Page 10 of Wicked Curses
“They do?” Sahira squeaked.
“This place isn’t like any outer realm you’ve ever been to,” Orin said. “It’s more than being trapped here. This whole place is different than anything we’ve ever experienced before. Whoever made it impossible to leave here also set it up so those who arrived could survive.”
The hair on Sahira’s nape rose as she glanced at the reddened sky and buildings surrounding them. Feeling like she was in a snow globe, she waited for someone to shake their glass home and send them all spiraling into a dust-covered wonderland.
“Are we being watched?” she whispered.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Orin couldn’t denythat he’d often wondered the same thing. Was this all some sick, cosmic game someone had set up, and now they were sitting by, watching it play out?
If that was the case, it was a boring game to play, but he didn’t put it past some immortals to devise this twisted trap. It would be great fun initially, but over four centuries later?
A giant snooze fest. If he’d done something like this, he would have killed all the members of his game over four hundred years ago. He didn’t know any immortals with the patience to continue something like this.
Unless they’d gotten bored and walked away, but that didn’t seem likely. Mostly because… “Who would have the power to do such a thing?”
“The arachs, maybe,” Sahira said.
“We’ve heard that one of them still lives,” Zeth said.
“I see Orin has been talking.”
“We like to be kept up on things, so when new immortals arrive, we usually bombard them with questions. You’ll get them too. There was a lycan who arrived about a month before Orin. He filled us in on a lot, but I don’t think Orin has been questioned as much. I haven’t asked him many.”
She understood not wanting to deal with Orin. “It’s been a busy couple of months for new immortals arriving here.”
“It happens. Sometimes new arrivals come at steady intervals. Other times we’ll get two or three in a week and then no one for a year or two.”
“It depends on the unlucky draw,” Sahira muttered.
“Yep. So, this arach, does she have the power to do something like this?”
“She wasn’t alive when Belda and the vamp first arrived here. And all the other arachs were dead, except for her parents. They wouldn’t have had the power for something like this. They were powerful, but notthispowerful. We can’t open portals, and vampires can’t teleport. That level of magic would have requiredallthe arachs, and I’m still not sure they could have pulled off such a feat.”
“Maybe, before they all perished, the arachs set up this realm.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Why did they all kill each other?” Orin asked. “They’re not exactly easy to figure out and weren’t entirely rational.”
“I don’t see them wasting their time or power on a realm they had nothing to do with before they all started fighting each other,” Sahira said.
Orin agreed, but when it came to this place, he was willing to exploreeveryoption if it helped them escape.
When they arrived at the golden palace, Zeth stopped walking and turned to face them.
Orin hadn’t talked much with the demon since arriving, but he was one of the few who had his shit together. He wasn’t a hothead or a whiny pain in the ass.
“I don’t really get that vibe from this place either, but maybe they did do it,” Zeth said.
Orin rocked back on his heels as he studied the tall, powerful demon. “What vibedoyou get?”
“I think it might be a realm that… died or was starting to die. It’s almost as if the inhabitants were starting to make a home here and were building the places they needed before suddenly abandoning it.”
“If there were enough of them to build a pub, library, and jail, then they would have built more than one home,” Sahira said. “Those things are built when there are bigger populations.”
Zeth rubbed his jaw while studying the town. “We sometimes find debris when we’re building the new homes. There were other homes here, too, but none of them remained standing. The sand eventually claimed and covered them.”
