Chapter 55
The passage was barely wide enough for the two of us to walk abreast, forcing Rìan ahead of me as we followed the dripping tunnel deeper beneath the cliffs.
The farther we ventured, the tighter my chest became. Every instinct I possessed strained toward the entrance behind us, urging me to turn and flee. I could feel the hum of magic against my skin, raising gooseflesh along my arms. It hung in the air around us with an ancient, watchful awareness.
My hand closed around the hilt of my bone knife.
It was warm.
Not from my body, but from within itself, as though it could sense where we were and had awakened in anticipation.
The tunnel suddenly surrendered to an enormous circular chamber. Wan light filtered through openings high overhead, washing over smooth, curving walls too perfect to have been shaped by time or tide. Nature hadn't carved this place—magic had.
Though the cave flooded with seawater every day, no algae coated the stone. No barnacles clung to the walls. And at the center of the space, stark and bare as though no living thing dared touch it, sat the second well.
It was every bit as immense as the first, a great hole punched through the world, its shaft plunging into profound blackness.
Painted high across the far wall, an enormous eight-pointed star bore down on the chamber like an unblinking eye, what remained of its pigment darkened by untold centuries to a flaking brown.
“The Vein makes the tide unpredictable here. We need to hurry,” Rìan murmured, his voice rising through the chamber before echoing back to us.
Hurry… hurry… hurry…
Rìan strode straight to the well. An old wooden bucket lay half-buried in the wet sand beside it, knocked onto its side by the sea's comings and goings. He crouched down, testing the slick rope looped around the handle before tugging at the knot fastened to the rusted hook on the well's edge.
I stepped closer to the wall, drawn toward the enormous painted star. That eighth arm—that extra downward stroke that didn’t belong—made something cold stir in my gut. It was wrong. Ominous. An arrow straight into the depths of the well itself.
"Rìan," I called.
There was a distant splash as he hurled the bucket into the well, and then a distracted grunt.
Frowning, I reached out, brushing my fingertips lightly over the paint. Tiny brown flakes came away beneath my touch. I rolled them between my thumb and forefinger, studying them more closely.
"That's not paint," Rìan warned from somewhere behind me. "It's blood."
Blood... blood... blood…
His words echoed around the cavern, mocking me.
I recoiled, scrubbing my hand against my trousers.
"What is this place?" I murmured, turning slowly as I searched the chamber, uneasy. The magic hung so heavily in the air it felt like a hand pressing me down into the sand, its pervasive wrongness seeping into my lungs with every breath like a sickness.
Whose blood had stained this stone?
Aedric insisted the gods didn't exist, that mortals had mistaken the Firstborn for gods, and that each arm of the star represented one of the seven.
But this star had eight.
The extra point filled me with an instinctive revulsion I couldn't explain. Who would dare pervert a holy symbol?
Unless…
Unless there had once been an eighth Firstborn.
The thought caught on something deep inside me, lodging there like a shard of glass.
Was it possible? Had there once been another—a people erased so completely that even memory had surrendered them? Over the centuries, had the symbol itself been forgotten too, eight points slowly becoming seven?
But then how old was this symbol? Why was it carved into the hilt of my bone knife? Why did it appear at both wells? Why was it present in The Book of Old Tales?
I shivered.
Each Gate demanded a blood offering beneath the gaze of the eight-pointed star, a corrupted symbol presiding over an act that defied the natural order. If a bond between souls was meant to be unbreakable, what terrible magic was this that could unravel it?
For the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps those were questions we should have asked before we'd come searching for them.
“Eidra.” I turned my head toward him at the sound of his voice.
He was waiting for me.
The pale light caught only one side of him, leaving the other veiled in shadow, as though he were made of equal parts light and darkness.
He stood perfectly still, and even so there was something immense about him, a presence and power that was undeniable.
The sight of him eased something inside me, and before I even realized it, my feet were carrying me forward.
I stopped in front of him, and the moment I met his gaze, my heart began pounding furiously in my chest, my magic stirring inevitably at the feel of his nearness.
My enemy and my protector. My villain and my mate. The monster I trusted with my life.
I found him at the center of every path I took. Every road, every choice, every twist of fate, for better or worse, led me inexorably back to him.
Soon, the thread binding us would snap completely. The bond would be severed, and I would be free of him. The thought should have brought relief. Instead, every part of me strained against it like a tethered animal.
Guilt splintered through me.
Aedric.
The sliver of magic buried inside his mind would never be released unless we saw this through. Unless I broke this bond. Whatever else Aedric had done, whatever truths still waited for me when he woke, I had done this to him. I had broken his mind, and I couldn't leave him trapped inside it.
But it was more than that now.
I needed the truth.
Not Levinica's truth. Not Rìan's. His. I needed to look Aedric in the eyes and hear what he had done from his own mouth. I needed to know whether he could give me that much, at least, or whether every good thing I’d once believed about him had been another lie.
And I couldn't have those answers while a piece of Rìan’s magic held his mind captive.
Still, standing on the threshold of finally setting him free, some traitorous part of me balked. A trapped, desperate beast clawed against my ribs, constricting my chest until every breath came shallow and strained.
Rìan searched my face, his features drawn with grim resolve, as though he already knew how this would end and had resigned himself to it. Yet his eyes held something softer. Something unbearably complicated.
He held out his hand, palm up.
An offering.
An inevitability.
Something pulled painfully inside me.
With a shaking hand, I drew the bone knife from its sheath.
I took Rìan's hand in mine. It dwarfed my own, his fingers long and elegant despite the rough calluses marking his palm. He gave a single, curt nod. Go on.
In one smooth motion, I sliced. Blood welled instantly, bright against his skin, but he didn't so much as flinch. His gaze never left my face. Patient. Waiting.
Quickly, I turned the blade and drew its blood-tinged edge across my own palm. I barely felt it.
Before I could even think, he took my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, strong yet impossibly gentle, as though he were holding something precious and breakable.
Blood laced hotly between our joined hands, slipping over our wrists to patter softly into the sand at our feet.
His thumb brushed across the back of my knuckles, so lightly I almost thought I'd imagined it.
Together, we lifted our clasped hands over the open mouth of the second well. The first drop of our mingled blood slipped between our fingers and disappeared into the depths.
It happened quickly.
I felt it just as I had the first time—an immense pressure rising from below, as though something colossal had begun to stir beneath us. An unseen force fused our hands together, blood slipping between them now in crimson ribbons, feeding the ancient magic lurking within the Gate.
Shadows belched upward from the mouth of the well, rising like smoke from a chimney, darker than night itself. They erupted around us in a violent wind that lashed my hair across my face and swallowed the chamber in a single breath. The walls vanished. The eight-pointed star. The well.
The metallic shriek of it drove through my skull, reverberating deep in my bones.
Then, suddenly, everything fell silent. We stood beneath a starless sky, nothing left in all the world except Rìan and me, our blood-slicked hands still outstretched. The only sound was our ragged breathing as we waited. And waited.
A strong hand skimmed slowly up my bare thigh.
I gasped.
It wasn't real. It couldn’t be. I knew I was clothed.
I could still see the sleeves covering my arms, feel my trousers secure around my waist. Yet the phantom touch traced across my skin, warm and impossibly intimate, as though my clothes weren’t there at all.
Fingertips glided higher until they settled at the crest of my thigh, coaxing my legs apart with gentle insistence.
I looked up at Rìan, panic clawing through me, and froze.
His outline wavered before my eyes. A second figure shimmered faintly beneath it, ghostlike and insubstantial. A bare chest. Broad shoulders. It was only a fleeting overlay, there one moment and gone the next. And yet the touch…
A mouth found the curve of my neck. Soft lips brushed upward beneath my ear with exquisite tenderness, and desire crashed over me suddenly in a dizzying wave, washing away all reason and thought.
Across from me, Rìan had gone utterly still. His silver-flecked stare remained fixed on mine, but it had lost its focus, his eyes seeming to look beyond me, through me, into something only he could see. His breathing roughened.
My hand remained locked in his above the well, yet another part of me felt my fingers threading through thick, impossibly soft hair, my hands cradling a face I couldn’t quite see even as it drew closer.
A mouth, sinful and perfect, met mine.