Chapter 13
brace for an impact that never comes.
Instead, I’m falling.
My brain can’t catch up as the world reels around me. I see churning darkness and an intermittent light fading from view as I plummet down, down, down, on and on.
Could this be the fall into the underworld? My stomach swoops and the earth narrows around me, pinching until I feel like a cork being screwed into a bottle. I hurtle faster and faster, spinning aerial somersaults as the darkness consumes everything.
And then I slam into a wall of water.
The impact blasts my senses to oblivion. I can’t tell which way I’ve landed. Something vital is broken. My ribs? My pelvis? Pain. There’s so much pain.
I choke, and my lungs fill with water that burns like a flame. The current drags me—up? Down? I can’t orient myself. I can’t move, I can’t breathe.
Then something seizes my shirt. A hand. It pulls, hard, and some inner voice screams: SWIM, LYRIA. SWIM NOW OR DIE.
I kick, and every move sends spasms of pain through me. My bones feel like rubber. But I struggle, thrashing; the blackness pitches, then all at once the world explodes around my ears as I slam through the surface.
Air.
I gasp the deepest breath I’ve ever taken.
“Hold on,” someone growls.
I know that voice. I think I hate that voice.
Arms like tree trunks clamp around me. I’m being dragged. We hit pebbles—the shore. Cygnus pulls me onto rough terrain, then collapses.
I roll and vomit until hacking consumes me. When it’s over, I lie still, trembling.
“Are you okay?” he pants.
It’s all I can do to shake my head a millimeter.
I’m sinking deep within myself, allowing the Talent to take over, to rush through my limbs and heal what’s been broken.
I don’t know how long it takes, but the healing exhausts me.
So much harder to fix things than break them.
Seconds pass, filled with Cygnus’s tense and shallow breathing.
“Lyria?” Cygnus drops beside me. “Lyria, talk to me.”
Gradually, the pain eases. The fire in my blood recedes as the magic ebbs from my system, until finally, I can sit up and examine my surroundings.
We’ve fallen into an underground lake. The only light comes from a tiny shaft in the ceiling, some inestimably vast distance above.
Blinking up at the opening, I’m reminded of the stained glass window in the chapel where I met Davina.
It has the same greenish glow, except the light behind it shimmers and swirls.
The glow is unlike sunlight, or firelight; it’s something else entirely, something I only recognize because it puts form to what I have always felt flowing through my veins.
The light comes from magic.
The cavern is huge. You could put the whole of Rodrick’s castle inside and the tallest tower still wouldn’t scrape the ceiling above us.
As I tear my eyes from the portal, they adjust, and the otherworldly landscape clarifies.
What I initially mistook for pitch-blackness is actually a mesmerizing mixture of dark purples, blues, and greens.
The stalagmites tower higher than Ironwood trees, some bedecked with pale bioluminescent fungi.
I look behind at the lake. In order to reach the portal we just fell from, we’ll need to cross the lake, climb a boulder field, and then traverse a rocky cliffside. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.
Where the hell are we?
“Lyria? Are you all right?” Cygnus asks.
I blink, coming back to my body.
“Lyria. I need you to answer. Can you hear me?”
I pounce. “WHAT—IN—THE—ETERNAL—HELL—” I hit any part of him I can reach. Head. Shoulders. It’s too dark to see clearly, so I whale aimlessly. “WAS—THAT?”
Confusion and reactive fury blast through me, and my primal self takes over—that small and scrappy part of me that’s determined to stay alive. Cygnus is a threat. He’s always been a threat. He is the enemy, that desperate inner part of me roars.
“I can explain!” Cygnus seizes my wrists. “Lyria, listen to me!”
“You tried to kill me!” I struggle, but he’s so much stronger. I’m not thinking clearly enough to listen. I’m saturated with panic, terrified by his much larger body wrestling against mine, even as he’s trying to calm me.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you!” he shouts. “I didn’t know how to explain! There wasn’t another way!”
“Another way for what?”
“TO PROVE YOU’RE AN ELF!”
Silence.
I’ve stopped struggling. My body is frozen. Realizing Cygnus is still holding my wrists, I yank back, lurching away. We’re both breathing hard.
None of this makes sense. How does falling through a tree prove anything? Questions assail me one after the other.
“How…” I struggle to make my voice function. “How long have you known?”
“I had my suspicions from the beginning,” Cygnus explains quickly.
“The signs were there. You cover your ears every day, you grew up outwall. When you asked about the wellsprung flowers, I was almost positive. I’ve only known one other person who knew how to distill grizzlefoot or meadowblood, and that was Ragglestaff. Also an Elf.”
“Ragglestaff?” I choke. This is all too confusing.
But Cygnus is no longer looking at me. “If you could do me a favor and pull yourself together, I’m also going to need you to prove your Talent in about ten seconds.”
My heart skips. He also knows about my Talent?
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather not die today.”
His delivery is ashen, but there’s a charged current beneath it. Cygnus is scared.
I follow his gaze, straining to make out what is approaching from the shadows. Faint clicking rises from the void—what I thought was water dripping on the rocks. But as I track Cygnus’s eyeline, my stomach plummets with dread….
It’s not dripping. It’s tiny appendages, tapping against stone.
Emerging from the darkness are dozens of giant, bone-white scorpions.
Panic flames my skin as I recall what Cygnus told me about the skakabri that stung Daisy…
that it was a juvenile version of a much larger underworld daemon.
He spoke like he’s had experience with them.
I didn’t even question where he’d gotten the antivenom or why he had it.
I guess now I know. It’s because he’s fought them before…down here.
A curse slides between Cygnus’s teeth, and he draws a sword. My hand drops to my belt, and I’m almost overcome with panic until Cygnus hands me my dagger.
The skakabri approach quickly, some crawling up the walls, others skittering toward us across the stony ground.
“Should we go to the lake?” I ask.
“No,” Cygnus shoots back instantly. “They can swim.”
My head whips toward him. “How do you know?”
“They just can, okay?”
We slide almost automatically into a back-to-back stance. “Great. Absolutely fantastic,” I snap irritably. “Any other ideas?”
“Don’t die?” Cygnus offers.
The nearest skakabri lunges, pincers snapping.
I dodge, scrambling as its stinger whips around lightning fast to find me.
A second is almost on top of us. I try to dodge them again, but they’re too quick.
The first monster’s pincers snap around my leg, and I let out a shriek of agony.
There is venom in their saliva—I can feel it.
Another cry behind me punctuates my scream. Cygnus is hit, too.
The self-restraint I’ve been clinging to shatters. My Talent has become a beastly thing, rioting for my survival. It blasts free from the white-hot coil in my spine, expanding and burning away all trepidation as it rises. Euphoria takes over. I will survive this. Death won’t win today.
I point my palms toward the daemons and unleash my power.
With the Moragorion, it was slow. That first attempt was marked by trepidation. Not this time. This time, the power comes roaring. There’s no chance to isolate organs or pick through the invisible tapestry to pluck a precise thread. My will is simple.
Destroy.
The skakabri let out a horrific, high-pitched, strangled sound, and their bodies torque with a crack that pitches my stomach. They spasm as they crumple to the cavern floor. But there are two more behind them, with another three on their tail.
My head whips toward Cygnus, who’s managed to bring down two and is dancing with a third, hacking at its legs until he leaps to dodge the stinger that slams into the earth, right where he stood seconds before.
I summon another wave of power, channeling it through my back and arms and palms. Then, as a raw, animalistic sound tears from my throat, I aim it toward the next wave.
More strangled squeaking. Several explode this time, à la the Moragorion.
Exhaustion forces me to my knees.
Never have I drawn so much power at once. Stars pop into my vision, and I blink at the remaining scorpions. Two more rush toward us, scrambling down from the walls.
I hear a thunk and whirl toward Cygnus. He’s clutching his arm as the sword clatters to his feet. The scorpion he’s been fighting scuttles around to bite again.
I reach for my Talent, and it is like scraping the bottom of an empty sack. Nothing. Blood rushes to my head; I feel myself teetering on the edge of consciousness.
NO! that internal voice, that primal part of me, roars. Desperately, it battles to keep me awake. I claw at my power like I’m digging into frozen ground with my fingernails. That voice cries again: IT WILL NOT END LIKE THIS.
I lunge for Cygnus’s sword.
The nearest scorpion strikes at the same moment, but I’m faster. I seize the handle and swing the sword overhead. It connects, slicing the scorpion’s head off. But its tail swings, clipping my shoulder and knocking me to the cavern floor. I crash headfirst, blasting with pain upon impact.
One more. Just one more.
Back turned, I can hear the monster scuttling toward me. I can smell its awful stench, like carrion and metal, infecting my every labored breath….
My eyes fall shut, and I brace for the blow that will take my life. My last thoughts soar to Finn. How he looked in the garden, the sunlight against his hair, his laugh, the rough feel of his hands…
I hear a crack and prepare for pain and darkness. But neither comes.
Something heavy thuds behind me.
Then silence.
Slowly, disbelieving, I lift my head. Cygnus stands over a fallen skakabri, a jagged rock buried in the monster’s head.
His gaze meets mine. Blue fire in the darkness.
“I’m so sorry,” he mumbles.
And then he collapses.