Chapter 28 The Hollow Canyon #2
He looks as if he didn’t sleep, eyes red, dark circles spread beneath them, and his mind remains closed, an impenetrable steel fortress. His friends look equally disheveled but keep checking us, their exhaustion as evident as their worried curiosity.
I hope the zenith’s not far. I’m ready to go home.
I find myself revisiting that word, that momentary slip that seemed to speak the truth.
Westfall hasn’t been a home for years, but my enemy’s land is somehow mine. I want to be at our Hearth. Curl into our bed. The thought softens the storm in me.
I still want this. Him.
“Your Highness, it’s just up ahead. I must warn you though, this is a dangerous area, and the toxic drake killed many of our soldiers before we felled it.” The elven leader, ?lvor, looks back at us over his shoulder, his hair a long sweep of platinum gold.
“But you did in fact kill the drake, right?” Malik asks, his voice pitched a bit high.
“Of course,” ?lvor says. “It was quite the battle, I’m told.
Still, it left toxic pools behind. Not to mention this place is home to many malevolent creatures.
Nixies, trolls, draugrs, and vampyrs. Frigga spiders are known to take over abandoned drake caves, and are larger than your wyverns, so we should move with caution. ”
I shudder, gagging at the thought of monstrously sized spiders, and have only the barest idea of what the other horrors are that he mentioned. We dismount from our horses as the space grows tighter, moving the rest of the way by foot.
“When exactly did you find this drake’s hoard?” I ask ?lvor.
Draven perks a bit at my line of questioning, and I notice the elf’s eyes skirt away.
“Shortly before sending word to His Majesty, King Silas, of course.”
Fable rolls her eyes at my side, looking under her nails. “What a load of shit.” She mutters to me, “They probably knew about this vein of zenith for a long time and are just using the supposed dangers to bargain. I bet there’s more in the countryside they haven’t revealed, just you wait.”
Draven tsks at her.
I raise a brow and whisper, “You think she’s wrong?”
“I think she’s loud.” He slows his pace slightly, letting the elves get a bit farther ahead. He addresses our group, “I want you to be ready for anything. I have a bad feeling about all this.”
I glance at the expansive rock walls towering alongside us, stretching hundreds of feet high, winding as if a river had once eroded it before drying up and whittling away to sand. A flash of blue light sparks in a little opening in the rock at my side.
I stop, looking again. And I swear whatever it was pulls back, disappearing into the crooked opening. When I bend to look inside, there’s nothing there.
“What is it?” Malik asks me, the only one to notice I stopped. He’s more on edge than the others. I shake my head.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something.”
“What did it look like?” His tone isn’t mocking, only curious, worried.
“Like a blue flame? I barely saw it.” I shrug my shoulders.
“Draven, your girlfriend is scaring Malik,” Fable tattles, though she throws me a teasing glance.
I grin, rolling my eyes, but Draven merely grimaces.
“The zenith den is this way,” ?lvor tells us, rounding a bend ahead, and we follow.
The canyon narrows before opening into a wide space, where glimpses of crystal glint in the light. But a chasm yawns between us and the other side, with only slender fingertips of stone pillars rising from the vast expanse below like life-or-death stepping stones.
?lvor gestures forward, the rest of the elves standing at either side. “This scattered path is why it went undiscovered for so long. One of our explorers spotted the zenith and decided to chance it. It’s the only way in.”
Zara mutters about the path being a death trap, and I agree.
“It can’t be the only way,” Commander Soto argues. He nods to one of his soldiers, who summons the Death Arcana, but his shadows sputter, never solidifying. The soldier shakes his head.
“All the zenith is blockading portal magic.”
Draven crosses his arms. “We cannot leave this zenith here. Especially if you say there are draugr in the area. Why didn’t you insist we bring wyverns or your bakka?”
“I did mention to your commander that the route was … difficult.” ?lvor clenches his hands together.
I’ve never seen Draven so astounded. The elven envoy has annoyed him into speechlessness.
“I think we’re past difficult here.” Draven barely keeps his exasperation in check.
“Should we head back?” Commander Soto asks.
“Just … give me a minute.” Draven looks across the chasm and sighs. “It’ll be tight for some of us, but we’ll manage … everyone without wings, partner up. Rune.” He lifts his hand to me, still not meeting my eye, but I grasp it. To the elves he asks, “Do you need assistance?”
“No, but thank you, Your Highness.” ?lvor leads the elves across the harrowing path, running and jumping with such swift ease you’d think there wasn’t a deathly fall beneath them. Draven scoops me into his arms, and my body automatically gravitates toward his.
I push a thought Draven’s way. Draven, can you look at me? But it just seems to echo back.
His wingspan is large enough that he struggles where others don’t in the narrow chasm, but we make it across in strained silence.
When we land on the other side, the ground sifts under his feet.
The cavern is covered with moss on the back wall and lifts above our heads like an enormous hollow turtle shell.
Little shafts of sunlight pierce through apertures in the cavern roof to illuminate the mounds of zenith.
A lurid, toxic odor lingers in the space.
Draven sets me down without a word, and the others spread out, investigating the domed space, mindful of every fallen log or overgrown bush.
“All clear,” Commander Soto shouts from ahead. Perhaps nothing lives here, but it still smells like a bog, the air ripe with swampy humidity.
“It stinks like Scorpius’s sparring bag,” Fable comments.
Zara and I both chuckle, though Scorpius shoots his sister a glower.
“How exactly do we move all this out to the pack animals?” Malik asks Draven, looking more skittish than the others.
“Slowly. Zenith can be moved safely, so long as arcane magic is used during the process. But without the ability to portal it, we have to ferry it out of this cavern in chunks.” Draven summons the Emperor, and some zenith rises on invisible hands, a glob of acidic-green ooze stringing with it.
“We might have to clear this lovely residue away first.”
Fable holds out a hand, reversing the time on the crystal so that it reverts to a state before it was soaked in slime. “Well … at least this doesn’t take much energy.”
Scorpius takes it from her, examining it more closely.
“Be careful, if you’re touching it and not summoning, it can explode,” Malik warns, watching the small crystal in his hand. A little light activates inside, like an illuminated vein.
“Toss it!” Zara orders as Scorpius stares.
Fable curses, grabs it, and throws it into the chasm. A moment later we hear a loud bang that makes it certain her brother nearly lost a hand.
“What a fun afternoon we have ahead of us.” I turn to Draven and add, “You sure have a way of picking romantic dates.”
A rat chooses that moment to squirm out of a pile of rubble and race off, squealing.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s disappointing so far, but there’s draugr in the area. Maybe I can show you some real monsters soon. Ones far worse than me.” His tone is flat and his smile sharp. The cavern goes silent.
I close the distance between me and the prince, and lead him away so we’re out of earshot. His eyes spark as I turn on him.
“Look, you’re mad, I get it. I am too.” My eyes narrow on his stupidly perfect face. “You want to win the award for most pissed, be my guest. But I found out a lot of shit I’m going to spend the rest of my life unpacking, and you managed to make it about your own insecurities.”
His eyes flare, the indigo spoiling toward crimson.
I sigh, hating this. “I’m sorry about my family.” I mean it, too, and he crosses his arms, wings enveloping us, blocking the others out. “I don’t think you’re a monster. Though, sometimes, I think you’re an asshole.”
“Gods Below, your apologies are breathtaking.”
“I don’t hear one given, only rejected,” I chastise.
He clenches his jaw hard enough the bones strut beneath his cheeks for a moment.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more forthcoming. I honestly didn’t think it would matter to our pact.
I didn’t want to burden you with information I don’t wish to know about myself.
Though I realize it probably gives you some important context about my nature.
” Spitefully, he adds, “Monster or asshole.”
“Definitely the latter,” I growl. Softening a bit, I say, “From now on, can we decide together what is or isn’t important for me to know?”
“Fine. And I’m sorry for being harsh about your mother. I’m still angry with her. But I meant what I said. I will hold up my end. Will you hold up yours?”
I pause. “Is that all we are for now? Our vows?”
His gaze narrows before breaking away, and he bites his lip hard enough to bleed.
“You and I are bound by more than vows and our pasts. More than the claim we marked each other with.” He lowers his voice, wings wrapping tighter around us.
“We are written into the other’s stars, our paths unbreakably intertwined.
You have entangled yourself in my soul, your thorns rooting between my ribs, and I cannot breathe without thinking of how sharply I want you.
You are my vexation, my obsession, and though I would rather cut out my heart than let you continue to hold this power over me, I will always—”
“Your Highness, we need you to look at this.” Commander Soto’s call is firm, and Draven cuts off, red-faced.
I’m breathless beneath what he just said.
His wings clip back, and he nods curtly to Soto, moving to go.