The hall we stepped into took my breath away all over again. In the thin light that streaked through the immense arched windows from the security lamps outside, gold glittered all across the molded walls and ceiling. Between the gleaming mouldings, richly colored paintings covered nearly every surface. Dozens of crystal chandeliers as tall as I was dangled at intervals.
If I’d been here on burglar business, right about now I’d have been thinking I should have brought a bigger bag. Possibly an entire trailer.
As Omen and I headed down the hall, Thorn vanished back into the shadows. Our feet whispered across the polished floor.
The looming grandeur made vigilance feel even more necessary. My voice dropped another octave. “Where in this place do you think we’ll find Tempest? Or is she going to find us?”
“Oh, no, she’ll enjoy having us come to her.” Omen tipped his head to the right as we rounded a corner. “Chances are she’ll have claimed the queen’s bedroom as her own.”
Where else? I might have appreciated the shadowkind woman’s aplomb if she hadn’t allied herself with an army of murderous mortals.
Omen couldn’t have been here with her before, but he’d probably been in other bedrooms with her if he could make that statement so confidently. A question prickled up through me that I tried to suppress… but why? It might be useful to know to help me follow the conversation ahead.
“So, you’ve made it very clear that you’re no longer friends with Tempest. Were you ever more than friendly?”
Omen’s mouth flattened. “If you’re asking if we ever fucked, then yes, a handful of times when we couldn’t find more exciting activities to pass the time with. It wasn’t any kind of love affair. It meant nothing more than momentary physical satisfaction to either of us.”
Was that all our passionate tumble into bed had meant to him too? I didn’t know if I wanted it to have meant more. The encounter had certainly been off the scales in the physical satisfaction department. And now I was remembering the sear of his kiss and the literal flames that had flowed between us, which wasn’t exactly helping my focus, so maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the subject after all.
“Well, it’s good that you should know your way around her in a bedroom,” I said in a breezy tone, and Omen shot me a look so scorching it made me want to feel his kiss again for real.
Whoa there, hormones. I had three other monstrous lovers who weren’t watching my every move for signs that I was going to incinerate all life in both realms. No need to be greedy. Or stupid.
We walked through a few more of the ornate rooms that smelled faintly of jasmine. Omen slowed coming up on the next doorway.
A voice rang out from the room beyond in the same sharp, droll tone I’d heard rising up from Omen’s phone at the start of this recent mess, the effect amplified when it only had to travel through air. “Here you are at last, Omen. Come on then. Don’t tell me you’ve gone shy.”
“Only perhaps a little more cautious,” he said, sauntering in.
I followed him into a room so full of splendor it took everything I had in me not to start gaping again.
Two lamps lit the space, catching on the masses of gold that coated the walls and ceiling. There was enough of it around us to buy one of those collectors’ mansions back home, gilded across delicate filigree-etched borders and painted in with the pinks, blues, and greens of intricate floral patterns. Between two more crystal chandeliers, a massive gold canopy rippling with sculpted leaves protruded from the wall, flowery curtains falling from its edges to frame an immense bed. The jasmine smell had thickened, adding to the opulent atmosphere.
If this was how royalty lived, sign me up to start a dynasty of my own.
Somehow, the figure lounging on the silk covers of the bed managed to top her surroundings in extravagance. Tempest would have been a difficult figure to miss even without any special trappings: she had to be at least six feet tall and built like an Amazon, both muscular and buxom. Her bronze-brown hair gleamed as brilliantly as the gold around her, twisted into waving locks that lifted and swayed around her face as if they had minds of their own. Like some kind of Medusa—Omen had said she liked to take on different roles.
True to the lion-ish aspects of her nature, her shining eyes held cat-slit pupils, and there was something feline about her prominent cheekbones and flared nose as well. Definitely not a face you’d easily forget. The fabric draped across her voluptuous figure had the cut of a bathrobe, but hardly the kind you’d pick up at Target—this was a bathrobe fit for a queen, scarlet and violet satin strung through with gold embroidery.
Over that magnificent bathrobe, she’d draped so many golden bangles heavy with emeralds and sapphires that I wasn’t sure she could sit up straight under it all even if she’d wanted to. Good luck walking under all that weight of riches. Although she looked perfectly happy sprawled as she was.
What made the biggest impression, though, and not one I could poke fun at even in passing, was the sense of power that wafted off of her like the wind off a stormy ocean, chilly and razor-edged. Omen might have cultivated his ice-cold bastardom to a T, but the energy that thrummed off him still held his natural heat. Tempest was a bastard down to her bones.
Annoyingly, in the midst of the awe and uneasiness I was already trying my best to tamp down, a jab of jealousy pricked at me too. The hellhound shifter had been so close to this woman, even if he disdained to call her so much as a friend now, even if he said their “fucking” hadn’t mattered at all. She knew him in ways I likely never would, considering he now saw me as only slightly better than a ticking time bomb.
Yeah, I really shouldn’t have ever asked him about their past liaisons.
I shoved the jealousy aside along with the rest and held myself steady. We came to a stop a few feet from the gilded barrier that ran through the room in an attempt to keep tourists away from the most valuable furniture.
Tempest’s gaze slid over Omen to rest on me. “Well,” she said in the same tone, which managed to sound like she was making both a threat and a joke, “what have we here?”
“Just a lowly mortal,” I replied, attempting to match that tone. That seemed safe enough to say before we knew exactly how and how much we might be able to work her into our plans.
“Hmm.” Her cat-like eyes flicked toward the shadows along the edges of the room. “Let’s see your whole troop, Omen. All the indomitable beings who worked so hard to disrupt my plans.”
Of course she’d be able to sense the shadowkind who’d stayed in the darkness. Omen had expected that. He made a casual gesture, and our three companions materialized around us.
Omen had said it’d been a force of wingéd who’d attempted to destroy Tempest on the Highest’s orders. If the sphinx could identify Thorn and Flint as beings of the same kind, considering she had pretty direct experience with their kin, she showed no sign that their presence bothered her at all. She cocked her head, the locks of her hair continuing their sinuous dance around her face. “This isn’t all of them. You had an incubus.”
“He’s attending to other business tonight,” Omen said, which was sort of true. Ruse had offered to stay back and ensure that Antic didn’t follow us to insist on contributing her impish version of “help.” “Not much my talents can offer against a sphinx,” he’d said in a flippant way that had felt a little forced to me.