A tingling sensation surged over my skin when I stepped into the doorway.
I recoiled instantly, an involuntary hiss leaving me like a startled cat. The feeling lessened, but didn’t vanish entirely, like the pressure of a blade just at the edge of breaking skin.
“What’s wrong?” Dex demanded, stepping protectively between me and the door as if to keep me back from it.
“Vampire,” Byron murmured.
I looked over at him in shock. “What do you mean?”
“You may enter, Princess,” Leontine called.
As if blown away by a breeze, the sensation faded.
Trembling with residual adrenaline, I fought the sudden urge to snarl at her like an animal. She knew what this was.
And at my first chance, I’d be discussing it with Byron. I’d had enough surprises to last me a lifetime.
Eyeing the doorframe warily, I stepped past Dex.
No trace of the strange resistance I’d encountered remained.
As if on some silent command, the robed figures seated at the center of the room rose to their feet and turned to face us. The others stopped what they were doing, and at a motion from one of the people in the circle, they retreated as one toward the walls, taking up positions with their hands folded and their heads bowed.
I stopped, eyeing them as if waiting for the trap to spring.
“Welcome, Princess.” I couldn’t tell who spoke, but it sounded like a woman, her voice cracked and weathered with age. “Welcome…” She paused, and when she continued, I could hear a calculating smile in her voice. “Dwarves.”
Only years of royal training kept my face from giving my surprise away. She knew the term the giants had once called these men?
None of the men around me reacted. They’d known that fact already, I’d wager. But what they thought of it, I couldn’t hope to guess.
A figure at the far edge of the circle lifted her hands and lowered her hood. She was older than Leontine with dark skin wrinkled so deeply it was hard to tell what she must have looked like when she was young. Her curly gray hair hovered like a storm cloud atop her head, but nothing about her seemed whimsical or flighty. Rather, her bearing reminded me of iron and stone. Of things unbowed or changed by time. She seemed like the mountain itself. Like all of creation could shift around her, and it would change nothing. She would crush any who thought to test her, and in the end, only she would remain standing.
“Thank you, Leontine,” the woman said.
With a bow of her head, Leontine stepped to the side as if clearing the path for the woman before us.
“Welcome to the home of the Jeweled Coven,” the woman continued. “I am Rufinia, First Matron of the Jeweled Coven and witch of diamonds. It’s good you all have come.” She turned to me. “Now we must make sure you don’t die.”
