Revealed in Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights #9)(39)

“What do you mean? The flowers were purple, red, and yellow. That was the color scheme. And how many types of cobblestone are there? It’s brown. Wasn’t the other stuff brown? Or was it gray? Crap, I can’t remember.”

“The flowers were heliotrope purple, carnelian, and butter yellow. These are—”

“Whoa, whoa…wait.” I tried to pour over the words he’d used for colors. “So…deeper purple…maybe?” I changed those out.

“Now you are using majorelle blue.”

“Blue?” I dropped my hands. “What are you seeing? I’m seeing purple.”

“No.”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, hell, I don’t know. Obviously this is not going to work. I don’t know colors.”

“It is not your specialty. There is nothing wrong with that. In the Realm, a master gardener usually works with a magical structuralist to create the designs, and then lesser structuralists to maintain them. Your imagination is very vivid, but your gardening…”

I left the flowers as they were. Hopefully no master gardeners would be wandering through anytime soon. The trees were easy enough, even though Romulus’s tsking when I added the leaves indicated they were the wrong green. The gold filaments came next, and since those were annoying and I had no idea why they were here in the first place, I didn’t bother. Maybe they’d get the hint.

“I do wonder, if you were fae, what your contribution to the community would be,” he wondered aloud.

How did you politely tell someone they were starting to get annoying?

“Demolition. I’d give all your masters something to do.” I finished up and surveyed my handiwork. “The colors look kind of like a circus.”

“Yes. It is quite hideous. I think you should pass it off as making fun of the elves. It’s the only way to avoid public ridicule.”

“Wow. Don’t pull any punches, huh?”

“You don’t seem like the type of person who would appreciate it if I did.”

“You’re not reading me very well.” I put my hands on my hips as Darius sauntered over, just as freshly pressed as ever, with his suit jacket buttoned and a hand in a trouser pocket. He didn’t believe in dressing down for the occasion. How he was comfortable traveling—or fighting—in a suit, I did not know.

“They are going to know someone messed with their scheme,” he said.

“We’ve established that, thanks. Maybe get on my team for a moment.”

“What I mean to say is, if you can’t join them, beat them. Make your father proud.”

I studied his handsome face for a moment, seeing the glitter of mirth in his eyes. This was a plot of some kind. It was part of his strategy, the one he’d probably just developed after the elves showed their cards.

Given it sounded like an amazing idea, I didn’t question him. I just tore the illusion down again.

“Can we help?” Emery walked over. “If you’re going to mess with them, let’s really mess with them. I have some experience with that.”

He certainly did. It was why they were so eager to hang him. Grinning, I nodded at him.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Penny asked, standing behind us. “Won’t we get in more trouble?”

“What more trouble can I get into?” Emery asked. “What are they going to do, hang me twice?”

“They’re not going to hang you,” Penny said with grit in her tone. “My mother would not send us to the elves to be hanged.”

“You, no. Me…” Emery let his words hang.

“They will not hang you, Mr. Westbrook. Their bounty on you is a gross miscarriage of justice. We will rectify the issue,” Romulus said, and his arrogance was on par with that of any vampire.

It didn’t seem like he’d learned much from the meet-and-greet we’d just had with the elves. Thankfully, he clearly had no problem with extreme violence when things didn’t go his way. I assumed it would be no different at the castle. Our best bet was to believe the Seers and stick together. Otherwise they could pick us off one by one.





Thirteen





“Home.” Romulus heaved a sigh of relief as we dragged our weary butts along the path and into gorgeous lands filled with real flowers, lush, green, natural trees, soft, springy grass, and dusky stone slabs. A sweet perfume filled the air, but it wasn’t magically generated like the perfumed air in most of the Realm. The scent was from the actual plant life around us.

“I just do not get it,” I murmured, veering off to the side and bending to touch a bush with waxy, deep green leaves. Romulus could probably tell me the exact shade of green, not that it would matter. I couldn’t be bothered to remember it.

I peeled a little of the magical construction away from the ground and found the exact same fertile earth. It was like someone had taken the real scenic elements and painted over them with magic.

Darius knelt down beside me, and Penny and Emery stepped off the path, Penny’s eyes on the ground, probably looking for rocks. She’d found a whole bunch so far, and Emery was now making her choose a select few from her bounty. The decisions were not quickly made.

“These paths need more benches along them,” Callie said, stopping on the path and not bothering to get out of anyone’s way. She looked ahead with longing. She was clearly happy to be done with the journey, or at least to have halted for a little while.