Chapter 13
MAIZE
The snowstorm had broken sometime before dawn, leaving the mountains blanketed in a thin silvery fog that clung to every jagged edge of rock and skeletal tree.
The air still hummed with the bite of the wind, but sunlight was finally breaking through the heavy cloud cover, warming the world just enough to make it bearable to travel.
The warmth touched my face as we pressed forward along the path, our horses well rested after a long night’s sleep.
Chait insisted on riding behind me, his arms loose around my waist but his chest firm against my back. The faint rise and fall of his breathing was comforting as our horse moved along the narrow, ice-slick path.
In the early morning light, my mates and I rode in a comfortable silence, though tension rippled quietly through the bond connecting us. Even Pip—curled up inside Maddox’s heavy jacket—seemed to sense it, his tiny head occasionally lifting as if to check that we were all still alright.
It probably didn’t help that my magic was restless, drawing at the edges of my awareness—an invisible thread tugging me forward. It wasn’t painful, exactly, just relentless, urging me toward the looming mountain. The closer we came to that wall of stone and ice, the stronger the pull became.
A chill crawled up my spine as I stared at the sheer face of the mountain rising before us. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were closer to Oberon than any of us had predicted. The only question was how in the hell we were supposed to get past the impossible barrier waiting for us.
“I can feel him,” I finally said to Chait, my voice so quiet that the wind nearly swallowed it.
“Oberon?”
“Well, yes…” I hesitated. “But Balor, actually. It’s like I can feel an echo of his magic. Like—”
“He’s leading you?” Chait asked, his chin brushing the top of my head.
“I think so,” I said carefully. I didn’t want to sound too sure, because it was entirely possible that what I was feeling was a mix of my own magic and the pull of Oberon’s influence.
He didn’t answer right away, and the trail narrowed again, forcing us to slow. Fog drifted across the slope, veiling the valley in white. For a while, there was only the crunch of hooves on frozen earth.
“I just hope it’s him,” Chait said at last. “I hope it’s not one of Oberon’s tricks. These mountains up ahead—they’re where his magic signature was strongest in the Spirit realm.” He exhaled. “One way or another, we’re going to find out soon.”
A fact that clearly had every one of my mates on edge, especially after the events in the dreamscape last night.
Apparently, when Philip came barreling out of the tower, the others had just stared at him, wide-eyed, as he tried to explain the insanity of what we’d experienced.
If I hadn’t lived it myself, I wasn’t sure I’d have believed it was anything more than a nightmare either.
But I had felt Balor’s power. And, much like Cethlenn, I knew without a shred of doubt that he was real. They were real, and my connection to them was real.
And that meant one undeniable truth: I was the child of two gods.
What did I even do with that?
We continued upward until the path widened again, a break in the fog revealing the pale outline of the ridge above us. My magic pulsed once, gentle but firm, and I knew we were close to something. The awareness made my stomach twist.
“I’m scared,” I admitted. The words slipped out before I could stop them. They didn’t sound small or fragile—they just were.
Chait didn’t answer right away. He slowed the horse to a stop, ignoring the others as they rode past us, understanding we needed a moment. Chait reached up to tilt my chin toward him, his fingers brushing along my jaw.
He studied me for a long moment, his eyes searching my face. “Of him?”
I shook my head. “Not of Oberon. Of what happens after. Of what I might have to become to stop him.”
“You’re not a thing waiting to be turned into a weapon, mon amour.” His tone softened to a whisper. “You’re still you. You’ll always be you. No matter what you—or we—have to do to defeat him.”
I swallowed hard. “Even if I destroy everything in the process?”
“Then we’ll rebuild it together,” he said simply. “Piece by piece.”
The certainty in his words struck something deep inside me. Chait truly believed that.
Before I could respond, he tilted my head back further and kissed me.
It was slow, deliberate—like he wanted to make sure I understood every word he’d just said without saying anything else at all.
The world shrank to the warmth of his mouth, his familiar scent, and the gentle press of his fingers beneath my chin.
When we finally broke apart, a smile curved onto my lips. “I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much, Chait.”
He rested his forehead against mine, his voice slightly unsteady. “You are everything to me, Maize. I would follow you across every realm, and when our time comes, I’ll follow you into the Spirit realm too. We will never be apart.”
Because we were inevitable.
The moment lingered, soft and perfect, until a familiar voice cut through it.
“Alright, lovebirds!” Zed called from a few feet ahead, his tone dripping with pure amusement. “Are you planning to stop making out long enough to tell us why your magic’s lighting up the damn path?”
It was what?
I snapped my head up, and sure enough, Zed was right. My magic shimmered along the mountain trail ahead, threads of light slithering between the trees before disappearing against the sheer rock face. It wasn’t random. It was deliberately pointing us forward.
“We’re close,” I said quietly. “We need somewhere to put the horses before we go any farther.”
The others nodded, following as I urged our horses through the snow-dusted forest. The air had grown colder as we moved out of the sun, the fog clinging low to the ground and curling around the horses’ legs.
We followed the luminescent trail my magic carved through the pines, the world narrowing to frost-decorated branches and the anticipation of what we would find around the next bend.
Finally, the trees thinned. The path opened into a small clearing at the base of the mountain against a looming wall of rock.
“There,” I said, pointing toward a cluster of boulders tucked beneath a rocky overhang.
It offered enough shelter from the wind to keep the horses safe.
The others dismounted, securing the reins and brushing the frost from the animals’ coats.
The horses snorted and stamped but eventually settled under the blankets we covered them in, as if they somehow understood this was where their part of the journey ended.
“Pip, you coming with?” Philip asked. The little creature was sitting on top of one of the horses, snuggling up like a kitten would.
Instead of answering or moving toward us, his magic shimmered across his coat before expanding out into a bubble around all of our horses…like a shelter.
“Did he just make a house?” I tilted my head curiously.
“Essentially,” Zed murmured. “Well, that’s really fucking cool.” It was and I couldn’t help but dart forward and give Pip a small pet to the top of his head as he purred underneath my fingers.
“Be back soon,” I promised.
From there, we pressed onward on foot. My magic pulsed brighter now, streaks of blue and violet light rippling across the white ground, guiding us to the far side of the clearing. The path wound between two massive pines before curving sharply toward the mountain.
There, half-hidden behind a wall of icicles that might once have been a waterfall, we found it. A narrow, jagged opening cut the mountainside, warm air drifting out in slow, misty tendrils.
Cannon’s hand brushed mine, his eyes catching the dim light as Valerio and Maddox moved ahead to scout the entrance. “Stay by my side,” he murmured.
I squeezed Cannon’s fingers once, my pulse thrumming with equal parts fear and awe, then stepped with him into the mouth of the cave.
The air changed the moment we were inside.
The howling wind vanished as if swallowed whole, replaced by a silence so dense it made my steps slow.
The warmth that drifted from the entrance deepened the farther we went, wrapping around us as my boots scraped against smooth stone that shimmered beneath a thin layer of frost.
Then the dim light around us began to swell.
At first, I thought it was just my magic reflecting against the tunnel walls—but no.
The glow came from the stone itself. Veins of silver and violet light pulsed through the cavern, bioluminescent threads weaving together like the circulatory system of a living being.
The glow brightened with every step we took, as though the mountain were waking up simply because we had arrived.
Cannon trailed close behind me as the others fanned out, their magic flickering faintly through the bond, defensive and alert. Mine, though, had gone quiet. It was buried in my chest, subdued and watchful, leaving behind a hollow unease that crawled beneath my skin.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being observed.
The only thing that kept my focus on moving ahead was the tunnel itself—its impossible beauty and how damn unique it was.
The deeper we went, the more unreal it became.
Pools of water collected in shallow dips along the path, their surfaces perfectly still, untouched by the soft currents of air that moved through the cavern.
When I looked down into them, I didn’t see our reflections.
I saw worlds. Tiny villages of sea creatures swam through brightly colored coral and drifting kelp, these tiny pools somehow supporting an entire ecosystem.
Their depths seemed endless, stretching far beyond the stones they rested in, as though each pool opened into another realm entirely.
There was also the music. A faint melody drifted from somewhere ahead, the sound of harp strings plucked by invisible hands.
“Obviously, this isn’t natural,” Chait murmured from my left.
I didn’t look back. “No. It’s also older than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
We continued forward, the tunnel widening until it no longer felt like a tunnel at all—it felt like a vein carved toward the heart of the world.
The air grew warmer, saturated with a surge of magic so strong it made my fingertips buzz. The sound of rushing water became louder, echoing from ahead, and then—suddenly—the ground beneath my boots shifted from stone to soil.
Light poured in.
The tunnel opened up without warning, and I stumbled forward, one hand shooting out to brace against the rocky wall as my vision adjusted. My breath caught in my throat.
Before us stretched a valley that defied every law of nature I knew.
It was massive, impossibly so, an entire world hidden within the mountain we’d just passed through.
Pale grass rippled across the expanse, glowing faintly beneath the fractured sunlight that filtered from above, untouched by the cold or the snow of the outside world.
The air shimmered with gold and silver motes of magic, drifting lazily like summer snowflakes suspended in time.
We stepped out onto a narrow ledge overlooking it all, and the sight rooted me in place.
At the center of the valley lay a figure.
A colossal form sprawled across the glowing grass, its body tangled in vines and half covered by patches of earth and forest. At first I thought the figure was carved from wood, or maybe ancient stone, but then I saw it.
The slow rise and fall of its chest. The faint ripple of movement beneath the overgrowth.
It was breathing.
Slowly. Deeply. The sound of it was so deep it vibrated across the ground, up through my boots, and settled underneath my skin.
No one spoke. No one even dared to breathe.
My throat went dry. “What…is that?”
None of my mates answered.
The figure’s enormous, pale fingers were buried in the grass, its arm faintly glowing with veins of silver and black. Its face was turned away, features lost to distance, but I didn’t need to see. I felt it.
That same cold rush from my nightmares, from the dreamscape, brushed against my mind. Awe and fear twisted together inside me, impossible to separate, and the undeniable truth sank into my bones.
Oberon.
Then the valley shuddered as cracks tore through the glowing grass, spiderwebbing outward from the figure’s resting place. The air turned acidic, burning at the back of my throat.
“Maize!” Chait’s voice cut through the chaos. He caught my hand, yanking me back just as a section of earth gave way and crumbled into the ravine below.
Dark, electric magic flared across the valley. The light from above bled out of the air as storm clouds gathered above the figure, swirling with unnatural speed.
Ten feet ahead of us, the air thickened—distorting, twisting—until it finally took form.
Zagan’s massive frame filled the space in front of us, his predatory grin as dangerous as ever. Faint silver lines glowed along his throat, pulsing with each slow, confident step he took across the open air. His bottomless black eyes gleamed with power and arrogance.
“You really fucking came,” he said, his voice filled with disbelief that quickly twisted into a dark, amused sneer. He took another step forward, shadows curling around his boots like smoke.
“And because of your stupidity, little bug…” His grin morphed into something malicious. “You’re going to die.”