Chapter 15 THE OLD KING.
Vanessa’s POV.
Dust choked the air as I lunged toward the spot where Dante had fallen, but a massive boulder slammed down, inches from my feet.
The tunnel was collapsing.
"Dante!" I screamed but my voice only echoed back.
My mother had taken him. She had emerged from the grave just to take the man I loved.
I fell to my knees, my fingers clawing at the rocks. "Please," I sobbed. "Not like this."
She has the Lock, a voice hissed in my mind. It was my wolf, but she sounded different. Crueler. The mother wants the King. We want him more.
I stood up, my legs shaking.
I didn't go back for help. I didn't need a lot of guards who would probably lock me up.
I followed the trail of scent of the smell she had left behind.
It led away from the collapse, toward the Lower Dungeons—a place even Dante avoided.
I found them in the Chamber of Sighs.
My mother was standing in the center of a salt circle. Dante was slumped on a stone chair, his head hanging low.
Thick, black vines of magic wrapped around his chest, pulsing in time with my mother’s breathing.
"You were always a fast runner, Venessa," my mother said. She didn't turn around. She was busy sharpening a dagger made of black glass. "It's a shame you're running toward your death."
"Let him go, please”
"I can't do that, darling. I've waited ten years for this bloodline to ripen. Dante is the strongest King the North has ever seen. His body is the only one that can hold the First King without shattering."
She turned, and the smile on her face was beautiful yet so ugly. "I'm doing this for us. Once the King is in his body, and I hold the Key... we will never be afraid again."
This wasn’t my mother. It couldn’t be the same woman who fed the stray cats.
"You're insane," I whispered.
"No," she snapped. "I'm a survivor."
I lunged.
I used my claws but my mother was a ghost for a reason.
She waved her hand, and the black vines on Dante’s chest shot out like snakes. They wrapped around my throat and my waist, slamming me against the wall.
I struggled, my claws digging into it while trying to force my breath back into my lungs.
"Dante! Wake up!"
Dante’s head lifted.
His eyes were blood-red. His head had grey lines on them.
He looked at me, and I saw the pain he was in.
"V... ness..." he rasped.
"Quiet, Lock," my mother hissed. She walked toward me, the black dagger glowing. "Don't worry, Venessa. I'm not going to kill you. I need you alive to turn the bolt."
She pressed the dagger against my silver scar. The pain was like a thousand needles.
I screamed, my vision blurring .
"But first," she whispered, "I have to make sure the King stays in his cage."
She turned back to Dante, but she didn't see what I saw.
The silver light from my wrist wasn't just burning me. It was traveling along the black vines. It was reaching for him.
Dante’s eyes shifted. The red faded back into that beautiful blue.
"You've made one mistake," Dante growled.
The chains around him snapped once. I didn’t how he did that but he didn't run for the door. He didn't run for me.
He lunged at my mother, his hand closing around her throat and slammed her into the altar.
"You touch my wife again," he whispered, "and I will show you why they call me a monster."
But my mother only laughed. It was a chilling sound.
"Oh, Dante. You think you're saving her?"
She looked at me, her eyes wide with a sick kind of joy.
"The Key is already turned. Look at her skin."
I looked down at my arms. The silver wasn't just on my wrist anymore. It was moving up my neck.
It was turning my skin into something that looked like moonlight.
"To save the King, the Key has to break," my mother gasped, even as Dante’s grip tightened. "One of you has to stay in the dark. If he lives, you fade. If you live, he rots."
Dante froze. His grip loosened.
"No," he whispered.
"Choose, King!" my mother shrieked.
Then the chamber doors opened.
A figure stood in the doorway—a man in a crown of black bone.
He looked exactly like Dante, but his skin was as white as chalk.
The First King wasn't a spirit anymore.
He was standing right in front of us.
And he wasn't looking at Dante. He was looking at me.
"My Queen," the monster said, holding out a hand.
"I've waited a long time for you to wake up."
He was referring to my mother.