Greymoor Academy: I Accidentally Bonded With Four Lycan Royals! novel Chapter 163

Chapter 163: 163. The Prisoner Beneath The Castle

The gates of wrought iron shuddered under the woman’s fingers, before the ivy that hid the gates began to shrink back.

She drew her cloak tighter over her head, ensuring no one was following, before she ducked beneath the ruins and began her trek through the darkness, shrouded path.

The gates whomped shut behind her and she jumped slightly. It had been months since she made the visit down here. She’d forgotten just how sentient this particular part of the castle was. How the power that leaked from beneath infused every wall, every gate, so much so anyone who walked past tended to steer clear of it, even if they didn’t understand why.

Her fingers trembled as she took the steps up to the old temple, and she halted at the center of it, brushing away months of dust from its surface so she could lean over the trap door hidden under the illusion of a smooth marble surface.

Her fingers dug into the edge of the coronet, spilling blood over the ruby eye at its center and voices, old and new, curled around her in crazed whispers, "False queen." "Kin-killer." "Dark one." "A queen in hiding comes for her rightful place." "Death comes on the heels of a hunter." "Quick. Snap. Snap. Snap. Goes your bones." "Death approaches at the hands of a brown-haired hunter." "She is the fairest of them all."

Her blood dripped from the eye of the ruby and hit the center of the temple.

Purple smoke curved around her ankles and a voice slithered from the smoke, "Who are you?"

She breathed, body shuddering, "The Queen."

The smoke curled tighter around her and though she held her breath, she still inhaled a tendril of it, and felt it circle around her chest, choking her, filling her head, lifting her thoughts from her long, dead heart.

"You lie, wicked child," the ancient voice said.

But the ground underneath her shuddered anyway as the smoke drew away, answering to the power of the ruby in her hands.

And the trap door finally came to view.

She leaned over and pulled without much effort, gagging as the stench of rot wafted high up, teasing her nostrils.

She glanced sharply around her once again before lowering herself onto the steps, one at a time, until she was completely underneath the stairwell, and she let the trap door fall shut.

Old, wild magic thrashed in the air around her, lighting up the torches on the stairwell the deeper she went. She lifted one of them off the scones and threaded on the dusty steps, pushing down the bile rising up her gut as she descended into the very bowels of the dungeons.

The ruby in the coronet flared the nearer she drew to the prison. And when she came to a halt in front of it, she tried not to gag again.

The thing on the other side of the dungeon was no longer a person. Or as it formerly was, a Lycan.

It flinched from the torch, scrambling into the darkness for safety, rattling the chains around its wrists and ankles. "Lysandra," came the dark voice from within. "Have you finally come to give me... rest?"

"Only if you spry for me again," she said coldly.

An animal’s rattle came from within. "The lines have not changed. Your path remains the same. Your actions have only brought you closer to your doom. So long as the girl lives, you will die." A pause. "You will die on the night of Samhain, in one year. And the crown will be broken. And the world with it."

It was the same divination she had received from the demon a year ago. And the year before that. And the year before that. Only then, the demon’s words had been "three Samhains away." And seven years before that, it had been, "ten Samhains away."

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