Chapter 20
Von
T he moment I saw her—collapsed and broken, the icy fire within her eyes gone—dark emotions laced through my insides, gutting me on the spot.
Urgency gnawed at me, the need to protect her, to get to her, overwhelming me.
My mate was strong, yes, but something inside her was not as it should have been.
Had her memories returned to her? Had she discovered the truth of our past—that she had died while pregnant?
It was a question I didn’t need to answer, because one look at her had told me the devastating truth—
She knew . She knew, and I couldn’t be there for her.
A flurry of emotions blasted through me like a blade to my abdomen, cutting me open.
Rage for her mistreatment.
Frustration because I couldn’t help her right now.
Urgency to get to her .
Relief because she was alive.
My mate was . . . alive .
The black fog lifted from my vision.
I’m coming, Sage , I promised through the bond, taking my hand from Soren’s arm—who was still unconscious and unfortunately, still breathing. To my dismay.
“Your horns are gone,” Folkoln said from behind me, voice groggy. “And your skin is back to normal.”
I examined my hand—the black bolts had disappeared. My head felt lighter, too.
From her spot on the settee, Ezra was slumped forward, arthritic fingers covering her mouth as she cackled to herself, the sound full of disbelief, astonishment, and joy.
“Well?” Kaleb asked as he moved around me, eyes huge. Pleading.
“She draws breath in another realm,” I said, leaning into the truth of those words, feeling the weight of them, like kindling to my starved fire.
My mate was alive.
Kaleb swayed, and then he crumpled onto his knees, one at a time. “Alive,” he whispered, sitting down on the backs of his heels, his eyes filling with tears. He began to wipe at them with the back of his hand, unable to stop himself from smiling.
“She is!” Ezra exclaimed. “Our girl is not lost to us!”
Not lost .
Found.
And now I just needed to get to her.
Eyes darting to Ezra, I asked, “Do you know what realm she is in?”
“No, but I will,” Ezra said, holding up her hand, her thumb and forefinger nearly touching, but in between was the smallest piece of . . . sand. As if she were speaking to a baby, she asked it softly, “What is the name of your home, little one?”
Folkoln and I side-eyed one another.
Ezra moved her hand beside her ear, listening.
“Aha. I don’t know that one. Another. Oh, wait.
Say that again. One more time. No, doesn’t ring a bell.
Try another. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Wait! I’ve heard of that one!
” She lowered her hand into her lap, and then said to us, “This sweet little dear spoke a great deal of names to me. The last one I recognize.”
“What is the name?” I demanded, my patience long gone.
“The Ancient Lands,” Ezra answered. “That is where Sage is.”
“What do you know of them?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I tilted my head to the side, waiting for her answer.
“Very little, only whispers here and there. It’s hard to know which ones are true.” The skin crinkled between Ezra’s drawn brows as she contemplated something. Then, her lips twisted into a grin. “But I know someone who came from them, as do you.”
“Who?” Kaleb asked, face red and soaked with tears.
Ezra pointed to the ground.
I glanced down, and realization dawned. She didn’t mean anyone in this castle or even the other seven tiers beneath it.
She was talking way, way down—as far as you could go in the Spirit Realm.
I sighed. “Getting her to talk isn’t going to be easy.”
“We meet again, little god,” the giant said as I approached her, in the lowest tier of the Spirit Realm. She lounged beside a sprawling lake of water, her hand dipped in as she swirled it around.
Ezra trailed behind me, cane tapping the ground.
“And you’ve brought another tiny friend with you. How quaint,” the giant spoke sarcastically.
“Tiny friend,” Ezra muttered grumpily under her breath. Of course, now she was insulted. But when the giant had been eating every immortal in sight, she had merely shrugged her shoulders and told me, Good luck with that.
“It’s been a while,” I said by way of greeting, my hands in my pockets as I continued my leisurely pace.
I had no idea what to expect from this meeting, although I was more than ready to find out.
If I needed to unlock the beast within to attain the information I sought, I would, although I was hoping to handle things a bit more diplomatically.
“A while doesn’t even scratch the surface for how long it’s been,” she stated, flicking the water from her fingers a few times. She tipped her chin up and peered at us down the bridge of her nose. “Why have you come?”
“To have a nice little chat,” I said, the left side of my mouth curving upwards.
“You left me to rot for centuries. What makes you think I would be willing to talk to you ?” She snarled the last word.
I stood about an arm’s swipe away—a calculated position.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ezra walked up beside me. “In all fairness, you were eating people.”
“I was sending souls back to the empress,” she corrected. “It is what I was built to do—what we all were.”
“By eating them?” Ezra asked, quirking a wiry, gray brow. “How does that work, exactly?”
Skeptically, the giant looked at us, and for a brief moment, I thought she might not reply, but then she said, “Ah, fuck it.” She leaned back, using her outstretched arms for support.
“I will answer your question, but do not mistake my willingness to participate in conversation—something I have not had in a very long time—for anything more.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
She continued, “To your kind I am known as an Ancient One, but the proper name for my species is venum stoomic, and I was created for one purpose—to harvest souls from different realms, particularly male ones, and send them back to the empress.”
“Poison stomach,” I said, my tongue translating the foreign language all on its own. Where it came from, I did not know.
“Ah, you speak my language. Yet another sign you are not as you seem,” she said with a soft laugh. “Perhaps we should cut you open again, hmm?”
The memory of her slicing my leg open and peering at my bones resurfaced.
“I’d rather not,” I stated flatly.
“Aww, you’re no fun,” she teased with a coy grin.
“Now, where was I? Ah, that’s right. As the name suggests, the contents of my stomach are deathly corrosive.
It breaks souls down into such small pieces, the soul can no longer exist here.
Seeking to be remade, the soul returns to the Mother Realm, what you call the Ancient Lands.
It is where all life originated from and where all life must eventually return to.
But before any of that can happen, the venom within my stomach must gnaw through the body.
It is so powerful that even the strongest of immortal hides and iron bones don’t stand a chance.
” With her eyes on me, she licked her lips.
“Yours would be no different. You would be a tasty treat.”
“Eh.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think I would. I got a lot of muscle—probably be too chewy.”
“Who said anything about chewing?” The giant chuckled. “I’d just swallow you whole.”
Ezra turned to me. “You should probably take her up on that.”
I sighed, knowing the old bird wasn’t wrong. It was one way I could get to where Sage was, albeit I’d rather not be eaten by a giant today. I decided to try another avenue.
“How did you get here?” I asked the giant, trying to recall the events of that day.
I had been in my office, signing different documents, when Zahra had come racing into the room, fear propping her eyes wide open, explaining that a giant immortal had just appeared and she was eating other immortals.
“With this,” the giant answered as she lifted the blue gemstone hanging from her neck. It looked like a large sapphire.
“See?” I spoke through the side of my mouth to Ezra. “No eating involved.”
“Take a closer look,” Ezra stated smugly.
I studied the gemstone, noting that even when the light hit it, it refused to sparkle.
“This is an energy stone, in particular, a travel stone, and it is how my kind travel from realm to realm. Shortly after I arrived here, it quit working.” She removed it from her neck and placed it in her palm, studying it.
“For centuries, I have waited to see it glow once more, so that I can return home.”
“Do you know why it quit?” I inquired curiously.
“It’s a question I’ve wondered many times, but I don’t have an answer,” she replied. “All I know is that it hasn’t worked for a very long time and I’m starting to think it never will.” She reached forward, dangling it before me, the stone larger than my head. “Do you want it?”
I raised a brow. “What do you want in return?”
“A simple exchange. If you figure out a way to make it work, you let me use it to get home.”
I nodded in agreement. “Alright.”
“Good,” she stated. “Hold out your hand.”
I did. The necklace shrank, and she dropped it in my palm.
I surveyed it for a moment before I handed it to Ezra. “What do you think? Could you get it to work?”
She raised it to her ear, listening for a moment, then said, “I can take it to my sisters, but it could be a while before we discover anything. If we discover anything. And even if we do, there is no guarantee we can fix it.”
“How long is a while ?” I asked, peering down at her.
“Days. Months. Years.” She handed the stone back. “Time we don’t have.”
My shadows swam around it, dissolving it and placing it in their storage.
I crossed my arms over my chest, mulling things over. I could wait for Ezra to take the travel stone to her sisters, but, as Ezra pointed out, there was no guarantee they could get it to work.
I thought of Sage, and I knew what I had to do.
Not that I was going to like it.
I loosed a breath.
“It’s a good choice,” Ezra said before her face swiveled in the giant’s direction. “Would you like him salted or unsalted?”
Of course, she grinned.