Her stomach churned at the possibility, but she didn’t let herself jump to conclusions. Maybe she’d drawn the glyph wrong or maybe Emma was way off base. Whoever had brought her here—the same Fae warrior who attacked them in the underground lot?—could have simply liked the look of the glyph.
Lucan.
He’d called her name, hadn’t he? On the street before she’d wound up here. Or had she imagined that?
How could she have been so wrong about him? And so supremely stupid to let herself believe maybe he felt the same way.
How many times would she open up to him only to have him throw her feelings back at her like they didn’t matter? She should have learned the first time instead of foolishly convincing herself things had changed because he was her mate.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She took a deep breath, then another. If she wanted to figure out where she was and why she’d been brought here, she needed a clear head. She couldn’t afford to think about what happened or where that left her.
Instead, Briana focused on her surroundings. Her gaze slid over the furniture once more. The wooden door opposite her was the only way in or out of the room unless she counted the mirror on the vanity.
If it had been enchanted by a Fae she could use it to cross the veil into Avalon. That was assuming she wasn’t already in Avalon. The room didn’t offer any clues either way, making it impossible to rule anything out.
Across the room, the door creaked open.
Tension snapped down her spine and she instantly sifted through the new scents—dampness, earth, ash. A dragon probably. And…wet dog? Obviously a wolf had been in the area. Were they her captors? Or had others been taken?
Wary, she approached the door. Outside the same dull gray stones lined the hallway, the corridor stretching on in both directions with no visible end.
Following the dragon and wolf scents, she went right. She passed three other empty rooms, then took the stairs she only noticed when she was a moment from toppling down them. She backtracked a few steps, briefly appreciating the illusion that made the staircase appear to be part of the hallway.
The curved staircase made it impossible to see an attack coming more than a few feet in advance. She’d made few enemies compared to her brothers, but her family’s support of Rhiannon by entrusting the goddess with two Arthurian daggers they’d found had pissed off a good number of immortals.
Some immortals simply didn’t believe Rhiannon wanted to see the prophecy of Arthur’s awakening fulfilled, insisting she craved Excalibur’s power for herself. Which didn’t make sense to Briana, seeing as Rhiannon was already a goddess.
Other immortals had decided they were better off giving their loyalty to Morgana. It didn’t seem to matter that the traitorous bitch had pitted her own son, Mordred, against her half-brother. Briana didn’t know if the sorceress had insisted on her son leading their army or if Mordred had advocated for the position, eager to meet his uncle on the battlefield. Arthur and Mordred had only crossed paths once during the endless fight over Camelot, in the final battle that claimed both their lives.
Since Camelot was now a cesspool of the lowest, most disreputable immortals, some thought it was better to align with a power-hungry sorceress who made it no secret she wanted to rule all of Avalon, than an unpredictable goddess who had already meddled in immortal affairs too much.
Keeping close to the wall, Briana continued her downward trek long after she knew the stairs should have ended. She glanced back at the wall sconce she just passed, noting the height and path of the melting wax on the thick candle. Moments later she passed an identical candle. And another one.
“Nice trick,” she murmured to no one in particular. Hoping she wouldn’t spend forever trying to reach the bottom, she kept moving.
Avalon’s catacombs were famous for their ever-changing tunnels that kept immortals from finding their way out. The massive amounts of magic absorbed by the sanctuary the Fae had built to escape the first Campaign left many wondering if the endless caverns were actually alive.
Having never ventured beyond any entrance to the catacombs, she couldn’t be certain she wasn’t trapped in the massive caverns below Avalon’s surface. The castle and staircase didn’t match any description Cian had shared after getting lost in the catacombs with Emma only months ago, though.
Or were they just another illusion?
She got her answer a few moments later when she reached the bottom and the stairs spilled out into a modern foyer of a mansion right out of some Beverly Hills reality show.
Briana spun around. The stone staircase was gone, replaced by a glossy white marble staircase with a polished oak railing that disappeared to a floor above.
She didn’t know whether to be impressed or creeped out, but was definitely leaning toward the latter.
Passing through a large room with a huge flat-screen television, leather furniture and a variety of gaming systems that would have made Sorcha and Nessa wet their panties, Briana paused in the doorway to a dining room.
Beyond that she found an immaculate kitchen, another entertainment room, two bathrooms and a weapons room. Given how easy the weapons were to find for someone who’d been snatched off the street, she wouldn’t be surprised if they were magically safeguarded, or like everything else, an illusion.
That didn’t stop her from strapping two daggers to her calves and tucking a gun at the small of her back. Bullets couldn’t kill an immortal unless they had the kind of firepower behind it to remove a head, but the weapons gave her a small measure of comfort.
If someone could abduct her so effortlessly—and judging by the ten chairs in the dining room she wasn’t alone—then her assailant’s magic wasn’t anything to underestimate.
Heading toward a glass door that appeared to lead outside—appeared being the key word under the circumstances—she paused in front of a mural that looked sculpted right into the wall.
Layers of paint so thick they appeared three dimensional captured a bloody battle in the midst of a storm. At first glance she thought it was the fields of Camlann, a battle her brothers had fought in, Cian right on the front lines. But when she caught a glimpse of females among those perpetually locked in battle or lay wounded or dying on the muddy earth, she realized it was a Campaign.
At one time she’d envied the women in the mortal realm who’d been able to pass themselves off as men to take up arms. As determined as she’d been to join the Guard with Cian, she’d had to settle on using her strengths as a tracker far away from the battlefield, where females supposedly didn’t belong. If there had been even a remote possibility she could have masked her scent from the rest of her race, she would have disguised herself to take up a sword for Arthur.
The women in the painting, however, didn’t fight for the ideology and peace that Arthur had brought to Avalon and Camelot. The women bravely facing down enemies in the painting fought for their lives, pawns in a war fought among the gods.
If there truly was another Campaign brewing, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind Rhiannon would expect Briana’s family to fight for her.
Dismissing thoughts of the goddess and the haunting mural, Briana slipped outside.
Warm sunshine beat down on her the moment she stepped away from the door. She closed her eyes, indulging in the feel of the skin-tingling rays that warmed her skin.
She’d only risked stealing a few precious moments of sun in recent months, not wanting anyone to know she no longer needed to turn to stone at dawn. If woman and cat had chosen anyone but Lucan as her mate, she wouldn’t have hidden the truth from her brothers.