Chapter 18
Kier stumbled down the last few steps in time to find me stretching to my full height with Xiona, sans sword, balanced on my shoulders. She squealed like a pig, gripping my shoulders, my neck, my head, anywhere she could get a good enough hold.
“You need to actually reach up,” I told the woman who was, in fact, afraid of heights. She was too stubborn to refuse, though. “Just confirm if it’s up there.”
She lifted her hand, squealed in terror, and dropped it to grab my hair so tightly my eyes watered.
That was when I spotted Kier, standing at the base of the steps in his goblin form, a little wan, the blue of his skin dull and greyish, his eyes devoid of light.
He expelled a long breath at the sight of me, a visible weight sliding off his shoulders.
“What are you doing to my best friend, wife?” he asked, trying to inject colour into his voice and failing. The raw gravel of his tone told me the stairs had tortured him, and badly.
“Killing her, by the sounds of it,” I replied dryly.
“Don’t joke about that while I’m ten feet in the air!” Xiona shrieked.
“I’m gonna let you down now,” I offered, kneeling, and got rewarded by her blowing out my eardrums with a panicked yelp. “There; nice, solid ground.”
She stumbled off me and wobbled so severely that her ass planted itself on the floor. “Mother’s tits,” she hissed, even paler than Kier. But she was smiling. “I’m never doing that again.”
“Why are you smiling, you weirdo?” I demanded, already crossing the threshold to Kier, pulling him into a hug tight enough to arrange his internal organs. He groaned and held me just as tightly, a tremor moving through his hands.
“It’s up there,” Xiona said, still grinning. “The sword. I felt it.”
My heart skipped. “It has to be what Cl—motherfucker,” I hissed when my throat scalded and bled.
It was bad enough this time to flood my mouth with blood.
I forced myself to swallow it. Spitting blood in Gaia’s mausoleum was a shitty way to thank her for the vision.
“It’s what she wants. It’s why we’re here. ”
I kissed Kier’s neck, brushed a lock of dark hair from his face, and said, “Kier, boost me up.”
“If you want to wrap your legs around my head, there’s no need to go to these extremes,” he said with a scant hint of his usual wickedness.
I kissed his cheek, my lips lingering, our souls equally ravaged by strain and turmoil. “Later.”
He crouched low enough that I could scramble up his back, though his height and extra-broad shoulders made it more difficult than necessary.
Ruthless gods, he was big in this form. I scanned every plane and muscle of him for injuries on the way up and found none.
The stairs had tormented his mind, like it did Xiona and I.
The others were still up there, fighting their way through trauma.
Guilt snuck into my chest that I’d brought them here, but I’d feel a damn sight more guilty if I killed one of them under Cleodora’s orders, so I tightened my thighs around Kier’s neck and held on tight as he rose to his full height.
The space above the entrance looked empty, but when I reached out—carefully, because it was a sword—my fingertips brushed cold, cool steel.
“It’s here,” I laughed in half disbelief, feeling my way along the blade until I found the handle and wrapped my fingers around it. The second I did, I could see it. The dark fabric wrapped around the handle, the huge blue gem just above my hand, the long, vicious edge, the bloodthirsty tip.
It felt right in my hand, like I’d been meant to find it, like it had been waiting for me.
Very good, Zaba, Cleodora purred, her voice insidious but faint. So I was right; she struggled to reach me here. Now bring the sword to—
Oh, shut up, I snapped. Couldn’t she let me have one single second to feel good? To revel in the victory of actually finding what a mystical vision had sent me to retrieve?
Cleodora’s voice choked off, and then there was sweet, blessed silence.
The huge sapphire was glowing, light and magic beaming from within it.
“What just happened?” Xiona asked, at the same time Rook burst down the last few steps in a sprint and demanded, “What the hell are you two doing?”
“She’s gone,” I laughed, then said it again because it was true. The silken slide of her voice was banished. “She’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Rook asked, sounding as tired as I felt, deep down in my soul. But not at this moment. No, I was shivering, victorious, free.
“Cleodora,” I answered, and startled atop Kier’s shoulders. I could say her name. I could tell them everything. “The Greenheart Queen is the one who compelled me.”
Silence, so thick I’d hear a pin drop, gave way to shouting, and then chaos.