Chapter 24 #2
Red stained his cheeks. “I mean, it’s just what you said at the bridge…he doesn’t remember. I asked him, he said it was like a fog had his mind and there were two lines hooked into him. One was deep green, warm and peaceful and offered him a place of safety and rest.”
I swallowed. “Do I want to ask?”
He didn’t give me a choice. “And the other…that one held fire and ice, and was woven with shadows and gold, like walking through the darkest hours, to find the sweetest reward. That one he said he knew was you, that the chaos you hold within yourself, the contradictions they…they call to him.”
My heart was pounding way too fast for the little bit of running we’d done. “But he didn’t hear what I said.”
“Does it matter? I heard you claim him. Do you love him?”
As much as we were on a time crunch, I knew that this answer couldn’t be given while we ran. “We are bound, him and I. Not just because of the bond he placed on me, but because of something…before. Love isn’t…” My knee-jerk reaction was to say no, that was ridiculous.
What the hell did I know about love?
I loved my father. That was unquestionable.
Solid. A bone-deep certainty that had survived death, memory loss, and whatever fracture of existence had spit me back into this world.
I loved my soul sister. That bond had carried across lifetimes, across erasure of my mind.
Someone had tried to carve her out of me and failed.
That was love.
So, what was this?
I thought about losing Harrison and my guts twisted. Losing Rana, or Lucky, or Sorrow—each name tugged at something tender inside my chest. I would bleed for them. I would stand between them and any monster that dared breathe wrong in their direction.
But when I let my mind go where it didn’t want to…
When I imagined Veyyr gone—
My fist came up instinctively, pressing into the traitorous region of my chest as if I could physically contain the ache there.
It wasn’t the same as the others.
It was worse.
And better.
He was arrogant. Overbearing. Certain he was right even when the rest of us were glaring at him. He carried his power like a crown and sometimes wielded it like a weapon. He could be callous in his decisions, cutting away weakness without hesitation.
I had seen him execute Isla without flinching.
I had watched him choose the hard path without apology.
He infuriated me.
And yet—
I had also seen the way his eyes gentled when he looked my way, when he thought I didn’t see.
The careful way he carried me when I was injured, as if I might break.
The quiet almost-smile that curved his mouth when he thought no one was watching.
The moment his guard slipped and I caught the weight he carried alone.
I had felt him hesitate before touching me. As if I were the dangerous one.
He let me see him.
Not all the time. Not easily.
But enough.
Enough that I knew the arrogance was armor. The control was survival. The callousness was choice made from necessity, not cruelty.
Enough that I understood him.
And he understood me.
The thought of losing him didn’t feel like losing a friend, a fellow fighter.
It would be like losing a limb.
No. Not even that.
It would be like losing the part of myself that had only started breathing again because he existed and I’d found him.
“All of you,” I said softly, my voice rough with the weight of it. “I love all of you. A family I didn’t know I needed.”
But my eyes found his when I said it.
And he knew the piece that I didn’t say.
I grabbed him and pulled him into my arms, holding tighter than I meant to. For a heartbeat he went still, like he didn’t quite trust the gesture. Then his arms came around me, strong and sure.
A small hiccup slipped out of him. “Me too.” And that broke something open in my chest in the best possible way as he clung to me and said words I didn’t expect.
“He thinks he’s going to die.”
I stiffened. “Did he tell you that?”
Harrison pulled back and swiped at his face. “He’s my brother. I know him. And I thought it would happen and then you followed him back to camp after the veilrunner and everything changed. I…you can save him, Mallory. I know you can.”
No pressure.
But at the same time, I felt the same way. “I won’t give up, Harrison. Not on your brother, not on you, not on Rana or Lucky.”
“Sorrow!” Sorrow swooped by and smacked both of us with the tips of his wings.
“You either,” I laughed. “Come on, Harrison, I have a snake lady I need to talk to.”
It took us another fifteen minutes to find a cave that looked like something a gorgon might inhabit. I mean, if I’d been a guessing girl, this was the place.
Arcane symbols, snakes and Latin or maybe Greek phrases were etched around the edge. It wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. She might as well have put a sign out front, declaring herself.
Sorrow flew close then cawed and fell backward through the air. “Nope. Snake!”
I grabbed him as he tumbled through and thrust him at Harrison. “Yes, I know, stay with Harrison, okay? Watch over him.”
The big bird shuddered. For being so brave in so many situations, he really feared the snakes. Not that I could blame him, they were dangerous. And they seemed to like eating birds.
I set Harrison and Sorrow up against the cliff base a good fifty feet away from the cave opening.
Positioning myself so I stood in the center of the caves entrance, I decided on knocking first. Manners, I needed to have them at their very best for dealing with these old school monsters. New school monsters, it was all about fighting and killing.
Old school…it was a mix. Fighting, killing, negotiation, and networking. Weird.
“Hello, Euryale. Are you here? I bring news from your sister, Stheno.” The sand beneath my feet began to shift and I forced myself to hold my ground.
I’d been thinking on how to word things, wanting to sound more like Stheno than myself.
“I brought a peace offering, to show my intent is one of barter, and knowledge exchanged.”
The sand shifting below my feet slowed and a deep, sonorous voice rolled from within the cave. “Continue speaking. And understand that I can hear your lies, and you will pay for them with your life. I don’t like liars.”
I cleared my throat, kept my hands at my sides though I itched to grab a weapon. “Your sister is alive, and well. She healed me when I would have died.”
Silence. “Why…would she do that?”
I knew that Harrison might be able to hear me, but it didn’t matter. “I took a death blade meant for her.”
The darkness of the cave lightened, and a scaled hand reached out, crooking fingers, beckoning me to enter. “Enough yelling, come inside I wish to hear this tale.”
Tale.
As if it weren’t true?
I didn’t look at Harrison or Sorrow. I needed them to stay where they were and not think I was in trouble.
Taking a breath, I stepped over the threshold of the cave and the darkness was no longer.
Brilliant white light blazed from…flashlights?
They hung from above, dangling at different lengths, like a homemade chandelier that covered the entire ceiling.
I wondered if they were powered by the rare batteries that could still be found, or if they were magically charged.
I was betting on the second.
“Wow.”
“You…like my decorating?”
I hadn’t even looked at the gorgon, not yet. There had to be a thousand flashlights, maybe more. It was a cool effect. “I never would have thought to use flashlights like this, you must have collected them for a long time.”
Only then did I take my gaze from the ceiling to the ancient monster in front of me. She had the same build as Stheno, but her scales were more fish-like than snake, and her skin was lightly tinted blue, her darker blue hair woven in tiny braids that faded to white at the tips.
Striking, just like her sister.
She smiled, showing off sharp fangs. “Yes, I collected them all myself and am still collecting.” Her eyes went to my smaller pack at my waist. “I don’t suppose you have one on you?”
I touched the bag. “I do…would that be a sufficient item to trade with you, for your wisdom on a problem I have?”
She laughed and curled up on her coils, settling herself into the center of them. “You saved my sister; you are family now. The flashlight would be lovely, but I will do what I can to help you even without it.”
The shock must have been obvious on my face. “My sister didn’t tell you, did she?”
“Tell me…she only said that you resided here on the coast, and that you might be a source of help should I get stuck again.”
Euryale clicked her nails together and let out a heavy sigh.
“You won her over, little…Tracker. She is the tough one of the three of us to convince to help.” She motioned for me to sit on a water smoothed rock.
I sat down and stared up at her. Stheno said I could trust her, and I trusted Stheno.
The cynic in me said I was being a damn fool to trust another monster after Python.
“What is it you are struggling with?”
I went over the need to get across the water, the issues with the storms, the creatures of the deep, and then the Undines desire for Veyyr.
And then I gave her my plan. I deliberately chose a plan that wasn’t going to work, one that she would say was impossible and then she would give me a better one. One that wasn’t impossible.
She leaned toward me. “You think you can convince a dragon to carry you and your friends across the Sea of Magic, to the Witch Islands?”
I swallowed hard, her breath reeked of rotting fish. “I don’t see another way across.”
“Hmm.”
I waited, watching her mull the issue over.
“That is a…bold plan, I would expect nothing less from a child with your bloodlines. So many bits of magic floating around in you, each one just waiting for you to pick and choose.”
Blinking, I stared at her as the words flipped and bounced around my head. “I’m sorry, but could you repeat that? Did you say magic?”
“Oh you heard me, your head just doesn’t want it yet that’s fine.” She waved her long fingers at me, the joints moving in ways that finger joints should not. “There is one dragon you should seek out. A child of a blue dragon, and a red.”
“Is it purple?”
“Well played.” She laughed. “Yes, he is, but do not say that to him, he gets quite offended.” Euryale turned and the sound of wood and…bones reached me before she spun back to me. A dark wooden bowl made of driftwood by the wear on it, and inside the bowl were…bones etched with different marks.
“Let us cast the bones, to see who should go with you across the water, Tracker. Because while the dragon could carry you all, there is the case of, should he? How best to survive the Witch Islands? With all your friends? On your own? Hmm?”
Her hands moved in a circular motion, first counterclockwise, three times, then clockwise, the bones rattling with a steady rumble against the wood, before she cast them at my feet.
As they flipped and danced, finally settling, I noticed one marked with a bolt of lightning, facing up.
All the others were turned so the symbols were down. Blank.
“You have the one you said the elementals wanted still with you?” She touched the single bone, and it crackled with energy as if the lightning was trapped inside of it.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then that is the one who must go with you—”
“Is he going to die?” Those five words blurted out of me before I could catch them.
Her eyebrows shot up. “You fear that? Everyone dies, little Tracker.”
“I know, but, he says…that it has been foreseen that this quest will end in his death. That it’s been seen by too many to deny it but it doesn’t seem…” I didn’t know if the word was right or fair or what.
The gorgon snatched up all the bones and rattled them once more, only this time, she held the bowl in front of my face. “Breathe on them. Because you are the one factor I would lay all my scales on that he did not consider.”
I blew out across the bowl and several of the bone pieces flipped, even though I didn’t blow hard enough to disturb a single candle flame.
Euryale rolled the bowl again, the same movements and then she tossed them to the ground. I fully expected a few more turns, for the bones to show something only they were all blank again.
“Interesting.” Euryale muttered under her breath, her hand ghosting over the top of the bones. Then she looked to the bowl and laughed. “Well, well.”
It took a great deal for me not to jerk the bowl from her and look. “What is it saying?”
“That his survival will fully depend on you.” Her eyes lifted and she tipped the bowl to face me. Two symbols within—the one with the lightning bolt that represented Veyyr, and the other I assumed represented me, though I didn’t understand it. A single drop of water. “That’s—”
“You, yes. You can save him, but it will not be easy, he may even unintentionally fight to die because he believes it is his destiny so strongly.” She scooped up her bones, set them in the bowl and then set them in her lap with a sigh.
“You Tracker types are always so interesting. Chaos and action, and no small amount of luck for the situations you put yourself in.” She grinned.
“Perhaps I will peek from my cave to see if you succeed in convincing the purple-not-purple dragon to fly you across.”
I stood and nodded feeling the time slip through my fingers.
The gorgon’s caves did not behave when it came to the passage of time.
“Thank you. While it isn’t very big, the light is bright,” I pulled the flashlight from my hip bag and held it out to her.
The handle was bright green, and the beam of light was indeed very bright.
Euryale clapped her hands together. “Oh. It’s lovely! I never thought you’d actually give it to me for a single reading!”
She moved quickly, climbing to her ceiling to hang her new treasure. “I should go, I have to climb the—”
“Cliffs of Insanity, storm the castle, rescue the princess, I know, I know! You kids have fun now!”
She didn’t even look at me as I backed away. Not that I thought she’d attack me, but more like she might try to grab and hug me. Stheno was right, her sister was…different. But I liked her too.
The bright light of the cave gave way to the sombre gray of the afternoon skies that had only darkened further. And gotten colder.
That cut through me first. “Witch’s tits that’s cold.” I hurried down to where I’d left Harrison and Sorrow. “How long was I gone?”
Harrison stared at me. “You went in and right back out. Like less than a minute.”
“Good, let’s go.”
“Wait, did you get an answer?”
“Yeah, and nobody is going to like it. Not even me.”