Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) by Jess Raven, Paula Black

primitive creatures, they definitely knew how to carve. Statues sat on pedestals or were recessed into the walls. Some were hewn straight into the rock. She didn’t recognise the people they depicted, but they were beautiful, powerful.
    ‘Elatha.’ He made her jump and she hid the freak-out with a glare.
    ‘Excuse me?’
    He smirked and turned her to face the largest statue: a giant prince of darkness with hair that shimmered with strains of gold. It wasn’t plated. The colour was in the rock. Blue glittered in the sculpted sea, silver shone from the boat he stood in. It would have been angelic, if not for the limp raven dangling from the man’s fist.
    ‘This is Elatha. Our ancestor, our God.’
    ‘Damn, Great-Great Grandpa was a real animal lover, huh?’
    ‘The raven is a representation of the Morrígan,' Mac explained. 'Their falling out has been at the root of all our evils.’
    Big Mac was deadly serious, but his gravitas did little to calm the hysteria in her blood.
    ‘Can’t beat a good ‘ol family feud,’ she quipped. Her family tree was starting to sprout some bizarro branches. Maybe being an orphan wasn’t so bad after all. ‘So, if my grandmother is rotting away in a nursing home,’ she asked, ‘does that mean the Dublin Bird Strangler is on the loose somewhere too?’
    He clearly didn’t appreciate her humour.
    ‘All that remains of Elatha’s earthly presence is the red fog that gives us life during full moon,’ Mac replied.
    Earthly presence? Ash wasn’t sure she wanted to know what other plains these ‘Gods’ dwelt upon. Her head was already spinning. She shrugged Mac off on the pretense of moving closer to the shrine, but really, the heat of his hands through the thin sheath of her robe was too much.
    A dark pool at the foot of the statue seized Ash’s attention. No … Not a pool at all. A doorway. A conduit.
The
conduit. Connal had told her as much in the forest. The black waters were channels to the surface. Escape from this godforsaken place was just within reach ...
    ‘Not a wise move, Ashling,’ Mac interrupted her thoughts, ‘it’s days yet until the full moon.’ Reaching around her, he took a bowl from a stone niche and carefully poured its thick, liquid contents into the water. Red fog shimmered up from the surface and overflowed, lapping their ankles with a soft fragrance.
    ‘Elatha’s essence lives on in the black waters,’ Mac said, by way of explanation.
    It was sweet, musky. Ash inhaled hard and sighed as her muscles loosened and the tension under her skin eased. She tried very hard not to think about breathing in some ancient deity’s essence, but there was no denying it was good shit. It made her all warm and fuzzy.
    She’d get back on board with her escape plans, just as soon as her head got off this tilt-a-whirl intoxication. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.
    ‘We are in the Sanctum of the Thegn Masters.’
    Right, because that explained everything. Mac wasn’t being very vocal and it scared her. These short answers did nothing for her confidence.
    Irritated, she spun away from him, taking in the majesty of the place, the sanctuary. ‘Are we going to pray?’ She quirked a brow. ‘Because I’m not the type to scrape down on my knees to anyone, not Gods ...’
    ‘And not Kings.’ Mac laughed, finishing her sentence. ‘Your rebellious spirit excites me, Ashling,’ he reached out and twined his fingers in a lock of her hair, rubbing the curl against his skin, ‘more than it should. The way you went for Fite back there … utterly fearless.’
    The awe in his tone left her breathless. She pulled away. ‘We’re here to train.’ Not a question, she wanted his head back on track because hers was getting fogged. She tried to convince herself it was the smoke.
    ‘And so we are, my impatient one.’ Mac peeled the shirt over his head in one lithe shift, and Ash gaped. Magnificent. Revealed in all its chiseled, muscular glory, the King’s torso was