Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) by J.T. Geissinger

Author:J.T. Geissinger [Geissinger, J.T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2014-10-20T22:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Honor’s room—cave, Lu kept reminding herself—was well away from the warren of others they’d passed on their way through the cool, echoing passageways that led from the Assembly chamber. The shadowed beauty of the place enthralled her; soaring ceilings and secret corners and whispers teased along stone walls, the scent of water and moss, air so deathly still it felt entombed.

It was magical. She loved it, in the way a prisoner long held under lock and key loves his first glimpse of open sky. She felt safe and secure in this enchanted underground city.

But, most of all, she felt free.

“It’s not half as wonderful as you think it is,” muttered Honor, sweeping regally into her rooms beneath a low, carved archway of stone. She’d installed thick white curtains on either side of the entrance, plush and sound dampening, so that when she released the tasseled ties that held them back, the velvet panels fell together with a swish and a billow, and the sound of flowing water from beyond was instantly muffled.

“If you’d spent your entire life sleeping in a bedroom the size of your sitting area, you might disagree,” Lu said, eyeing the sumptuous white divan flanked by a pair of fat, snowy armchairs that surrounded a low grate of glowing embers sending up feathers of orange ash into the air. The entire room was sumptuous, outfitted all in white, from the furniture to the draperies to the rugs underfoot, and Lu wondered briefly why her sister insisted on having no color in anything she owned, from her clothes to her décor.

Everything in Honor’s world was bleached as bone. Colorless. Bloodless. Even her dragon form was pallid as the full moon.

Honor sniffed, clearly disagreeing with Lu’s assessment. Moving to her bed, an elaborate, four-poster affair of downy pillows and gauzy curtains and white fur throws, she stripped off her jacket, casually tossing it atop the coverlet. Her boots followed, thrown one after another over her shoulder to land in hollow thumps against the stone floor, then she padded barefoot back to where Lu stood near the entrance.

She held out her hand. “C’mon. There’s not much time.”

Lu followed as her sister towed her past the bed, around a gnarled column of stone into an adjacent chamber. It was a bathroom of sorts, though there was no shower or bath. But there was a vanity with a mirror, lighted by small, flickering votives set into niches into the stone, and Honor pushed her down onto the small padded bench before it. She stood behind Lu, gathered her loose hair into her hands, and began to work the strands into a braid.

“Funny,” Honor said after a moment, her voice neutral, “that we’d both wear our hair this long, even though we’d never met.” Her eyes met Lu’s in the mirror, and Lu glimpsed the pain her sister tried to hide behind her bland looks and flavorless tones, her hard and frigid persona.

She reached up and grasped one of Honor’s wrists. “We’re coming back,” she said, her voice quiet but vehement.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.