Golden Stair by Jennifer Blackstream

that?”
     
    Adonis frowned. “It is a will o’ wisp. A member of the fey.”
     
    Ivy closed her eyes and raised her hands to her temples. The trembling in her hands and sudden rigidness in her spine piqued Adonis’ interest and he tilted his head, waiting for her to say more.
     
    “You’re lying,” she said quietly. “I told you, only my mother and I can get through the gateway to this dimension.”
     
    “You keep saying that,” Adonis muttered, “but I’m here. A will o’ wisp is here.” He shook his head. “The evidence is right in front of you, why do you keep insisting on something that you have to know isn’t true?”
     
    “I have the evidence of twenty years of not seeing another creature within sight of this tower. And my mother’s word.” She opened her eyes and tilted her chin up. “Unless of course you think I should take your word over that of my own mother?”
     
    Adonis bit back a curse. This woman had lost her mind. Another dimension? No creatures for twenty years? What was she—
     
    Suddenly something behind the woman caught Adonis’ eye. He looked past her to a row of paintings leaning against the wall beside the bookcase he’d crashed into. They were gruesome even in their beauty, vivid battle scenes filled with copper blood and ash skies. Adonis squinted and then his jaw dropped as he recognized some of the monstrous figures.
     
    “That’s me,” he said softly. “And that’s Patricio,” he squinted, “though to be fair, he’s never looked like that in person.”
     
    Ivy straightened her spine, nodding a little too quickly. “Yes. Yes, that painting is of you and the dark angel from Meropis. You can see from the painting that my mother has told me the truth of you, the truth of what you really are. I captured you rather well, don’t you think?”
     
    Adonis shrugged. “I’m a demon, I’m not going to apologize for my appearance.” He pointed at the werewolf and the vampire wrestling around on the ground amidst blood and darker fluids. “But you got those two wrong. The King of Sanguenay is a brown wolf, not black.” He pointed to the other figure. “And the king of Dacia —if you’ll excuse the pun—wouldn’t be caught dead fighting his own battles. He would turn fresh vampires every night for breakfast if it meant keeping his own lily-white ass off the field.”
     
    “You focus on details, but the picture is still true,” Ivy declared. “My mother told me about the war going on outside our dimension. She fights in that war every day, and every day I have to sit here and wonder if she’ll come home.”
     
    The maiden’s voice broke and for a split second Adonis almost felt sorry for her. Whatever her delusions, the girl believed what she was saying. His wings drooped slightly as his anger bled away. The girl was obviously deluded. Punishing her for attacking him would serve no purpose, certainly not until he discovered who had been filling her head with such grisly lies. He eyed the circle of stones still holding him prisoner. If she wanted him dead, she would have let him burn to ashes. There was still a possibility that he could get out of this.
     
    “I don’t know what war you’re talking about,” he said finally. “Nysa has been at peace with Meropis , Dacia , Sanguenay, and Mu for decades. The last great war ended, though not so long ago that you shouldn’t remember it.” He eyed her again, searching her face for some sign of dishonesty. “You must be over a century old, yes?”
     
    Ivy jerked back. “I’m twenty. If I were over a century, I would be old and grey, are you daft?”
     
    “You’re a sun elemental,” Adonis returned. “You’ll be just as young and beautiful five hundred years from now.”
     
    “I am not an elemental!”
     
    Adonis shouted as Ivy’s body erupted into golden light. He fell to the ground as the energy bounced off the circle’s boundaries, protecting him from the heat if not the light. Black spots