Chapter 40
Dianna
M ountains far larger and jagged than I’d ever seen rose in every direction, thick smoke rolling between the craggy peaks.
I watched as the last of the mortals dead walked from the cavern and into a castle carved from the mountain.
The caves reminded me of those below Novas.
Beasts circled high above, stretching and flapping their wings but staying close to the citadel of rock.
I glanced behind me and stopped, turning back to force him deeper into the cavern. “Logan. Your skin,” I hissed. His tattoos cast his skin with vibrant cobalt, the thin lines leading to even bluer eyes, marking him as a celestial.
“I cannot control it in some realms, and Yejedin must be one of them.”
“Fine, stay here, and I’ll kill Kaden.”
“Like fuck you will.” He grabbed my arm, and I fought the urge to rip his off.
“If you grab me again, Logan,” I hissed. “I will knock you out and leave you in this fucking cavern.”
He let go but didn’t back up, not this time. “You’re not going alone. I already told you that.”
“Well, you can’t come. You’re glowing like a freaky blue nightlight. Every monster living here will spot you. You will only be in the way.”
“Maybe. But only if we walk through the front door.”
“Okay, well, what other way is there?”
He looked beyond me and down. I followed his gaze and groaned to myself. “Oh, you have to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
I felt my lip curl, the smell from the river below crawling toward us. “I’m not jumping into that.”
“Okay then, the front door it is.”
He started toward the castle. This time, I grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“You’re a pain in my ass. I should have killed you the second you showed up,” I hissed and moved closer to the edge of the embankment. “Would have saved me a lot of time.”
But I hadn’t, and I knew why.
I like Logan and Neverra. They’re my friends.
Gabby’s words were always in my head, acting as my moral compass.
“Let me go first. Samkiel would—”
“Rule number one of this short-term partnership. We don’t mention his name or even talk about him.” I gave him my most intimidating stare.
He smirked knowingly, utterly unaffected by my death glare. “Why? Does his name bother you? You said you don’t care about him. Seems weird that it would be an issue if that is true.”
My eyes narrowed into slits, and I shoved Logan into the river. I watched with satisfaction as he hit the water and went under, but I sighed when I could still see the blue glow beneath the current. When he surfaced, he looked up at me and flipped me off. For the first time in months, I smiled.
* * *
We followed the walls beneath the castle, trying to stay out of the murky water.
Our clothes clung to us, and my hair stuck to my face in slimy tendrils.
We had emptied as much water as we could from our shoes so we wouldn’t alert anyone with the squeaking.
I could use the heat I wielded to dry us off, but smelling like this place was a great cover to help us stay undetected until I was ready.
“You hear that?” Logan whispered.
“Yes.” It sounded like grinding metal and a thousand machines working above us.
“He is building something. That’s why he needs the iron.”
“Yes.” The only question was what.
Logan suddenly stopped and went still. Shock and something primal and impossible to define moved across his face. His eyes dropped to his hand.
“I feel her.”
“What?”
“Neverra. I can feel her. Here.” His skin glowed so brightly in the darkened hall I squinted from it. He spun in a tight circle, his breath coming in short pants. His eyes focused behind me, and he sprinted away, nothing but a blazing cerulean light in the gloom.
“Fuck,” I said and chased after him.
I caught him by the sleeve and spun him around. Samkiel’s best friend, his steady second-in-command, was gone. The territorial, possessive, celestial warrior stood in his place.
“Let me go,” he snapped, his blue eyes glowing as they bore into me.
I tossed him against the nearest wall and pressed my forearm against his throat.
He struggled, attempting but failing to break my hold.
He was damn near feral as he tried to free himself, but I had been feeding enough that even The Hand wasn’t an issue.
“Think before you go charging into gods know what.”
“She’s here,” he hissed. “I have to get to her.”
I pressed him harder against the wall, the stone behind him cracking. “And you will, but if you run in there without thinking, you will alert everyone and get us all killed.”
“What if—”
“Logan.” I tried reason, pulling on that sliver of hope I used to carry. “If she has been alive this long, a few more minutes will not matter. Think. What did Samkiel teach you?”
I hated saying his name, hated hearing it. It made the aching void in my chest stir, and I couldn’t afford to be distracted by that grief right now. I needed to be lethal, and the memory of him made me soft and weak. But if I allowed Logan to run in there, he could ruin everything for me.
“You have to control your emotions, just like he taught us. Think first, not on instinct or drive.” The dull, empty ache began to pound. “Breathe. Center. Focus. Core. Okay.”
I took a deep breath, making sure Logan watched me as I inhaled through my nose and held it before releasing it through my mouth.
I moved one hand in the now familiar pattern from the top of my head to my chest before pushing back again, just as Samkiel had taught me.
All the while, I held Logan’s gaze, willing him to listen. “Now, you do it.”
He leaned his head back and relaxed. I let him go, and he took a deep breath, running through the small centering ritual before he pushed away from the wall.
The frantic need left his eyes, the lights on his skin easing to a soft glow.
I could still see the need to follow the pull, to run blindly in his search for her, but now he had a handle on it.
“Better?”
He nodded and took another deep breath. Satisfied he had himself under control, I turned and headed back the way we’d come. I lifted my hand, summoning a flame to help guide us as Logan fell into step beside me.
“He taught you that, too?”
I said nothing for a long while, trying to keep that empty ache from dragging me under. And a lock on a door in a house rattled.
“Yeah.”
“It was a mantra his father taught him.”
“I know.”
I felt Logan’s eyes bore into the side of my face. “When did he teach you?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head, needing to change the subject. I didn’t want to talk about anything that would derail me from my mission. “What happened back there? It was like you were a whole different person.”
He glanced at me and seemed to understand that I didn’t want to continue to talk about Samkiel.
“I can hear her, feel her when we’re close, but what you saw back there, in its most basic terms, is my need to protect her.
I would do anything to accomplish that. It’s an instinctual reaction.
My body takes over, and I have no control. ”
I frowned and tipped my head. “At all?”
Logan shrugged, taking in the narrowing of the cavern walls.
“We had a fight one time, like every couple. I don’t even remember what it was about, but we were in the kitchen arguing, and she didn’t realize she had her hand so close to the burner.
I placed mine beneath hers before she could make contact.
Mortal flames don’t hurt as much, but I would never let anything happen to her.
Not if I could help it. I’d do anything for her.
That protectiveness is one of many perks of the mark. ”
“You mean the Mark of Dhihsin?”
He nodded. “I can feel her now that we are closer. She’s cold and alone and hungry.”
“Can you hear her thoughts?”
“Yeah. We share everything. That’s why it has to be a soul tie for the mark to appear.
The closest equivalent in your language would be a soulmate, mate, or fated love, the one person who is your equal in every way.
That’s how the old gods spoke of it. The mark appears once the bond is completed and only disappears in death.
It was a crime punishable by death to kill someone’s soul tie, but that didn’t stop it from happening.
It was a convenient way to kill both. The surviving mate wouldn’t physically die at first, but they would eventually succumb to a broken heart. They just… stop.”
“Oh.” A shudder of disgust went through me as we ducked under a hanging slab of rock. “It sounds terrible.”
“It’s a bond on every level, and in every way, two beings can connect. Have you ever heard of the story of Gathrriel and Vvive?”
I shook my head.
“It is the first recorded incident of the mark. When chaos first erupted, everyone fought for their place in the realms. Gathrriel was a powerful warrior wounded in battle and on the edge of death when Vvive found him. She swore on her blood, body, and soul, praying to the Formless Ones, the ones before creation, to save him. That was when the mark appeared. It was the first soul tie, and it sealed them together in every way possible. She saved him that day, saved the world, really. Dhihsin was the child of Gathrriel and Vvive, hence the name. It was a way to honor their love and one of their greatest joys after the challenges they’d faced.
Some of the gods discounted the mark and thought it defied nature. ”
Logan glanced at me as if this story was a legend passed down like a bedtime story for fools in love.
“That was the beginning. Your life becomes their life, and your power becomes their power, and so on. Sometimes I feel as if…” Logan paused, looking at his hand and the mark on his finger.
“I hope I am keeping Neverra alive. Some of us share the same life force. Maybe I’m healing her. I don’t know.”
I glanced at him as he flexed his hand. “Maybe you are.”