38. Chapter 38
The silence of her cottage crept across her skin.
Izzy could barely breathe, fearing Fotios was around every corner. In the kitchen, standing before the door to go down into her caverns, she breathed out, trying to calm her racing heart.
She opened the door and faced the long stairwell.
As she took slow and steady steps downstairs, the motion detection lights flickered on one by one.
The chill of the air pressed in on her. She stepped down to the bottom, and humid air enveloped her.
Each tunnel stretched long and dark ahead, like the hands of death.
A reassuring presence stretched along the link. A ferocity waiting to be unleashed.
But she was alone. Just how Fotios wanted her.
Taking another deep breath, she headed toward the right tunnel. Again, the lights flickered on, and with each step, her heart rate quickened until she faced the large door at the end of the hall.
A tomb.
Candlelight flickered under the door. He was here.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the knob. You can do this. Stomach churning at the idea of seeing Fotios again, she closed her eyes. Willing calm into her being, she opened the door that she had left closed for centuries.
Stagnant air met her nose as bright lights flooded the large catacomb. A hall of Fotios’s relics stretched before her. Mementos she’d been unwilling to part with. She walked down the hallway, gazing to the tall, cavernous ceiling.
At the T at the end of the hall, she turned.
Fotios stood next to his muscle cuirass, armor that had fit over his chest when he’d been in ancient battles. Now he stood hunched with ragged wings at his back, a pitiful shape beside the bronze armor that would never fit him again.
He grimaced but didn’t turn toward her. “I find this room the most deplorable. A marker of how badly you failed me.”
“Failed you?” Anger heated her chest. “You’re the one who abandoned me and killed my kind to become this monstrous being.”
His wing snapped out and knocked the cuirass into the wall. The resounding clank made her jump. He’d cracked the bronze.
Her vulnerability tightened around her heart.
With shaking hands, she grabbed her sphalerite dagger and the pistol from her waist harness.
She held the weapons stiffly in her hands and left them pointed down—ready.
Their heaviness felt reassuring. She just had to get close enough so that he couldn’t dodge the bullets.
Fotios’s head ticked to the side unnaturally. “You think to battle me with those silly weapons, child?”
Child? There was a time when she might have condoned his referring to her in that fashion. But she had long grown into a woman far stronger than he’d ever given her credit.
“Tell me your plan,” she said.
“It’s interesting how you threaten an area and people flood out of it like ants. Protect the queen, and I wonder, will she suffer their loss?”
Her heart plummeted.
“Daxton,” she sent her thoughts, hoping their link was strong enough to send the message. “He knows we evacuated everyone, and he’s going to attack no matter what.”
“I’ll warn them.” His voice in her mind eased the tension in her shoulders, even if just the slightest.
“Don’t do this, Fotios. You aren’t evil.”
The crooked smile stretched across his face as he shoved the tan robe back, revealing a crude indigo blade strapped to his waist. “Is that concern I hear in your voice? I’m not evil, Izzy. I am logical.”
“You used to be caring once. What happened to the man, the mentor who believed everyone deserved happiness?”
“Shut up.” He drew his sword, the iolite surface reflecting in the light. “Happiness is nothing but the lack of wounds. But they come back unless you become resistant to all emotions.”
She dropped low and lifted her weapons into a protective stance.
“A reset is just what you need,” Fotios said. “I wonder how you’ll do this time after you lose your new Coheart.”
A fire burned within her. This was the last time he would threaten Simon. She ran at him.
He cut down with his blade. She crossed her weapons, catching his sword with a clash. Pressure strained her arms. She barely stayed on her feet as he continued to push down.
“Izzy!” Daxton raged into her mind.
Nearly kneeling, she pushed up and jumped backward.
Her blades slid free of his, and she tossed her dagger at his wing.
He whipped to the side, dodging in a blur.
She ducked under his other wing. As he turned back, she came up from behind and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
The other circled his waist, embracing him from behind.
Only coldness pressed against her skin. A tear wet her face.
“I am sorry, Fotios.” It was time to call in her ace.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“What I should have done years ago. Teaching you my Angelic name. La-ish-arum…” As the syllables took shape in her mouth, whispered into his ear, energy tinged the air.
The Angelic Summoning coiled along her spirit and the link that bound her to Daxton.
The distinction between their spirits had blurred—fused at a level that let her Summon him. “…dese-rub.”
The link vibrated and snapped.
A bronze dragon appeared before them and rose to its full height, casting Izzy in a shadow.
Daxton.
“What did you just do?” Fotios’s elbow slammed into her temple.
Pain exploded, disorienting her as she fell to the ground. The heat of Daxton’s fire blazed into the room.
A blast of Fotios’s indigo light crackled against the inferno. The black fire singed an edge of Fotios’s wing, turning it to solid ebony stone. He screamed and ran for the cavern’s opening.
Daxton shot after him, a fox chasing a mouse into a hole. Izzy scrambled to her feet, needing to see them. Near the entrance, Daxton reeled backward, flinging Fotios into the air of the cavern.
Fotios snapped his wings out, but crashed, back first, into the wall. Rubble crumbled to the ground. The dragon whipped around; a red gash glistened across the bottom edge of his snout. Oh no. She grabbed the gun she’d dropped.
Fotios launched himself at him.
Daxton deflected a blow to his neck with a sweep of his tail. Fotios feinted left, but Daxton obstructed his path and blew fire. Another flare of powerful indigo light from Fotios acted as a quick barrier against the flame.
Fear clogged Izzy’s throat. I can’t get a clear shot. The gun trembled in her hand.
Every time Fotios tried to land a hit, Daxton dodged.
Their bodies slammed into the wall, and the glass towers—each one cradling Fotios’s relics—shattered in bursts of light and sound.
Shards shot outward, slicing the air. Her memories, once preserved in crystal and bronze, fractured with every blow.
The scent of old parchment and scorched metal filled the air.
What had been sacred was now rubble, like her relationship with Fotios.
Fotios had Daxton on the defense, unable to make an offensive blow with his need to keep Fotios from escaping.
Pain ripened along the link. Daxton’s shoulder seeped blood from another deep gash.
Izzy gritted her teeth. Cold ice glazed over her mind.
I won’t let Fotios hurt someone else I care about.
Energy shook the air, and she gave in to it. Her featherless wings stretched out on either side of her. Knitting yellow power into her wings, she kicked off the ground and flew at Fotios, gun ready.
“Izzy, don’t!”
She caught a slap from Fotios’s wing as he spun to meet her advance. The impact knocked her back into the air. He lunged after her. She swooped into the cave wall. The air from his sword brushed her face. She gasped, feeling a painful nick against her cheek.
Dipping under his next swing, she flew up and shot him in the chest. Black light flashed between them.
“Isi…” He wheezed and stared down. Ebony stone fractured across his chest. He grimaced wryly. “You were always good with inventions.”
The compliment tugged at her fond memories. “Fotios. Please stop.”
He shook his head. “Not until you learn the truth. Logic built that gun, not emotion.” Fotios raised his blade.
She folded her wings and dropped. Fotios dove after her, but Daxton grabbed his torso in his powerful jaws.
Fotios yelled, swinging his iolite sword in a desperate, wild arc that missed Daxton.
At the rear of Daxton’s throat, a deep, internal rumbling intensified, and Izzy saw a warning in his eyes: blue light mixed with black, like a furnace ready to consume.
This was the dragon’s black flame, the power that petrified Archfiends like Medusa.
Fotios’s own eyes, once so full of cruel malice, now met Izzy’s gaze, and for a fleeting, horrifying moment, unadulterated terror froze his face.
A wave of profound sadness, mixed with the chilling recognition of his fear, washed over Izzy.
Her hand, still gripping her pistol, stretched out instinctively toward Fotios.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words a raw ache in her throat, wanting to stop Daxton even if it was wrong, even if it meant letting the monster escape.
But it was too late. The decision had been made, the momentum irreversible.
Daxton unleashed his breath, and a blinding wave of black fire erupted from his jaws, not a typical flame, but a consuming darkness that seemed to suck all the light from the cavern. It enveloped Fotios in its petrifying embrace.
Izzy watched, transfixed, as the fire consumed him, not burning flesh, but turning it into stone.
Fotios’s skin, where the flames first touched, turned ashen, then solidified into dark, gleaming ebony.
The transformation was agonizingly swift yet excruciatingly detailed.
The ebony fractured across his chest. His indigo blade fell with a faint clang.
But then, as the flames continued to rage, something miraculous happened.
From the stone already surrounding his chest outward, it transformed his body into the man she remembered.
The flames turned back the clock. The malice that had contorted Fotios’s face receded.
The harsh angles softened, and the familiar laugh lines, etched by years of shared wisdom and affection, reappeared around his mouth.
His once-black Archfiend eyes, now wide with wonder and dawning realization, faded to their original dusky blue.
Izzy’s breath hitched. She could read the pleading cant of his gaze, just like in the olden times. “I was wrong,” his eyes seemed to say. “I didn’t mean to lose myself. Forgive me.”
Hot tears streaked down her cheeks, a torrent of grief and forgiveness she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for millennia. She could only nod, a silent affirmation of understanding and sorrow.
A gentle, knowing smile touched his lips, no longer cruel but soft and utterly familiar. “You found it,” his gaze whispered.
Izzy’s eyes narrowed through her tears, her voice hoarse. “Found what?”
“Heaven,” his lips mouthed, silent as the encroaching stone, his head tilting upward as if gazing at something beyond mortal sight.
And with that single, profound word, his face froze. His eyes, wide and peaceful, a warm smile gracing his lips, were completely encased in ebony. Her familiar, beloved mentor, now a statue.
Static energy shocked her wings—ten new feathers. The weight of the unexpected gift, combined with the crushing loss of the man she had loved, was too much. She dropped to her knees, collapsing under the unbearable, beautiful burden.
Light flashed as Daxton shifted in her blurring gaze and strode toward her. Blood streaked down his jaw and from a wound on his shoulder. He dropped to his knees in front of her, grabbed her face, and pressed her forehead against his. His grip tightened, yet his hands trembled.
Yes, Fotios, this is my Heaven.