Chapter 20
Twenty
Aiden
Aiden couldn’t tell how many days he’d been sleeping, or if he’d died and been brought back to life.
Every bone in his body ached like he’d been forged anew, and in his ribcage, his heart was pumping like any beat could be its last. With a groan, he rolled to the side, joints protesting as he scrambled into a sitting position, taking in the fire-lit space.
Rough stone in all directions, including the ground, only a small gap behind the fire—a cave. He was inside a fucking cave.
Holding his growling stomach with one hand, Aiden scrambled to his feet, swaying toward the wall and bracing his other hand there as he swept his gaze across the abandoned fire.
Blankets and used dishes lay in a half-circle around the stone dying embers, informing him that he hadn’t imagined the voices before he’d passed out. Whether he’d imagined the lilac-eyed, antlered beast remained yet to be determined.
With half a thought, he reached for his magic, nearly sighing with relief as a thin layer of frost coated his fingertips.
Whatever this place was, the people who’d found him hadn’t killed him, and they hadn’t tied him up, both good signs that they weren’t intending to harm him. Unless they hadn’t expected him to wake up while they were gone.
Aiden took a careful step closer to the fireplace, looking for something that could be used as a weapon. His magic hadn’t fully recovered, as if it would slip the way his physical strength threatened to slip.
There, in the folds of a rumpled blanket, an abandoned fork sat, waiting for him.
With two slow strides, Aiden was there, picking it up and sliding it into the empty scabbard at his belt. Then he limped toward the cave mouth, determined to orient himself by the positions of the stars high up in the night sky.
He was about halfway there when a deep, compelling voice rumbled through the cave. “Not go he must,” it demanded.
Aiden froze, his magic icing over his palms as he slowly turned around to assess the threat—
And nearly fell on his ass at the sight of a creature so tall it nearly hit its head in the cave, high enough to fit four men stacked upon each other. Its very lion-like and antlered head.
The breath left Aiden’s lungs. “What the fuck—”
“Not speak in such unworthy manners he must.” The creature stomped its paw, lowering its head like a bull ready to charge.
“What in the Guardians’ names are you?”
Oh, Aiden knew what he was seeing; he just didn’t want to believe that the monsters from myths and legends were real—and that one of them was standing right in front of him, measuring him like it was still wondering whether it should tear him apart or merely run him through with the sharp ends of its antlers.
“Not ask such stupid questions he shall,” the creature grumbled, its voice not coming from its maw, but somehow projecting straight into Aiden’s head. “Open his eyes he shall.”
“My eyes are open,” Aiden objected, wondering if he looked as stupid as he felt as he gawked at the creature—the leonthor.
“Smart boy he is.” Funny enough, the leonthor’s mock praise drew a smile upon Aiden’s face. “What doing all on his own in the mountains is he?”
Aiden swallowed. He’d been prepared to fight rebels or to die from infection, but this—
“I got injured during a fight.” It was perhaps the vaguest answer he could possibly give, because the mountains were full of dangers. Let the creature make of it what it would.
The leonthor crinkled its nose. “Weak he is.”
“Hey, that’s no reason to be rude.” Even if he might not survive it, Aiden insisted, “Instead of interrogating me, why don’t you help me? I mean, you seem to own this place, so it has to be in your power to help me.”
Maybe the beast would let him live if he appealed to its vanity.
With a heavy thud, the leonthor stomped its paw again. “Not afraid he is. Acknowledge we must that.” Tilting its massive head, it took a step forward, sniffing at Aiden. “Of our Flame he smells. The injuries our Flame has given him?”
Glancing down along his body, Aiden noticed his blood-caked shirt and a cut in his pant leg.
He couldn’t give away what he knew about Lory.
Perhaps the creature’s request wasn’t about a Flame, as in a fire magic wielder, but about actual fire.
“What flame do you mean?” It was an effort to keep his voice casual, especially when vertigo was assaulting him with every moment he kept on his feet.
“Our Flame,” the leonthor repeated, as if that would clarify everything.
“I don’t know what that means.” Aiden leaned against the wall and sank to the ground, where he blew out a slow breath, head lowered to gather his thoughts.
When he looked up again, the leonthor was towering over him, its pair of massive paws right in front of his boots and its head so high up he had to crane his neck.
Leaning his head against the cave wall, Aiden closed his eyes. “Are you about to kill me? Then do it. Everyone already believes I’m dead anyway.”
Aiden wasn’t sure leonthors could frown, but it appeared a lot like that particular one was indeed frowning as it sank back on its haunches, then flopped onto the ground, crossing its front paws and resting its head on top of them, eyes level with Aiden’s.
“Not stupid we are. Seen him out there we have.” It sniffed again, as if reminding both itself and Aiden that it could smell something on him. “Elory, the Flame. Died for her he has.”
Aiden’s breath caught in his throat. “You were there?”
The leonthor grunted its confirmation. “Followed her we have since the moment we have felt her enter the mountains. Waited for her we have for thousands of years.”
When Aiden took a good look at the creature’s face, and when it didn’t bare its needle-sharp teeth, he was almost convinced he’d survive yet another day. “What do you mean, you’ve been waiting for thousands of years?”
He’d read about the leonthors in the Ashthorn library, had even made notes in some of them for later to go back to and dig deeper.
But he hadn’t truly believed that the stories about the leonthors were true: Banned by Ulder’s ancestors to live beneath the mountains until the end of time.
A verdict of horror for creatures of the sky.
Out of their own volition, his eyes darted to the leonthor’s side and the scars where its wings might one day have been.
“What happened to you?”
The leonthor cocked its head without lifting it. “Only one question we grant him. Which question the Flame’s friend answered wants?”
Not that Aiden could make demands, but—“Aren’t they one and the same question if you think about it?”
With a growl, the leonthor flicked its tail—its double tail that reminded Aiden of a snake wrapped in a horse’s tail.
“Good with words the Flame’s friend is.” The creature considered him for a heart-stopping moment.
“Eat him for dinner we wanted to, because he has killed the Criu in these mountains. But his life for our Flame given he has and saved his own that has.”
It wasn’t an answer to the question Aiden had asked, but it was reassuring to know he was no longer on the menu.
“I consider Lory a sister,” he merely said. In his mind, he added, Even when I’ve disappointed her and she probably won’t want anything to do with me again. Not that he could ever contact her. As much as the world out there was concerned, Aiden Bellmont was dead.
“What to disappoint our Flame he has done?”
Aiden cringed into the wall as he realized the leonthor must have read his mind.
“If our trust he wants to maintain, tell us he must what he has done to disappoint our Flame.”
All right then…
What was the harm in confessing his sins to an ancient, mythical creature who could kill him at a whim?
“I was there when her brother was killed, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.
” He didn’t add that he hadn’t known Lory back then, or that he hadn’t thought he’d ever see her again.
Neither was an excuse for his shortcomings and lack of judgement that night, when he’d watched the Gargoyles box them in and back them into a corner.
For a long while, the leonthor just stared at him with large, lilac eyes, judgement passing in silence.
When it spoke again, it was in a softer tone, with a hint of sorrow. “Three thousand years it has been since taken they have our freedom.” The whole creature seemed to expand with an audible breath. “Three thousand years since my kind has been locked in these caves all over the Amrin Mountains.”
Aiden’s heart beat so fast he could no longer feel the various pains in his body.
This was huge. Leonthors had been believed extinct for at least two thousand years, which was a likely timespan for a people to collectively forget a species had ever existed.
This wasn’t written anywhere in the books he’d studied, only that the leonthors disappeared with the first war won against the Flames.
Why hadn’t the kings of the past just killed the creatures? Why trap them in caves?
“Told I have been that the Flames put an imagery of that war into their former palace in a city now called Dunai. Of the days when the old kings learned that our kind killed couldn’t be, only banished.”
Aiden was torn from his thoughts so thoroughly he almost grabbed for the fork on his belt. When he gathered his composure once more, the leonthor lifted its head and grumbled a noncommittal sound.
“If you mean the glass panel in Ashthorn’s mess hall, no one actually believes this is a historical war scene. They think it’s merely ornamental.”
The leonthor leaped to its paws, stomping over the blankets by the fire as it sniffed the empty bowls.
“No longer believe in us the people of Brestolya do. Our Flame we need to be freed of this cage.” It pawed the ground, growling at the walls, then at the gap allowing a view of the night sky.
“When you say our Flame… What do you mean?” It was a risk, asking another question when the creature was obviously having a moment, but Aiden needed to know. Maybe it would be the last time he heard about Lory.