A Breeding Darkness (Complete)

(5)

After a few more minutes, a carriage drew up to the curb. Lucy and Saul climbed in and gave the driver instructions to drive to the hill on the western edge of the city. He raised an eyebrow at them, knowing that anyone who wanted to travel to The King's Brow, as the hill was affectionately called, was heading to the palace. But he knew better than to ask them their business, and kept his mouth shut as he snapped the reins on his horses.

Two bright lanterns cast light in front of the carriage, but the driver still had to carefully guide his horses through the darkness. He had to make sure they stayed on the cobblestones and avoided any walking people or other obstacles. It had been a mere twenty minute drive to reach The King's Brow when the sun and moon had graced the skies, but now it was impossible to tell how long it would take. It depended on how safe the driver wanted to be, and how lost they would get in the blackness before they found their way again. Thankfully, this driver seemed competent in the new travelling conditions, and they pulled up to the bottom of the hill at exactly seven.

Saul paid the man as Lucy hefted her skirts and climbed the winding path to the palace gates. Many paper lanterns, hanging from strings, lit up the three arched entrances and the roads that passed through them. Next to the gates, in a circular koi pond full of lilies, a stone dragon dripped with wax from a thousand candles set up along its back. The flames guttered in the breeze, making the shadows dance on its face and body, and Lucy had the uncomfortable feeling that it could have been breathing and she'd never know.

Shaking her head, she approached the commoner's arch and waited for the guard while Saul huffed up the hill behind her. A moment later, a man in an emerald tunic appeared from a door in the archway, holding a large lantern that spilled a similar green light onto Lucy and Saul.

"Business?" he asked, peering through the gloom.

"We were summoned. Lucy Shubin and Saul Ostovo," Lucy replied.

"Proceed." The guard ducked his head and gestured them forward.

Beyond the grand gate, they were free to walk through the palace grounds. Following the white stairs that zig-zagged up the hill, they passed by formal gardens, government buildings, and the temple. Not that any of this was visible now, except for the few glimpses that could be seen from the light of lanterns set up outside a few of the buildings. Everything was lost to the gloom.

The palace was especially hard to pick out from a distance, at least nowadays. Its two-story façade of dark wood and black tiles was lost in the dark sky. The familiar silhouette of two sloping roofs stacked on top of each other, once so easily recognized even by moonlight, was gone. The only way Lucy picked her way toward it was by keeping an eye on a window that glowed with a yellow light, beckoning her onward like a moth. By keeping it in her sights, she picked the correct staircases to climb, and soon she was standing on the large swatch of white stone that made up the courtyard of the palace.

Her boots clicked against the stone, and she heard Saul behind her. Lucy knew better than to attempt to gain entrance by climbing the sprawling marble stairs to the main entrance, and instead cut to the right and walked to a door on the side of the building. She knocked on the forest green wood, and a moment later a woman in a silk dress appeared.

"Miss Shubin and Mr. Ostovo?" she asked, her voice lyrical and refined. Most certainly a member of the families that had conquered the country of Strana from the furthest east; a group the royal bloodline also belonged to. Lucy's people, a small exiled group from a warring western country, had only made their way over in the past few decades. 

"Correct," Lucy replied, feeling a bit cowed by the woman's graceful features and intricately embroidered gown.

"Please follow me. The others have been waiting for your arrival."