The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(49)
* * *
HE KNEW HE WAS NEARING House Kore when the road changed.
His father had brought him here when he was seven years old … back then, Tante Delphine—as he had known the House Kore matriarch—had taken him horseback riding. “He’s like a son to me!” she’d said. “Of course I shall teach him how to ride.” She’d held him close, his spine to her chest, her laugh in his ear. “Next summer, we’ll practice jumping. How does that sound?”
But there was no next summer. There was nothing after the day she administered the inheritance test and dropped his hands as if he were rotten fruit.
“Tante?” he’d tried, only for her to shudder.
“You may not call me that. Not anymore.”
Séverin quickly shoved down the memory. It belonged to another life.
Ahead, the road split into five lanes that looked like rivers. One lane was polished hematite that looked like a ripple of silver. One lane glowed red and looked like twisted candlelight. The other, a pale blue, looked like a sky scraped of clouds. Beside it, a lane of glass appeared dimpled as if invisible rain kept denting its surface. And last, a lane of smoke. Beyond the five lanes disguised as rivers, fog and mist stretched or pinched into fantastical shapes—three-headed dogs yawning and baring translucent teeth, gigantic hands scraping misty nails down the mountain, women wearing ragged tunics, folding in half as they wept and wept and wept. Beyond that … well. Séverin could hear the music. The laughter.
“Lethe, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, and Acheron,” he recited softly.
The five rivers in the home of Hades.
House Kore had turned its country estate into an opulent underworld. How fitting, he thought, for this place was his hell.
The carriage door opened on the River Styx. Before him stood an elaborate entrance: a glowing, jade skull of what might have been a monster dragged out of myth, with a row of teeth concealing verit stone. The barest prickle of ice ghosted over Séverin’s skin. When they’d tested the verit that Enrique and Zofia discovered, it had worked like a charm.
It will work … It has to work.
To the left of the verit entrance stood a group of three guards. Jutting over their shoulders, the points of their bayonets caught the flat, green light of the stone.
“Monsieur Faucher, welcome to House Kore’s country estate,” said the first guard. “If you do not mind, may we check you before you enter through the jaws?”
“Into the belly of the beast, as it were.”
The first guard let out a nervous laugh. The lightstick in his hand flashed. “May I?”
“Of course.”
Séverin forced himself not to flinch as the penlight neared his skin. Every time he saw a penlight, he thought of Wrath, who had used the penlights to double-check there was no sign left of the Forged mind affinity he used on them. He always knew when the Order was planning their monthly check-in because for twelve precious hours, Wrath would not place the Phobus Helmet on him. It was just enough time for traces of mind manipulation to disappear … just enough time that no one from the Order ever believed him.
The familiar light flashed over his pupils. Memory conjured the nightmares of the Phobus Helmet behind his eyes, but just as quickly, the light flashed off, and the guard waved him toward the verit jaws.
Behind him, he heard the scrape of carriages. The others had arrived right on time. Including—judging from the low laugh—Hypnos. Which meant Laila was here, pushing that gigantic icebox of cakes and Forged tools, all hidden by a verit stone concealed in the metal.
As Séverin walked through the verit entrance, he held his breath … but the small nub of verit in his shoe had done the job. With the entrance behind him, he headed to a dock choked in fog and mist where Zofia and Enrique were already waiting.
“Welcome to the country estate of House Kore,” announced a calm, disembodied voice from the air. “Please be advised that all boats may only transport three guests at a time.”
A long boat carved of onyx rose out of the water.
Once in the boat, the false Styx flowed beneath them, leading them toward a cave. The cave walls were hewn onyx, gleaming wet and lustrous. Stalactites dripped down from the ceiling. Within minutes, the small boat glided to a stop in front of another elegantly appointed dock, this one shrouded in mist save for the gigantic pair of ebony doors Forged with the snarling, barking faces of the three-headed guard dog of the underworld. Each head barked:
“In—”
“—vi—”
“—tations.”
The three heads kept their mouths wide. One by one, Séverin, Zofia, and Enrique placed their invitations onto the black tongues. The dogs’ jaws slammed shut, the heads melting into the wood and stone. A moment passed before the doors swung open. Light and sound and music poured out of the doors, blinding Séverin. The three of them stood, and the boat rocked beneath them. Once more, the dog heads appeared, this time a slip of velvet dangled from their teeth.
“Take—”
“—your—”
“—masks.”
They did.
Zofia entered first. Then Enrique. Séverin went last. He couldn’t undo this step once he took it. Past the greeting vestibule, a floor of polished black marble drank up the light cast down from chandeliers of etched bone and stained glass. It looked like nothing he remembered as a child, and for that he was glad.