Kinked (Elder Races, #6)

“It’ll be uncomfortable but doable. You?”


“Same.” Purpose came back into her angular face. “So we leave at sunset.”

“I’m down with that.” He stretched his stiff back. “In the meantime we’ve got hours to sunset, and I’ve a mind to nap in an Elven lord’s bed. Come on.”

They traveled into the main part of the palace by way of the kitchens, and for a time they wandered in silence, looking at the precious gold and lapis lazuli inlaid in the high, wide walls and marble floors, and gazing out the windows at glimpses of the silent, abandoned city spread out along the shoreline below. Then they came to the throne room and stopped to stare.

A burned body slumped in an ornate chair on a scorched dais. More bodies lay in a semicircle, their throats cut. Scavenger birds had been at them. Other than that, the bodies remained perfect, giving a glimpse of ruined beauty.

After a long look, Aryal turned away. She said simply, “They’re dead and it’s awful, and I’m done. I’m full up. I can’t feel anything for them.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and led her away.

They climbed another wide, curving staircase and explored hallways. Quentin opened the large double doors down one hallway and walked into a room that was the size of his apartment at the Tower. A massive bed dominated the room with coverlets and pillows embroidered with gold and scarlet thread.

Wide windows the height of the room looked over the city. The far one faced the white, pillared Temple of the Gods, which stood outlined against the backdrop of the blue-green sea.

There was no doubt in Quentin’s mind whose bedroom this was. He walked around the room, looking in doors. One opened to a huge bathroom, with tiled steps that led down to a walk-in tub patterned with an intricate mosaic. The tub was large enough that a troll could bathe in it. Another door opened to a wardrobe filled with sumptuous clothes that were suitable for an Elven male.

Drawn by the dramatic view, he walked back to the far window. The temple was simple and open to the elements. The side facing the palace had steps leading up to the marble-floored interior. The gigantic statues of the gods on either side, interspersed with columns, provided the main support of the plain prop-and-lintel roof. On the farthest side of the temple, a single god faced outward to the sea. Even though all Quentin could see of that statue was its back, he was certain that it was the god Taliesin, god of all the other gods, the prime mover of the universe.

The bedroom was at the same height as the enormous profiles of the two closest statues, one male and one female, their stern, strong faces looking into infinity. The male statue faced the city, and he held a book tucked under one arm. That would be Hyperion, the god of Law. The female was less easy to identify, but he thought she might be Camael, goddess of the Hearth, age and wisdom.

Aryal joined him at the window.

He said, “Camthalion put himself on the same level as the gods. Can you imagine looking out at this scene year after year for millennia, while possessing Taliesin’s Machine? After all that time I wonder if there was anything recognizable of the original man.”

He glanced at her. As spectacular as the temple was, she wasn’t looking at it. Instead her face tilted up to the wide, cloudless sky, and her expression was filled with so much anguished yearning, it cracked something inside of him.

They were perfect. Perfect, which was insanity all on its own. After hating her so vehemently, experiencing this kind of emotional turnaround was enough to give him whiplash. That issue alone should have been more than enough to deal with for, say, five or six years, but on top of that he also knew what was going on in that spiky, passionate head of hers.

She was about to go into war without having enough to live for.

Gods, he didn’t want to say the things he was about to say to her. He wanted to shut the hell up, take a bath and go to sleep. Heart-to-hearts gave him indigestion. He would do almost anything to avoid them. Hearing the words “we have to talk about our feelings” was the surest way to get him out the door fast, and he had never looked back before, never up until this point in time, with this woman.

He could walk out of this door too and find another bedroom for himself, except that meant he would leave her alone with that heartbreaking expression on her face. And he would rather die than do that, which meant that somehow he had landed himself squarely in the middle of the Deep Shit Zone for sure.