I squinted, but all I could make out was that there were three male Wardens in addition to Matthew and Thierry. One had longish brown hair, another had shorter brown hair cropped close to the skull and the other was a blond. No females were with them. That wasn’t at all surprising. Female Wardens rarely traveled outside of their home communities or the outposts, because they were often targeted by demons, just as the children were.
Demons were astonishingly clever and logical. They knew that, if they took out those who could produce the next generation of Wardens, they could level a blow near impossible to recover from.
And it was one of the reasons that, collectively, all the classes of demons outnumbered the Wardens by the millions.
I was kind of like a female Warden, caged here for my safety, but for very, very different reasons.
Thierry greeted each of the visitors, shaking their hands, and I wished I could see their faces. The group turned to walk into the Great Hall.
What in the world was going on?
Reaching over, I rapped my knuckles of the stone shell and was immediately rewarded with a low, rumbling growl of annoyance. I giggled. Misha loved his late-afternoon naps in the fading sun. It’s where he always went after training and classes.
“Go to your room,” came the gruff reply from Misha. “Read a book. Watch a movie. Find a hobby.”
I ignored what Misha said, taking a perverse amount of joy in annoying the utter living crap out of him whenever I could.
“There are Wardens here,” I said, the words coming out in an excited rush.
“There are always Wardens here, Trinity.”
I stared at him, brow wrinkled. “These Wardens don’t live here.”
The statue shifted, the stone becoming slightly less hard and turning from dark gray to a quicksilver as the wings unfurled behind me. Reddish brown hair appeared around the horns, the curls blowing in the wind.
Vibrant blue eyes with thin, vertical pupils met mine. Irritation shone in those eyes. Wardens had weird sleeping patterns. Some stayed up all night and slept in the mornings and late afternoons. Misha’s schedule was based on whatever I was doing. “Trinity...”
Dipping under a wing, I took off as Misha rose from his perch, spinning around. “Dammit!” he shouted.
I knew the roof like the back of my hand, not even needing to really see where I was going. I was already on the other side, hopping up on the ledge, when Misha took flight behind me.
“Don’t let them see you!” he yelled as I jumped. “I swear to God, Trinity, I will lock you in your room!”
No, he wouldn’t.
Hitting the small alcove below, I skidded down the rounded roof. The moment my feet hit nothing but air, I twisted onto my stomach. Gripping the edge of the roof, I swung my body inward, through the window I left open when I first joined Misha on the roof.
I landed in the empty, dimly lit hallway and spun around to close the window behind me and then I locked it just in case Misha tried to follow me through. After shoving my sunglasses into the back pocket of my jeans, I took off down the hall, passing several closed doors to guest rooms and apartments that were almost never in use before throwing open the door to the musty-smelling stairwell. I took the steps three and four at a time and reached the first level in ten seconds.
From there, I slowed my steps and kept close to the wall, slipping past a kitchen that was used only when there were banquets and ceremonies. Activity was bustling for the upcoming Accolade, a massive ceremony held to celebrate Wardens becoming full warriors. It involved a lot of eating, a lot of drinking and whole lot of secret squirrel stuff that went down with the newly ordained Wardens.
Beyond the kitchen, I found the room I was looking for, which was a staging area of sorts and filled to the brim with folding tables and stacked chairs. I was careful not to knock into any of them, which required me to walk extraordinarily slowly.
And that took a lot of effort.
I didn’t do slow.
Voices grew louder as I neared the deep maroon curtains that separated the staging area from the Great Hall.
Stopping in front of the curtains, I carefully curled my fingers around the edge of one and tugged it a few inches aside, revealing the wide, cylinder-shaped hall in all its glory as dust spit into the air.
Good Lord, when was the last time anyone touched this curtain?
My gaze immediately lifted to the ceiling even though I couldn’t see the paintings anymore, no matter how brightly lit the hall was. Angels adorned the ceiling, many of which were battle angels—the Alphas. Those were the angels that oversaw the Wardens and often communicated with them, sometimes even in person, though I’d never seen one in real life. Painted in their armor and wielding righteous swords, they were a fearsome sight to look upon.
“How was the trip here?” Thierry was asking as he walked into my line of sight, and I refocused. The visitors stood on the raised dais, waiting. “I hope uneventful?”
Matthew followed Thierry to the center, toward a seat that wasn’t supposed to be called a throne, according to Thierry, but that, with its oversize seat and a back carved out of granite and shaped into a shield, sure looked like a throne to me.
But what did I know?
“Yes,” answered the one standing the closest to the dais. I couldn’t see him quite clearly, but he was the one with the longish brown hair. “The drive was long but it was a beautiful one.”
“It’s been many years since I’ve been to the nation’s capital,” Matthew said, hands clasped behind his back. “I imagine our community is vastly different than what you’re used to.”
Wow.
They were from Washington, DC? The DC clan was a large outpost and their clan leader had died recently, which was right around the time Thierry had begun to act more stressed than normal.
My gaze shifted to the one who’d been speaking. He looked like he was in his late twenties and seemed too young to be a clan leader, but he was the one doing all the talking.
“It is very different,” the male Warden answered with a chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve seen this much open space in years.”
Thierry sat. “Well, we’re glad that you were able to make it here, Nicolai.”
I mouthed his name, sort of liking it.
“Thank you for receiving us,” Nicolai responded. “We were surprised that our request was accepted.”
So was I.
“We don’t approve many requests,” Thierry replied. “But we thought it would be best to meet in person with you and your clan.”
So he was the new clan leader. My gaze shifted to the other Wardens. The one with the shorter dark hair was standing near the blond, who was the closest to me, standing maybe a foot or two from where I stood behind the curtain. I couldn’t see the blond’s face yet, but goodness, he was tall, around six and a half feet, and the black thermal he wore stretched across broad shoulders. His shoulder-length hair was pulled back and secured at the nape of his neck.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, the demon activity around several of the cities has been steadily decreasing over the last three months,” Nicolai said, drawing my attention back to the clan leader. “Before, we spotted maybe two or three Upper Level demons a week. We haven’t seen one in months.”
That sounded like good news to me, especially since one might be sniffing around here.
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a problem,” Thierry commented.
“It doesn’t on the surface, but there’s also been an increase in Fiends and, even more disturbingly, lower level demons that couldn’t blend in with the populace if they tried,” Nicolai continued. “Zayne has come across four hordes of Raver demons this month alone. It’s odd to see so much activity from lower level demons without an Upper Level being behind it.”
My gaze shifted to the blond. Zayne. That must be his name. He turned slightly, and every thought I had scattered like ashes in the wind as I got my first look at him. A tiny, still-functioning part of my brain knew how bad being that distracted by appearance was, but I was... I was stunned.
Stunned straight into stupidity.
I liked to think that I wasn’t someone who could be easily distracted by a gorgeous face, but he was... He was beautiful. And that was saying something, because I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous Wardens who rocked some great DNA when they appeared human.
His skin was golden, like he spent a decent amount of time in the sun. He had a strong jaw that looked as if it were carved from stone, and those lips... How could they look so soft and so hard at the same time? And wasn’t that a weird thing to notice, but I so noticed, which probably meant I was veering into creepy territory. High, angular cheekbones matched a straight, proud nose. I was too far away to see his eyes, but I assumed they were like all the other Wardens. The deepest, brightest blue possible.
From where I was standing, this Warden looked like he was only a few years older than me, and he reminded me of the many painted angels that covered the ceiling of the Great Hall—paintings I could no longer see in detail.
“Whoa,” I whispered, my eyes going so wide that I probably looked like a squeezed bug.
He stiffened, and I held my breath, fearing he’d heard me. When he didn’t look to his left, to where I stood, my shoulders relaxed a little.
“Something has the Upper Level demons afraid enough that they’ve all gone into hiding.” Nicolai was speaking again. “And that something is killing us—killing Wardens.”