Chapter Thirty-Nine
I BOLTED THE WAY HUNTED ANIMALS DO.
I sprinted for my life, too fast for my pathetic system to catch up, driven by primal instincts.
The estate was a blur of corridors and lanterns.
My bare feet didn’t make a sound as I flew through gardens and over bridges; Whisper’s silent paws tearing up the lawn beside me.
The night was cold, but I poured with sweat.
Burning alive, just like him.
Lucien.
Furnace Heart.
God, please don’t die.
The pull in my chest twisted, yanking me east, toward the dragon wall, toward the looming mountains that touched the stars and cut the moon in half.
Every step hurt. Every breath seared.
I could feel him like a second heartbeat—wild, erratic, racing toward catastrophe.
Another glimpse almost sent me skidding into a lattice screen.
His shirt ignited in a fireball, leaving his chest bare and metal disc turning molten. His jaw clenched as orange and gold roared out of him with flaming surges. The pool he sat in completely evaporated, leaving the dry rock to crack—
“Lucien!” I screamed, the vision making me fall.
I cried out as sharp pebbles tore into my knees.
Whisper surrounded me instantly, twining and whining, nudging me to get up, get up, get up.
Gasping and sobbing, I crawled and scrambled, forcing my way back to my feet.
The moment I was upright, I flew.
“Hold on. Please, hold on. I’m coming.”
I didn’t know what I would do when I found him.
Didn’t know what I could do.
But whatever it took, I would do it.
Whatever he needed, I would give.
Up ahead, a turtle and lotus carved door waited for me. Cracked open and giving me a way to escape the dragon wall.
My heart hurled me toward it, guiding me, whispering to me.
Dashing through the wall, the mountain and trees swallowed me whole.
Thick branches blocked the starlight and wide trunks blocked my path. The air grew thick—every breath acrid with smoke and scorched stone.
Flinging my hands out in front of me, I ran.
I didn’t need eyes to see where I was going. Not when my heart guided me.
The ground sloped upward.
A luminous glow beckoned me forward, but...it wasn’t moonlight.
It pulsed a violent gold, licking at rocks and leaves, revealing a cave mouth where a monster dwelled.
Trading bracken and foliage for a world made of water and stone, I staggered against the wall as a wickedly sharp pain almost killed me.
The world turned helter-skelter as I clutched my chest, sipping air, begging the pain to stop.
Each inhale was too hollow, too shallow—filling with an absence as if Lucien couldn’t hold on any longer.
The cord in my heart—the tether in my soul—blazed white-bright, jerking me forward.
My shoulder bruised against the rock as I followed the urging—like a compass needle, leading me to where I was supposed to be.
Whisper kept pace with me, his whiskers flaring as the air temperature increased to unbearable degrees.
The deeper we travelled into the caves, the louder the water roared. It thundered everywhere and nowhere, loud enough to drown everything.
I ducked under a low arch, tripping into a large cave that’d been fashioned by time and liquid. Instead of round walls and empty spaces, the cave wove like a snake, full of shadows and corners, pockets of pools glittering in the red haze.
Whisper hissed as he stepped into a shallow puddle, shaking off his paws as if it’d burned him.
Steam rose from the ground, licking around my ankles.
It had to be close to boiling but...I couldn’t feel it.
My skin didn’t blister.
I was immune.
But Whisper...
He pranced on the spot, trying to find a cold patch. He snarled and hissed and...couldn’t come any further.
Pointing the way we’d travelled, I panted, “Go back.”
He roared.
“Go home,” I roared right back. “You can’t come. I’ll help him. I promise I’ll help him.”
Lucien couldn’t be too much further in this labyrinth.
I would find him.
Save him...
“Go, kitty cat.” I broke into another run, leaving the panther behind as I followed a pitch-black tunnel, lit up thanks to Lucien’s fire.
I stumbled into a large cavern with a giant pool in the centre. This one hadn’t dried up, full to the brim with sloshing angry water. Endless eddies churned, thanks to the hypnotic spiral in the middle—a whirlpool pulling down into death.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
A sharp tug on my heart, sudden and hot—begging me to come quickly, come fast, come now.
I staggered and broke into another run.
Skidding around the deep pool, my bare feet slipped as the roar of water hurt my ears.
The red glow brightened as I paused on the threshold of yet another cave.
In the distance, in the middle of a dried basin, I found him.
Exactly like I’d seen in my mind’s eye. Hunched over his crossed legs, clinging to his knees, every muscle rigid and quaking while savage flames burned him alive. Fire poured from him in violent surges, licking up the cave walls, turning dripping droplets into hissing steam.
I went to move.
I opened my mouth to scream—
But pure agony tore across his face. The intricate web of veins beneath his skin ignited bright gold.
Too late.
I was too—
A supernova burst out of him—a roaring sphere of incandescent destruction.
It blasted toward me like a bomb.
Smacked into me harder than a devil’s fist.
It hurled me backward as if I was a flimsy butterfly caught in a flaming hurricane.
The cave shattered around me. Walls crumbled. Ceilings gave in.
And as his power fully unleashed, I was flung into the swirling water behind me.
I hit hard.
I sank quick.
My teeth punctured my tongue as burning water swallowed me deep, yanking me into its violent spiral.
I fought.
I fought so hard.
I kicked and flailed, clawing toward the blazing fire on the surface.
But it was no use.
My back smacked against rock; my knees whacked against stone.
I couldn’t tell which way was up.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t scream.
My hair wrapped around my neck like a noose.
I choked and tumbled, spinning and somersaulting.
The whirlpool sucked me down.
And down.
And down.
Darkness chewed me alive as the water forced me into a claustrophobic chute.
The tunnel tightened like the throat of an ancient beast, feasting on me as my lungs screamed. Something whacked against my spine and suddenly...I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.
No—
Horror made me inhale.
Hot water flooded in.
I slammed shoulder-first into stone.
Something cracked.
The stone or bone...I couldn’t tell.
Pain radiated down my arm, white-hot and dizzying.
But the water didn’t care.
It just kept breaking me into pieces, pulverising me as it sucked me around a narrow bend, tearing, shredding—
I hit another wall.
And another.
Something sharp scraped along my chest, splitting my skin open and snagging against my collarbone. It hooked onto the only keepsake I had of my mother.
The chain that’d been around my neck ever since I could remember fought to stay with me. It clung to me so tightly—stretching, shivering, refusing to leave.
But then...it broke.
My raindrop pendant vanished in a surge of bubbles.
No!
My necklace!
My mother’s necklace!
I reached for it blindly, fingers scraping against rushing rock.
My body hit yet another obstruction with a savage smack.
I convulsed—
And something answered.
Snow and sleet and ice, ice, ice ripped through me in a soul-rending flash.
Power flooded my veins—so cold it burned, so vast it erased pain, so wicked it ripped me from death’s embrace and roared.
My bones rang like struck crystal.
My blood frosted like red mercury.
Glacial fractals burst from my fingertips, turning the churning water stark white.
I was the cold between stars.
The silence after extinction—
But then, the mountain rejected me.
My head cracked against the rocky chute.
Something punctured my ribcage, stabbing straight into my lung.
Water poured in through the hole in my body.
And with a final bite, I plummeted into the mountain’s belly...