Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) by Christian A. Brown Page B

smile, and swept her into his arms; she instinctively hugged his thick neck. Abruptly they were moving, fast enough for the shop to disappear in the bat of an eye—perhaps she heard a door slam shut—and then they were out under an ivory fingernail of the moon.
    The Wolf and the Fawn had begun their chase.

    III
    When Morigan thought back on her first night with Caenith, her memories would take on a dreamy consistency and she would have piercing spikes of imagery, yet no clear picture of events. Caenith had promised to show her the
old magik
, a term she wasn’t aware had a meaning until that evening. For Eod was the pinnacle of sorcery and arcane thought on Geadhain, a realm ruled by an ageless king, where even the harshest elements failed to stymie life. But the magik contained in the City of Wonders was not what Caenith meant. Beneath the glory of the city, under the stone foundations, the pipes,and the sewer labyrinths, was where the true secrets, this old magik, was to be found.
    Quickly, quicker than anything imaginable, they were off the streets and in these dank spaces. Scenery smeared by them. Her cloak was torn off from the speed and sent spiraling into the night, but neither of them was interested in its rescue, and she was nowhere near cold. In truth, Caenith was carrying her, surrounding her like a warm wind, and she felt utterly safe. She did not raise an alarm at this uncanny mobility, did not plead the question of
what are you?
that any reasonable person would. For she didn’t want her disbelief to shatter whatever spell this was. A sorcery that she, born in Eod and exposed to magik all her life, could not classify. His breath and heartbeat were heaving about her, and she could not sense much other than the faintest odor of where they were or a hint of metal tubing. Shortly those signs faded to perceptions of depth and darkness. They had gone farther underground. She shut her eyes and felt the rise and fall of his legs, moving like pistons in a technomagikal engine, and was lulled into a daze by his rhythmic grunts.
    She became so calm that it was almost a sleep, and when the cadence stopped, Caenith ever softly said, “Open your eyes, dear Fawn.”
    Morigan was set down, and she nearly swooned from the sight before her. For she had never seen a wonder in Eod that matched the yawning chamber of rock teeth, their tips crystallized in garlands of pure clear ice. Or the diamond lake upon whose shore they stood, which was as still as glass and wafting her face with breaths of cold misty air. From the depths of the water, lights played up in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, and the back of the cavern seemed to stretch off into an indigo darkness. Fathomless, timeless, she felt as if she had stepped into another world.
    “By the kings,” she said, and then clasped her hands over her mouth, for her voice echoed and caused the placidity of the place to tremble, the ice to chime, and the lake to quiver.
    “This is not of their making,” whispered Caenith into her ear, so lightly that only the smallest ripples took the shore. “But another magik. Older than them, even. I think that is what drew him here to Eod, the Everfair King, however many ages ago he settled. He felt this pull, like the calling of the moon to a lonely wolf. I wonder if he even realizes what lies beneath his palace. I do not know what purpose it serves, this place. Or how deep thosewaters are. But there is a presence here, sleeping and calm…a peace. I come here when I want to listen to the old songs. Or to remember who I have lost.”
    “Who you have lost?” whispered Morigan.
    She could feel Caenith grow heavy behind her, and she turned in his arms to look at him.
    “Everyone. Everything,” he confessed. He lifted a lock of her crimson hair to his nose, sniffed it deeply, and then let it fall from his fingers.
    “You have lost someone, too. A precious heart…someone important to you.”
    Morigan did not ask how he knew this, or