Golden Stair

GOLDEN STAIR

Blood Prince Series:
 
Book Three

"What demon doesn't dream of climbing the Golden Stair?" 

Ivy has lived in a tower, locked away from the rest of the world, for her entire life. Her mother, a witch who leads the resistance against the bloodthirsty kings of the five kingdoms, is her only company. Ivy knows that her battle-weary mother relies on the golden power flowing through her veins for the energy to continue the good fight, but she can’t completely smother the selfish yearning to see the world beyond the safety of their hidden valley. When the demon prince of her mother’s horror stories literally crashes into Ivy's life, she finds herself facing her wildest dream…and her mother’s worst nightmare.

Adonis is a demon determined to bury his desire for love in the pleasures of the flesh. Bound by a vow to maintain his physical form, Adonis requires a great deal of energy just to live, energy he can only absorb through the carnal arts…more energy than any one woman could ever provide. Adonis knows he could never offer a woman the fidelity she would deserve as his wife, and so carries on with his wild ways, his cryptic smile hidden behind a puff of smoke. No woman can reach beyond the heat of his embrace to touch his heart. Not even the golden haired maid whose lonely eyes keep wooing him back to her side.

An incubus can only deny his nature for so long. Long golden hair. A tower with no stairs. A witch with serious possession issues. Debilitating blindness. None of these are enough to keep a demon from climbing…the Golden Stair.

“And you didn’t think to share any of this with us from the beginning?”

Etienne’s accusing tone rang through the clearing, bouncing off the trunks of the eclectic mix of sugar maples and pungent firs. Eurydice let her head thud against the inside of her towering yew tree, her ghostly tresses cascading down around her face like a spectral veil. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds was all it had taken for the werewolf prince to lay into the vampire. And after they’d gotten along so well…

She pinched the bridge of her nose and counted back from ten. With a weary sigh, she lifted her head and peered out the knothole. Seated regally on a gentle swell on the ground, the vampire prince Kirill was a tapered flame folded elegantly in a pool of black velvet and surrounded by neat stacks of parchment. He’d brought much more of his personal research to share with the others than Eurydice had ever dared to hope. Couldn’t Etienne see what a big step that was for the secretive undead?

As it was in most of her visions, Kirill’s expression was serious, contemplative. Blue eyes the same shade as a winter sky before one of Dacia’s famous blizzards assessed every parchment, carefully reading and absorbing every smidgeon of information, processing it, analyzing it. If he’d heard Etienne, he didn’t show it. Well, not until he was good and ready.

“Do your subjects know that you and your family are werewolves?” Kirill furrowed elegant platinum-blond eyebrows as he canted his head to the side, gaze still very much riveted on the battered old text in his hands.

Etienne halted his pacing from one end of the large circular clearing to the other and lifted his steely grey gaze from the scroll he’d been glaring at. The paper crackled in his grip as if he found the parchment a poor excuse for the vampire’s pale, slender throat. “
That
has nothing to do with this.”

“Oh? It seems to me that you think it’s all fine and well for you to keep secrets when it’s convenient, but when I want to—”

“This involves all of us,” Etienne wagged the scroll in the air. “Fenris take it, we all stood here that first night and tried to figure out what had brought us here, but you knew all along what was going on!”

“I do not know what’s going on.” Kirill’s voice was clipped as he finally graced the werewolf with a look riddled with faint annoyance. “I study a great deal of prophecies. This is merely one of them. I have no way of knowing if this one is any more true than any of the others, and if you’d bothered to concentrate long enough to understand all of this, you’d also see that despite all of this research, there is very little useful information.” Slender fingers caressed the book splayed on his lap like an old friend. “Besides,” he added, “that first night, I did tell you this was likely the World Tree. You could have done your own bloody research.”

“But you didn’t say one barking word about this being the key to a new world,” Etienne bit out. “Admit it, you were keeping that part to yourself because you wanted to keep the upper hand. What’s the matter, finally giving up on ever ruling your own kingdom, you’ve decided to find a new one?”

“I hear Sanguenay has only pathetic prospects for the future, perhaps I’ll offer my services there.”

Etienne’s jaw fused together and gleaming ebony claws spiked holes in the parchment he held. Nostrils flared, his spine hunched in a tell-tale sign of an impending shift, he prowled over toward Kirill.

Eurydice slapped the inside of her tree, narrowly stifling the urge to send her branches down to crack the testy werewolf across the back of the head. She was so close to her goal, but she wouldn’t get any closer if the bloody princes couldn’t quit fighting amongst themselves!

Kirill shot to his feet, but he didn’t brandish a weapon from the ominous depths of his cloak. Eurydice dropped her arms and perked up. His eyes weren’t glowing and he hadn’t reached for a blade. Perhaps…

“You…” His eyes flitted heavenward as if the twilight overhead might be mocking him, and then lowered his chin. Not in submission, but respect. “You helped save the woman I love.”

Etienne halted abruptly, wolfish golden eyes glittering with confusion at the mention of Irina.

Eurydice took a moment, and patted her tree.
Only three more left…

The wolf didn’t really seem to know what to do with himself. Good. Served him right for being such an ornery pup. Ever vigilant, he stood a few feet from Kirill. Waiting. Black claws clicked against each other, the sound ominous, vibrating the air with barely restrained violence.

“I do not offer information that I don’t have to.” Kirill flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the velvet sleeve of his tunic. “Knowledge is power, and as you all know, I am doing my level best to get more power than my father so I can put the miserable corpse in a crypt where he belongs. I don’t have friends, I have allies.”

He met the eyes of each of the gathered men in turn. The god and the angel watched him silently, having stopped mid-conversation when the werewolf and vampire had started arguing again.

No one made a sound, the forest itself hushing in deference to the moment. Even Adonis had ceased puffing on his cigarette, his perpetual grin replaced by a solemn stare as he rolled his bulky frame onto his stomach—smooth, tanned skin a pleasant contrast against the rich green grass. He focused earthy hazel eyes on the vampire, giving Kirill his full attention.

“I look forward to the day I can repay my debt to each of you,” Kirill straightened and braced his arms behind his back. His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “Know that I am just as serious in repaying my allies as I am in punishing my enemies. You gave me your help when I needed it, before you had any reason to help me.” He lifted his chin, staring up at the World Tree. “Until I can make the proper repayment of your kindness, I intend for this…sharing of information, to be a step in that direction. But…” He slanted hard eyes on the werewolf. “I will not apologize for my pragmatism.” He sighed. Heavily. “And for pity’s sake, didn’t we agree that you would leave some clothes here, Etienne?”

The unexpected joke shattered the tension. Adonis, Patricio, and
Saamal
chuckled and Etienne flushed as if he’d only just noticed his nudity.

“I left in a hurry.” Etienne scratched the stubble at his face and neck before threading a hand through his shaggy brown hair.

Kirill raised an eyebrow and pulled a small knapsack from the dark folds of his thick forest green cloak. Eurydice leaned forward and sniffed like it would help her figure out just what else Kirill might have hidden in that cloak. Weapons, certainly, but how on earth did the vampire keep the lines of his clothes so smooth and unassuming? Surely there should have been a lump where he’d hidden that sack.

Etienne caught the knapsack as Kirill tossed it across the clearing. Adonis crowed with laughter as the werewolf prince opened it to find a pair of plain, brown leather breeches.

“No shirt for the werewolf, eh, Kirill?” Adonis snickered.

The corner of the vampire’s mouth quirked. “Adonis, even a prince as wealthy as myself could not afford to supply our lycan friend here with a complete outfit every time he shows up skyclad.”

Etienne snorted and shook his head, but raised a hand in a begrudging half-wave. “Thanks.”

Patricio wove through the piles of Kirill’s research. The seven-foot angel’s soft, alabaster wings grazed the ground as he walked, leaving a trail of bent grass in his wake. “So what exactly does all this tell us?”

“Well, it tells us that my kingdom had the best idea about bloodletting,” Adonis joked.

Patricio shot the demon a dirty look before deliberately giving his back to Adonis.

Kirill cleared his throat. “What the trickster means, is that this prophecy has shown up, in some way, shape, or form, in each of the five kingdoms. Each royal family has had their own idea about what the prophecy meant by ‘blood sacrifice.’” He shot a withering glance at Adonis. “In Nysa, the royal family required newly-wed couples to spend their first night in the fields so that the maiden’s blood would seep into the ground and anoint the land.”

“That’s disturbing,” Patricio muttered.

Adonis blew a serpentine stream of smoke at the angel. “At least my people didn’t try to drink their way into a new world. You can bless wine all you want and call it blood, but I could hear Meropis’ royals singing drunken odes to women all the way from Nysa.”

Eurydice put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Adonis was irreverent, true, but he wasn’t wrong. More than one Meropan royal had thrown himself a bit too enthusiastically into the sacred wine.

Patricio’s mouth pinched into a hard line and the white robe wrapped around his body and over his left shoulder shifted as his wings rose with his agitation. The feathered appendages towered over the already imposing angel, blocking part of the full moon’s light to cast his celestial features in shadow. Midnight blue eyes narrowed on the demon. “Blow that foul-smelling cloud at me again and I’ll—”

“Gentlemen, let’s not fight amongst ourselves.”
Saamal
stepped forward, his perpetually calm exterior a balm on the strained atmosphere. His severe profile was softened by shadows, the moonlight lending a shimmer to his jet-black eyes. Dressed in simple black leggings, shirt and a charcoal grey tunic, there was little about his clothing that would draw the eye from his chiseled cheekbones and sloping patrician’s nose. “Let’s concentrate on what we can learn from the information Kirill has so graciously provided us. I’m sure Kirill and Etienne are both eager to get back home to their lovely wives.”

“By the gods, I think I have it!”

Eurydice jumped at Adonis’ sudden shout and the tree’s branches jittered in the wind. Everyone in the clearing faced the incubus who had leapt to his feet and was standing with his arms out at his sides, his cigarette smoldering, forgotten between his fingers.

Etienne picked a twig out of his lush disheveled locks and flicked it into oblivion. “What?”

“Wives,” Adonis said urgently, stabbing toward Etienne with the cigarette. “Women.” He threw his arms in the air. “Creation!”

“All fine words, but what is your meaning behind them?” Kirill prompted.

“Your little prophecies there mention the creation of a new world. Well, that new world’s going to have something in it, right? Animals and plants at least? You can’t create that kind of life with just a man.” He shrugged. “Or men.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, what are you on about now?” Etienne groaned.

“He’s talking about sex again, what else can you expect from an incubus?” Patricio sneered, crossing his arms. “It’s all he has to offer.”

“I am talking about sex, to a degree,” Adonis agreed, seeming unruffled by Patricio’s barb. “Look, we’re using our blood on the tree, right? And each time we meet here, the power grows, right? So, we should be asking ourselves, what is it that’s changing?”

“And you think that it’s Etienne and I?” Kirill mused. “You think that our joining with our wives has somehow empowered us more?” The vampire rubbed a hand over his chin, a lock of white-blond hair falling over his shoulder as he leaned forward. “Interesting.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Patricio argued. “There’s no proof of that whatsoever. We always meet on a full moon too, maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Not every full moon,” Adonis pointed out. “I’ve tried to come here on a full moon when I wasn’t feeling particularly pulled here, but I could never find the tree. It’s only when I get that feeling that I need to be here that I can find it, and so far that’s only happened three times. The first time, and now once after each of you has gotten married. We were here the first full moon after Etienne’s marriage, and this is the first full moon since Kirill married Irina.”

Eurydice clutched her folded hands to her breast at the way the mention of Irina’s name brought a light to Kirill’s eyes.

“He may have a point,” the vampire mused. “A great deal of ancient magic required both a male and a female, at least symbolically.”