I twirled the forget-me-not back and forth in my fingers, watching the fading sunlight play over the blue petals. Then I placed the flower on my mom’s tombstone, mumbled how much I still missed her to whatever ghosts and monsters might be watching, and left the cemetery.
I hiked through the woods, passing through growing clouds of cool, damp mist. The summer sun was hot enough to burn off most of the waterfall spray during the day, but as the sun set, the fog increased, sliding lower and lower on the mountain, like vanilla ice cream melting in a sundae and oozing everywhere. Most of the mist was still stuck in the trees above my head, but when night fell, it would filter down through the branches and completely saturate the forest. I wasn’t worried, though. No matter how low and thick the fog got, I would still be able to see everything as clearly as if it were noon, thanks to my sight.
No, what bothered me was the noise—or lack of it.
I don’t know how far I’d gone into the woods before I noticed that it was quiet—too quiet.
The chirp of birds and lazy drone of bugs that had surrounded the Sinclair cemetery had vanished, replaced by dead, still silence. I dropped my hand to my sword, stopped, and turned in a slow circle, peering at everything, but I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary. Just towering trees and tangled branches and white mist as far as even I could see.
Normally, this deep in the woods, I would have expected to spot at least a couple of sets of bright, glowing, jewel-toned eyes watching me from the shadows— sapphire-blue, emerald-green, and ruby-red orbs that belonged to various monsters. But even the shadows were quiet, still, and empty. Weird. And a little creepy. So I hurried on, keeping my hand on my sword, just in case.
The Draconi compound was on the eastern slope of the mountain, directly opposite the Sinclair mansion on the west side, but it wasn’t all that far between them distance-wise, only about three miles cutting straight through the forest. So it took me less than an hour to reach the edge of the woods that flanked the Draconi stronghold.
In addition to being on the other side of the mountain, the Draconi compound was also the exact opposite of the Sinclair mansion in every possible way. It wasn’t even a mansion so much as it was a castle, made out of gleaming white stone that rose up into a series of towers, each one topped with a red flag bearing a snarling gold dragon. Everything about the structure was slick and elegant, from the tall, diamond-paned windows to the red roses twining through the white wooden trellises to the cobblestone bridge that arched over the moat in front. Seriously, it was an actual moat with water running through it and everything. That was a bit much, if you asked me.
The Draconi compound was certainly beautiful, but I preferred the Sinclair mansion. The rough, black, blocky stone there seemed much more natural and honest than this too-perfect castle with its ivory towers.
But there was one thing I did like about the Draconi castle—all the trees and bushes that dotted the sloping lawns. Thick clusters of greenery ran all the way from the woods right up to a patio on the west side of the structure. I hadn’t mentioned it to Claudia, but this wasn’t the first night I’d come here. I’d been hiking over to the Draconi compound every few days and familiarizing myself with the guard routes, doors, windows, and more, in anticipation of this night, when I would actually break into the castle itself. A good thief did her homework, and this was the same routine I’d used countless times before, whenever Mo had sent me out to retrieve an expensive item from someone’s house on the sly.
I waited until the guards turned away from my location, then sprinted forward, keeping low and moving from one cluster of bushes to the next. It took me less than a minute to creep from the woods up to the side patio. I reached for the door to see if it was locked, but the crunch-crunch-crunch of tires made me stop. I hunkered down and peered around a white marble planter shaped like a snarling dragon blowing red roses out of its mouth, instead of flames.
A dark green SUV pulled up to the front of the mansion and stopped. A silver wolf’s head gleamed on each one of the vehicle’s doors. My eyes narrowed. What were the Volkovs doing here?
The driver got out of the SUV and hurried to open the back door. A second later, a short, muscular man with a bushy brown beard emerged from the vehicle. Nikolai Volkov, the head of his Family. And he wasn’t the only person I recognized. Katia got out of the vehicle as well, along with a middle-aged man who had to be Carl Volkov, her father, since he had the same dark red hair she did.
Nikolai, Katia, and Carl stood by the car, their faces neutral, waiting for the king himself to emerge.
The front doors of the mansion swung open, and Victor Draconi stepped outside, with Blake right beside him, just like always. I looked for Deah, but she didn’t appear.
“Nikolai, Katia, Carl,” Victor called out. “Thank you for coming.”