Chapter 22
Beyond the gate to the churchyard, a path led to the church proper, old and built on or near the ancient structures mixed in with the newer gravestones.
I was bleeding all over the path while a distraught Nokim had his arm around my waist to help me along. I’d managed to fall directly on my nose, and while I didn’t think anything was broken, the fountain of blood I was producing was worthy of a slasher movie.
“You poor thing.” Nokim clicked at me. “Vergis, you are well?”
Vergis had caught up with us, silently, and was walking on Nokim’s other side.
“Better now that I don’t have to mind the human anymore. I’d be even better if we could just head to the Stone now.”
Nokim made a rumbling sound. “Fellisse should tend to Rory. Look at him! He’s losing so much blood.”
“Inkiri?” I managed. “He okay?”
Nokim didn’t have to answer that. Just as the words left my mouth, Inkiri leaped up the few steps to the path and barreled toward us, or rather, at me. My heart beat faster when he got to me and wound his arms around me, Nokim managing just barely to step aside.
I sagged against Inkiri and hugged him back as tight as I could, but he pulled away fast.
“Get Fellisse,” he said, and Nokim took off at a run. “Sweet thing.” Inkiri clicked at me, his low, soothing clicks, and cupped my face in his palms. “What happened?”
“He ran to meet Nokim. Lacks coordination, though, and broke his fall with his face,” Vergis said.
I glanced over, and I could see it in Vergis’s face. He wanted what I had and knew he couldn’t have it. It occurred to me that another man might have simply killed me or hesitated a few seconds for the orange spider to finish the job. Vergis had done neither. He’d brought me back here, to Inkiri.
“Thank you, Vergis,” I said, and this time, I really meant it.
Vergis narrowed his eyes. “Broke his fall with his nose and his head, apparently.”
Inkiri went on clicking. “All will be well, sweet thing.”
Before I could tell him that all was well now that we were all together, he scooped me up like ice cream and proceeded to carry me toward the church. We didn’t go inside though, just headed past it.
Inkiri jumped the wall that enclosed the church area. That was both impressive and sexy, seeing as he was carrying me. When he started across the field beyond, I saw Nokim and Fellisse coming at us at a run.
“It’s just a bloody nose,” I said. “I’m fine. Ink, are you okay? Is everyone? What happened?”
I would have told him to put me down, but all evidence suggested that was a bad idea. Plus, being carried was really nice. Exhaustion was still haunting me like the ghost of a night spent partying.
“Sweet Sadir,” Inkiri said. “We’re all well.”
That wasn’t quite right though. I reached out a hand to cup his left cheek. He hissed and pulled back, and I looked closer and saw that he was sporting a shiner.
I frowned, torn between holding a hand to my bleeding nose and caressing his face. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“Nothing that won’t heal within a day, sweet thing.” He was smiling. He looked so handsome when he smiled.
When our eyes met, we had another minor movie moment in the meadow a stone’s throw away from the Stone of Destiny. Unfortunately, the moment was rudely interrupted by Fellisse taking my chin and turning my head to face him.
“That’s a good amount of blood,” he said. “Where do you hurt, Rory?”
I tried slapping his hand away, but to no avail. Fellisse would not be dislodged, and he went about pulling my bottom eyelids down so he could look at my eyes, then he felt his way up to my nose and exerted gentle pressure.
I winced then. “I fell. I’m fine.”
“He had a bout of hypothermia too,” Vergis said. “He took a detour to the other world, the one where the beasts come from.”
Inkiri made a hissing noise, and Fellisse lifted my head so he could stare into my nostrils. Ugh.
Inkiri’s eyes narrowed. “We should not have traveled.”
“We need to get him to the Stone, and then we need to figure out what to do next,” Vergis said. “Where’s Lissir?”
“Back where we made camp,” Fellisse said absentmindedly. “He took an arrow.”
I squirmed. “What!? Is he okay?” I glanced up at Inkiri as best as I could with Fellisse still tormenting me. “I want to go to him.”
Fellisse hummed. “I see nothing that appears broken. I see nothing that I know to heal, but if he has suffered exposure to cold, rest will certainly be in order.”
Vergis cursed creatively. It was a cute little soliloquy. Gran would’ve chided him with her wooden spoon.
“We all need a good night’s rest, but give me ten minutes with the human at the Stone. I need to see this spell. Don’t you get it? If the Koa Esher had anything to do with what happened here, we need to know.”
“His name is Rory.” Inkiri’s voice was colder than I had ever heard it.
Just like that, I was feeling sorry for Vergis, who’d probably not had an awesome time either with me around.
Okay, he hadn’t faceplanted so spectacularly, but he’d had to take another guy’s soaked clothes off, and unless I’d imagined it, he’d huddled under that scratchy blanket with me.
All while being very aware that Inkiri had picked me rather than him. The guy deserved a break.
I lifted my chin. “The bagu can call me human if it makes him feel better. Put me down, Ink.” Inkiri did. Reluctantly, but he did. “Ten minutes, and no more weird interdimensional travel while we’re up there,” I told Vergis.
Vergis seemed surprised, but he hid it quickly. “Fine. Let’s go.”
The five of us walked. Mostly. All growly, Inkiri simply picked me up again.
“I broke my promise to you,” he said when we reached the church again. “I told you that you wouldn’t have to be scared ever again if you came with me, and yet I wasn’t there to make it so.”
I shrugged, or tried to. As it turned out, a bridal carry isn’t good for shrugging.
“Oh, you know. If you’ve seen the apocalypse, you’ve basically seen everything.
But if there’s ever a spider, you’re taking care of it.
Humanely or not, it doesn’t matter. I just don’t want to see spiders ever again, and maybe I’ll swear off the color orange as well, you know? To be on the safe side.”
Inkiri buried his head in my neck and sniffed me before running his rough tongue along my skin. “Whatever you want, sweet thing. Whatever you want.”
The rest of the short trip up to the Stone was a quiet one, and the noise of the wind was only broken by Inkiri’s clicking. It comforted me, and I let my head fall against his warm chest in a kind of surrender. He had me. I knew he had me, so it was okay to let go.
When I’d first been here, with Cat and Jacob, Cat had joked that the Stone was kind of phallic. She’d been right, but I’d seen worse. Some billionaires’ space rockets, among other things.
More than anything else, this stone reminded me more of an obelisk, even if it was rough and not shaped like an obelisk at all.
Set around it in the ground were smaller, thinner flagstones, almost like tiles, radiating outward like the rays of the sun.
It was a magnificent place, and the view from up here was stunning.
I would’ve enjoyed it more if the memory of my last time being here hadn’t tried to take over my mind.
“Put him down,” Vergis said to Inkiri.
Inkiri did, and I stood and followed Vergis to the stone proper.
Vergis ignored me, but I was used to that by now. He closed his eyes and hummed something. When he opened them, his pupils snapped back to slits from having been super enlarged. He touched the stone with one hand, then looked at me.
“Place both hands on the Stone and don’t do anything.”
“Not doing anything. My specialty.” I put my hands on the Stone.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I felt something when my palms connected to the rough surface of the Stone. It could’ve been the wind. For a moment though, I thought there was something there, like a whisper I couldn’t quite hear, something just at the very edge of my awareness.
“Hmm.” Vergis stepped back. “Shit.”
Before Vergis had the chance to elaborate, screaming from the direction of the Mound of Hostages made us all turn our heads.
I saw blood, a terrible red against Lissir’s steel-gray skin. He came toward us in a jerky, stumbling run, shouting something in that other language.
I froze. I couldn’t make sense of the situation. I was the only one though. The other four broke into a flurry of activity. A gunshot rang out, and Lissir dropped. There was a terrible, terrible moment when his orange eyes met mine, and something passed between us.
“Lissir!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Vergis said something in LaGuardia—no, Lugarra—and the others moved. Fellisse and Nokim ran toward Lissir. Vergis began shaking me by the shoulders. He was speaking, but the words made no sense. Time slowed, and everything sounded and felt as if I were packed in cotton wool.
Then, pain hit with the sharpness of a rubber band snapping back when Vergis’s slap connected with my cheek.
“Touch the Stone! Both hands. Wait until I tell you to and when I do—”
“Wish for clear skies,” I said. Something snapped into place the moment I laid my bare hands on the Stone. “I got this.”
Vergis pulled his gun free, and the sound of it going off hurt my ears. Had the gun made it out of the lake okay? Had he cleaned it back in the wayhouse? Would Lissir be okay? And where was Inkiri?
The thoughts rushed around my head like a dog with the zoomies, but a look over my shoulder did at least give me one answer. Inkiri was right there, right behind me. Shielding me. Even now, he was protecting me when I couldn’t do a thing.
“Please. Please let them all be okay. Let my guys be okay,” I whispered against the noise of more gunfire ringing across the Hill of Kings.
Vergis’s voice rang out over the noise after several too-long moments filled with fear and uncertainty. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and I had no idea whether that made it better or not.
What I could see without taking my hands off the stone played out in slow motion. Lissir in Fellisse’s arms. Blood and fabric erupting from Fellisse’s shoulder when he got hit. Inkiri, stumbling back against me as if he’d been hit as well. I didn’t see Nokim at all.
I wanted to do something, anything, but somewhere inside of me, there rested a certainty like an old and wise presence that didn’t feel exactly familiar, but not altogether strange either. Something rustled in my mind.
What is your wish?
A part of my mind recognized this as unusual.
That was the part of me that had been cast as second tree from the left.
But there was another part there as well, calm and certain.
That I didn’t question speaking to this disembodied voice ringing loud and clear in my mind should’ve freaked me out. It didn’t.
I want them to be okay. Fellisse, Lissir, Nokim, Vergis, and Ink. I want them to be okay.
The presence seemed to consider this as if it were looking at files and sorting things. Then it said, As you will.
A bone-shattering noise rang out over the Hill of Tara, the Hill of Kings. The Stone of Destiny was singing.
When only the last echoes of the Stone’s song still filled the air, I felt myself floating. I was there, all right, but the present was at a polite distance from me while I observed my surroundings.
I saw Nokim, who’d been lying on his side, pull himself up and run toward us. His taupe clothes were torn and filthy with blood.
Lissir’s voice filled my ears like song, but I had no time to listen to the words in a language I didn’t understand. A hand landed on my neck, and a now-familiar warmth filled me.
Then and there, I knew for certain that I would forevermore recognize my mate by touch or scent, by even his shadow on an overcast day.
I knew he’d been with me when the Stone sang, had bled for me during the song, and now, his mate call echoed in me.
It was a foreign knowledge in my head, but it was there, and I couldn’t erase it. I didn’t want to.
One by one, they gathered around me and reached out to touch me. My guys. Bonds so recently forged, but forged in fire. I knew we were bound. I knew it the same way I knew Inkiri was mine.
I felt the mage—Vergis, the dark one—touch the Stone. My palms were still on the warm rock, and I knew Vergis was using some of the Stone’s magic to move us.
Farewell, Rory, said that presence in my mind. Until we meet again.
Heat and light came after the words, and Vergis’s magic took us away. All of us. We were safe. I was glad.