Chapter Thirty-Six
Fallyn
The passage beyond opened into a wide chamber, which was thankfully much taller.
I couldn’t see the ceiling, and I refused to look upwards, knowing that every time I did, my head swam and the nausea spiked.
Not to mention, if I saw a spider, I would never recover.
Ash glanced over, as if wondering if I’d make him burn the whole thing down too.
I tightened my lips, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a scowl.
Until an incessant itch had me cringing and clawing at the nape of my neck in a panic. He couldn’t hide his huff of laughter as he turned away.
Prick.
But something about this new dynamic had me smiling.
The torchlight spilled across the walls, diverting our attention. Ash slowed to a stop.
The entire chamber, floor to the shadows that enveloped the ceiling, was covered in depictions of war. The entire pantheon against a single being, crowned and ensconced in light from above, reigning over a dominion of fire at his feet.
The Morningstar.
“Hades take me,” I breathed a curse. “Ash, look at this.” The artistry was ancient, in a long-dead language lost to time.
Ash’s face hardened as he stepped into the chamber.
“These symbols….” His hand hovered over two figured locked in a deadly feud, one wreathed in lightning, the other in shadow.
Zeus. And there were three gods I knew of that could wield shadows.
Those who reigned over death—Hades and the Morningstar.
“This is Olympian script. Centuries old. No, older even.”
I squinted hard at the mural, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Time stopped, the chamber held its breath, standing on ceremony as I stepped up to examine the wall where the shadowed figures towered all the way to the ceiling. The torchlight flickered over Ash’s pensive expression.
I frowned. “This one,” I pointed to the large depiction with symbols written beneath, “is different from the others.”
His answer came as a growl, low and full of loathing. “The Morningstar.”
“The new god,” I spat reproachfully. “It looks like there was a war. Long ago. A great battle between the Morningstar and the Olympians.”
“There was.” Ash’s expression was unreadable, but flickers of wrath were evident in the tight pressing of his lips.
There was something grating in his voice, some old hurt that hadn’t healed.
He shook his head, dispelling the illusion.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this rendition of events. ”
“Are you saying the gods may not have deserted us?” I turned to him in horror. “They were murdered?”
It was unthinkable. How do you even kill a god? They were immortal.
Curiosity tugged me, a spell all its own, compelling me around the room. I stepped closer, my fingers running the edges of the stones, searching for answers amongst the unfamiliar symbols. They shimmered against the torchlight and I wondered if they were reacting to our magic like the torches did.
“Wait,” Ash commanded, his tone suddenly sharp.
I shifted my weight, to turn to him—
—a soft click.
The sound was small, unassuming, but it cleaved through the air like the boom of thunder. I froze.
“Fallyn!” Ash’s warning came too late. The magic of the room had awakened. From some cranny hidden gods knew where, a mechanism shifted, a blade shot out, gleaming menacingly in the torchlight.
No, not a blade.
A long, vicious dart.
I gasped, too slow. I closed my eyes, readying myself for the nasty bite of pain.
Ash moved faster than a human should be capable of, knocking me to the ground in a whoosh. The dart streaked through the air and buried itself into Ash’s side.
It made no sound, but the grunt of pain Ash released echoed through the chamber like the tolling of a bell. Ash staggered, his lidding eyes finding mine. His hand braced against the wall, eyes widened in shock.
It was just a dart. I’d seen him take worse hits than that. I was about to say so, when his knees buckled.
“Ash!” I scrambled up from where he’d knocked me over, reaching for him. I pulled the dart out of his side, my breath leaving me when the needle point was covered in blood. He caught my wrist, forcing me to drop the dart with a clatter.
“Don’t.”
A pulse reverberated in my mind. Familiar. Lethal, reminding me of a moment in time I’d rather forget.
Poison.
“The dart was poisoned,” I whispered, Ash’s condition making sense. His eyes were shut, but black veins had already begun to appear, spreading from his eyes over his face. He was able to whisper two disjointed words of warning through the grinding of his jaw.
A plea.
“Trap.” A shudder. “Run.”
“I’m not leaving you.” I blinked through the haze fear held me in.
“Old poison. God killer.”
“God killer?” Only one kind of poison according to ancient myths could kill a god….
Hydra venom.
As if satisfied with the introduction, the poison pulsed again insidiously in my mind. I could feel it spreading with each pass of his heart. Was it the magic of this place, was it a curse, or was this poison sentient?
Hydra venom had no cure. Not even for the divine.
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Ash, don’t leave me.
Fight it,” I begged between sobs. “Don’t you dare leave me here.
Who’s going to kill the spiders?” He didn’t answer.
Or maybe he couldn’t. His jaw clenched as the color drained from his sweat-streaked face, his veins darkening beneath his skin.
Something snapped in me as Ash’s consciousness ebbed. Possibly my sanity. Possibly my inhibitions. Ash was dying because he took a hit that was supposed to be for me. I took his dagger, readying myself for something I wasn’t even sure was possible.
“Ash,” I whispered through sobs as a plan took root in me. “Forgive me.”
I slashed the dagger where the dart made contact, cringing as the blood welled black and oozed from the wound too thickly to be normal. I spoke to the poison directly, feeling a strange smugness. “He’s mine. You can’t have him.”
In my mind, an answering chuckle rang hollow.
Placing my hands on either side of the gash I inflicted, careful not to touch the blackening wound, I fought through the fuzziness of my mind. Poisons may not be from the earth, but whatever compound its bound to usually is. If I could force it out…
Through the wave of nausea, my magic latched onto the poison, contacting it, gripping it, and pulled.
Ash screamed, an agonized wail that made my throat close around another cry.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I breathed over and over again as I drew the poison out.
It gushed from his wound like ink spilling from a quill.
The world spun , my magic faltered, making that whispered laugh arise again, louder this time.
A flash of pain behind my eyes had me biting down hard of a shriek of my own.
Still, I gathered my focus again, forcing threads of my power to pull at the poison snaking through Ash’s veins like living death.
I screamed again, not in pain, but in fury. “He’s mine!” My magic surged again, responding to my will. My skull pounded in tandem with my heart. More black poison sizzled as it was forced out of Ash’s wound, corroding the stone below.
Then it fought back.
It turned, every bit as sentient as I’d suspected, oozing towards me, forcing me backwards. I gasped, my magic faltering.
He’s mine, a voice taunted. Already he goes to the beyond realms.
“You have no claim over him,” I seethed as the venom tore at the skin of my knees where it pooled around me. “Now leave him!”
The air pulsed and thickened as my strength waned. Shadows roiled off Ash in waves twining and twisting across the walls, his darkness colliding in his unconsciousness with the green light of my will. The poison screamed as it was pulled free, black tendrils spilling from the wound like smoke.
Ash heaved a breath just as the last of the poison was yanked from his body. With a startled gasp, I hurtled the poison to the other side of the room where it splattered unceremoniously, sizzling the stone with an angry hiss.
I had to get him away from it. I had no idea if the poison were capable of movement without a host, but I wasn’t taking chances. Struggling to my feet, I hauled him with all my remaining strength until we were at the far side of the chamber.
I collapsed to my knees. With my back against the wall, I sagged.
In a last-ditch effort to keep him comfortable, I dragged his head into my lap protectively.
Fighting the pain exploding behind my eyes and the creeping nausea, I summoned a mound of dirt and flowers around us, a barrier between the poison and us in case it could move.
The flowers and dirt would absorb a great deal of the caustic, cursed substance in case I succumbed to my weakness.
One moment I was thanking the fates that color had returned to Ash’s face. His breathing was easier. Lighter. The next there was nothing but darkness.
POV ASH
The world returned in pieces. Sound first, then pain. Like the darkness hadn’t released me so much as it discarded me. Spat on me.
My awareness seeped through to reality like water through the cracks. And I was acutely aware that everything felt scorched and charred to the point of living up to my namesake. Ash. My veins throbbed, feeling as though I had no blood in them, instead the friction was making me wish I hadn’t woken.
This was worse than waking from the sleeping curse, which felt like a lifting haze that left a visceral ache in its wake.
Except when I looked up, my mind blanked.
Fallyn.
Her features were softened by the flickering torchlight. That amber and gardenia scent was still notable even through the damp, moldy surroundings, and her warmth seeped into me. Thawed me.
She was exhausted and dirty, her eyes fallen shut.
Her hair created a curtain around us, shrinking the world until only the two of us remained.
Her hand twined in my own hair, as if she’d feared my disappearing in front of her, even as her strength had deserted her.
We weren’t trapped underground in a forgotten temple. We just were.
I should be dead. I shuddered at the memory of the poison’s burn, the dissent into darkness. I remembered begging her to run, before it got her too.
Something twisted deep in my gut like a blow. Gratitude. Shock. Something unfamiliar had that my chest aching.
Then there was no pain. Had I been conscious, I would have assumed I’d died.
And I would have. Had she not emptied herself to keep me here.
I stared up at her, throat tight. For a long moment I did nothing but stare at her, enraptured.
Why? I’d been so many things to her, not one of them worthy of her mercy.
Yet here she was, clinging to me, protecting me even under the spell of exhaustion.
Nobody had ever stayed for me. Not even my supposed family.
Another bitter laugh. I couldn’t even say I blamed them.
Everything I’d ever loved turned to ash in my mouth, and she still reached into the shadows and pulled me from them.
She risked everything to save my life, even when I begged her to run.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
A bitter laugh tried to rise but sharply died in my throat, breaking into something softer. More strangled.
“You foolish girl,” I murmured to her, my voice raspy and raw.
“What have you done to me?” My hand betrayed me, reaching up to tuck her raven hair behind her ear, away from her heart-shaped face.
Her skin was pale as marble, cool, clammy, and I found my heart rate picking up until my fingers found her pulse, thin and thready. But there.
Something in me shifted as I stared at her. Something that hurt. Something loud. Insistent. Something I couldn’t kill. It was my ruin, and her name was Fallyn Ravenshade, and she would haunt me until the very end of my existence.
And she would have been better off had she let me die.
Because I would haunt her in turn.