we are. This place is... wrong.”
“Wrong?” Tycho asked. “Wrong how?”
“There’s no trace that any person has been here ever. Not man, woman, demigod, or werewolf.”
“But if no one’s been here before us...” Ionna began. Our eyes all fixed on the same thing. “Who put all this food here?”
An uncomfortably long silence beat against the whispering wind.
“It’s all freshly picked and baked,” Theron said. “Someone put it here. And the plates, knives, and forks.”
“The finest plates and utensils. The best food.” Jason bowed to Nitsa. “Even for a trap, they know lovely, beautiful queens such as yourselves deserve the best.”
Ignoring him, I pointed. “That door looks exactly like the door we took to get here. That’s where we need to go, and the key must be around here somewhere.”
“Please say it’s not down there.” Nitsa took in the miles of wheat. “Even if it is, we can’t get down there.”
I kicked against the restraints. She was right. We weren’t going anywhere.
“What do we do?” I hissed at Selene.
“If I knew how to get through these measures, I would not have needed you or anyone else.”
“Fine.” I took a deep breath and considered. “Okay, let’s think about it,” I said. “What if we’d swam through the Lethe water like we were supposed to? We would’ve ended up here, a bunch of clueless, empty-headed morons. We wouldn’t have known we were in danger, or anything at all. So if we plopped down at a table with food in front of us—”
