Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

its face on a table at an angle, its contents spewed all over the carpeted floor.

She picked her way over them toward the window. It didn’t look like that far of a drop. Maybe she could open it slowly and scramble out that way.

It wasn’t until she edged closer to the glass that she realized the moonlight…wasn’t quite right.

Ember stood by the window and gazed outside.

Her spear fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Her jaw might as well have joined it.

It was a city. A sprawling, beautiful city. Electric lights illuminated the windows. Moonlight shone off rooftops and on cobblestone streets. She could see carriages and people on the road below.

Looking up, she had to grip the window jamb to keep from collapsing to the ground. Her hands were shaking. She felt a cold rush pour down her back as if she had been thrown into a frozen lake.

The moonlight had seemed off. And that was why. Instead of a single, faded yellow moon hovering in the sky…there were two. One was pure white, and the other was purple.

She had asked the man in the sanctuary where she was. And he had told her what building she was standing in. But now she realized she needed to ask a bigger, more important question.

“What world is this…?”

Lyon groaned from the floor where he had landed. It wouldn’t have been so bad, perhaps, if the entire shelf of pots and pans had not upended and crashed down on top of him. He had been simply minding his own business making tea when the world seemed to drop away.

There was no other way he could think of to describe it.

It was as though the floor, and everything permanently attached to it, fell a foot from where it had been a second prior. He, and all the rest of the objects that were not bolted down, hovered in mid-air for what seemed to be a strangely long fraction of a second before crashing back to the ground. He had caught himself and managed to stay on his feet. But the pots and pans could do no such thing and came down on his head, knocking him to the floor.

He shoved the objects away from him, sending them skittering. He hissed and snarled in pain as his hand struck the burning-hot kettle that housed the boiling water he intended to use to make said tea.

Standing, he glanced down at his hand. The burn was already healing, and the sting was already gone.

He walked from the room. He would deal with the mess later. Or, more likely, one of the servants in the cathedral would scramble to clean up before he returned. He didn’t enjoy being fussed over. Even though it was his right as the King of Blood to have servants do what he liked, he could never quite get used to being tended to. He was fully capable of brewing his own tea.

Today’s events notwithstanding.

Everything in the hallway was knocked over as if it had suffered the same fate as the kitchen. Candelabras were laying wherever they landed. Candles, lit and unlit, were strewn about the floor. Benches were overturned. A few of those who served in his house were already picking themselves up and doing what they could to right the fallen objects, tipping the wrought iron receptacles back upright.

He leaned down to help one woman up to her feet. She smiled up at him warmly. “Thank you, my king.”

He smiled gently back. “You’re quite welcome.” He was a royal. It was still laughable. It felt strange even if it had been four hundred years since he was made king through no action of his own.

Four hundred years of more peace and quiet than Under had ever known. Ever since the tragic and violent events that occurred during the rise of the new Queen of Dreams, things had been…simple. No assassinations. No games. No wars. Nothing more than the typical squabbles between houses. Even the antics of the House of Shadows could be explained away by their king and his subjects being a bit bored with no schemes and masterminded games to unleash upon the rest of them.

He smiled again despite himself. There was a very good reason for their peace and quiet.

Lydia, the Queen of Dreams, and her unlikely love for Aon, the King of Shadows. Oh, she hadn’t changed him. The reclusive and violent warlock was just as he had ever been. But, perhaps, she had tempered his bitterness enough to soothe his desires to unravel the rest of the world around him in his wrath.

It was to her that he could credit the peace they all had enjoyed.

Lyon reigned as the King of Blood during the easiest period he had experienced in his well over two thousand years of life. It was almost insulting to call him such a thing when he had done so little to prove himself worthy of the title.

An idle king was merely a caretaker.

But that was a role for which he was far more ready to admit that he was suited. He had always been a mindful soul. For all his faults and all his so-called skills, the one thing he would admit he was good at was being aware of those around him.

And it was perhaps for that reason that he sensed something was amiss.

Far more felt awry than the fall of the Cathedral of the Ancients. But the question remained—what precisely was wrong?

It was with a heavy heart that he saw that whatever had jostled the building had also shattered most of the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary of the cathedral. He walked along the pews, straightening up a few as he went, to stand in the center aisle. He looked to the altar, and there at the head stood the many-armed Ancient he served.

He served all of the Ancients in their slumber in the great pool beneath the building. But the one at the main altar was