Chapter 33
Lory
The rocks weren’t uncomfortable, just cold—so cold that shivers raked through Lory’s body, head to toe, long before she opened her eyes to the dim light of what could have been sunrise or sunset.
A thin stripe of pink peeked through the otherwise gray-on-gray of the cave, where Lory remembered collapsing under the scrutiny of what she couldn’t describe as anything other than a lion-deer-horse.
So large, it had peered down at her with its head lowered and its eyes glowing like what a sunset on the moon must have looked like.
“A long time you have slept, Elory the Flame,” that same deep, rumbling voice narrated as she rolled to her side with a groan. She would have bruises on her hips and shoulders, and most certainly on her knees; pain was already blooming as the fabric of her pants slid over them.
None of it mattered when the shadow with antlers stepped out of the darkness gathering at the back of the cave. “Eat must the Flame.” The beast lowered its head once more, and Lory fought not to panic as its slender lion head came close enough to touch.
Instead of taking a bite out of her, it sniffed, then circled her on legs longer than a lion’s and shaped like a horse’s, except for the massive paws; they were clearly wildcat.
Its long tail swished, part hairy cluster like a horse’s and part hairy snake, like a lion’s.
Actually, there were two of those long, hairy ropes swishing in rhythm with the beast’s movements.
If she remained still, the creature might forget she was there or become bored.
What had Khayrivven said? That the mountains were infamous for playing tricks on people’s minds?
This must have been one of those tricks. Perhaps there were some gases floating through the cave, and Lory had fallen prey to their effects and was hallucinating what clearly couldn’t be.
Forcing down a shallow breath, Lory scrambled back toward the cave entrance, but the creature leaped over her, landing silently on claw-adorned paws.
“Stay, she must. Eat she must,” it hummed, sniffing at her. “Bathe she must.”
The way its tails swished nervously made Lory wonder if the creature was considering her as a meal only after she’d cleaned away the sweat and blood and soot of the battle she’d survived only because of Tabi, Thal, and …
Aiden. A bone-deep sadness swallowed her at the thought of the young man’s lifeless body.
“Slept she has enough. Eat she must. Strong she must become.” The creature kept circling her, cutting off her escape route.
With a sigh, Lory decided the beast would have long swallowed her whole if it had wanted, its gleaming teeth certainly sharp enough to cut through tendons, cartilage, and bones, and from the looks of it, Lory’s neck would have easily fit in its maw—perhaps her entire head.
“Are you real, or am I hallucinating you?” If the creature didn’t go away by blinking about fifty times, Lory figured it was worth asking.
“Real we are. Just like the Flame.” A hint of annoyance flickered in its lilac eyes while the rest of its body remained gray-on-gray, thanks to the dark cave it wouldn’t let her out of.
“That’s what I would say if I were a hallucination.
” Shaking her head, Lory attempted to get to her feet, but her legs refused to carry her, too shaky from running through the mountains and climbing up to that Guardians-forsaken cave while using an excess of her magic.
She made to crawl past the beast on her hands and knees when it leaped into her path, a deafening roar emerging from its open maw, and Lory shrank back, falling on her ass and staying there, hands covering her ears and eyes shut against certain death.
“Not an illusion,” the creature growled in her mind, and for the first time, Lory actually felt like she was no longer dreaming.
“The Flame has come to set us free.” Soft thuds padded toward Lory, and when she opened her eyes, the creature had lowered its head so much it was level with hers, and hot, stinking breath rushed over her face.
“The Flame has heard us.” A blend of pride and reverence reverberated in the creature’s tone, but its eyes remained those of a very intelligent predator who had already figured her out.
Set us free, Elory the Flame. The voice had called her. His voice. With a glimpse at the long, wavy hair growing around the creature’s neck in a blend of lion and horse mane, Lory confirmed it was a male.
Cautiously, carefully, Lory lowered her hands from her ears, bracing one on the rough cave floor while holding out the other for the creature to sniff like she might have done with a dog or a horse.
The creature shook its head, antlers almost catching on Lory’s already torn sleeve.
“A pet we are not.” It chuffed, tails swishing like those of a cat ready to leap at a mouse, but it didn’t move from its spot in front of Lory, close enough to touch.
“What are you?” Images of the stained-glass window panel behind the leadership tables at Ashthorn flashed through Lory’s head, her pulse spiking at the impossibility of what she might have been staring at, but when she checked the creature’s back, the pair of massive wings she had expected wasn’t there.
“The Flame knows what we are,” the creature filled Lory’s mind, and had she not actually seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed that this was a leonthor, a beast of legends, a myth. Not real.
“As real as the fire in your veins, we are, Flame.” The leonthor bowed its head, nudging its nose against Lory’s palm still frozen mid-air, and in Lory’s blood, her magic began to sing.
“The man with the bronze braid and the kind eyes has foretold that she would come, and too long, we have waited for her to find us.”
Wait—what? Another prophecy? Her magic died down.
Who was the man with the bronze braid and the kind eyes, Lory wanted to ask, but her nerves nearly snapped as the leonthor’s cold, wet nose nudged her palm once more as it spoke into her mind.
Lory knew this wasn’t a dream, nor was it a joke or a hallucination.
This was a real leonthor, for crying out loud, and for some reason, it believed she was there to set it free.
Panic didn’t even begin to describe the sensation roiling inside of her, urging her to make a run for it—if only her legs had been stable enough, the Guardians knew, she might have tried.
The creature pinned her with lilac eyes as if anticipating her thoughts and slowly shook his head.
“Come with us, Flame.” Command resonated in every syllable, and had her legs allowed it, Lory might have leaped to her feet and gone anywhere just because this mythical creature said so. It was better than going back outside where at least thirty more Ashthorn students were hunting her.
“Twenty-eight,” the creature corrected, nearly startling Lory to death as it responded to her thought rather than her words. “We bit the heads off two who came too close to our Flame.”
The possessiveness in the creature’s tone made the hair on Lory’s neck stand on end—as did the fact that apparently this was the shadow who had followed her around the mountains and who’d killed on her behalf without a second thought—or guilt.
“The lives of humans are irrelevant to us.” The leonthor shook its head in response, mane flaring to the sides with the gesture, and Lory pulled back her hand to get out of the antlers’ way. “Come now.”
Lory pushed herself up, but her legs were still not cooperating, and she swayed, grabbing thin air, but when her legs gave way, she didn’t hit the ground. Instead, sharp spikes slid under her arms, a length of hard horn curving around her shoulders as the leonthor caught her with his antlers.
Lory’s heart threatened to leap out of her ribcage at the sight of the needle-sharp points that would have speared her just as well.
“We will carry the Flame, but only this once.” The leonthor jerked his head to the side, dragging Lory higher up onto his antlers, where she hung like a ribbon in a tree, arms dangling awkwardly between rough horns, and legs draped over the creature’s neck, panting with panic, yet not daring to fight the monster from legends.
“Another one like you has tried to find you, Elory the Flame. His mind for yours has searched. We have blocked him out. Worthy of our Flame he is not.”
The leonthor’s tail swished angrily as it carried Lory off into the darkness.
Khayrivven. He’d tried to pull her into a dream. He was the only one with such abilities who’d actually care to find her. A flicker of hope tingled in her chest at the thought that he hadn’t given up on her.
“What do you mean, worthy?” And more importantly, “I’m not your Flame.” Whether disagreeing with a mythical creature of magic was a wise idea remained to be determined.
A rumbled laugh sounded in Lory’s mind, her objections apparently hilarious to the leonthor. Then his voice dropped into a near guttural register, making the hair at the back of Lory’s neck stand on end.
“A traitor to his own land he is. Watched him in the mountains we have before. Seen him spill his people’s blood, we have. Worthy of our Flame he is not.”
How the leonthor could have possibly witnessed Khayrivven’s worst moments, Lory didn’t even want to know. Khayrivven had told her what had driven him to kill those people; he had suffered from enough guilt—
Khayrivven, she called out in her mind. I’m here, Khayrivven.
But to the leonthor, she said, “He’s a good man trapped in an impossible situation.
He didn’t choose to kill them. Not that it’s any of your business,” she amended meekly, wondering how far she could push the beast before it turned those sharp teeth on her for real.
The leonthor didn’t respond, simply trotting on while, around them, the cave narrowed into a tunnel, ceiling pressing down on Lory and walls closing in, the only reassuring part that the leonthor’s antlers fit through without scraping against the obsidian.
“Where are you taking me?” Lory’s stomach had long bottomed out, the initial awe at finding a creature the world believed lost to legend replaced by sweat-driving fear.
The leonthor merely growled with his corporeal voice, the sound so much like that of a lion she could have fooled herself into believing that was what he was. But the hard embrace of his antlers didn’t let her forget the truth.
“To the others, Elory the Flame.” He hadn’t finished speaking when the tunnel opened into a wide platform at the edge of the mountain, sheltered by rock formations that blocked what had to be a steep cliff, and at the side, huddled around a fire, sat at least fifteen people, their curious eyes on the load the leonthor was carrying and their hands on their weapons.
“Elory the Flame, meet the last of your kind. The last of your kind, meet Elory the Flame.”
With an unceremonious lowering of his head, the leonthor dumped Lory on the cave floor, shoving her a foot closer to the group of people now getting to their feet.
Flame-born. More Flame-born. They weren’t alone. If Khayrivven knew, he’d kept it a secret—one of so many she might never learn.
When she scrambled into an upright position, the relief of feeling solid ground beneath her feet warring with the fear of what these strangers expected of her, Lory’s eyes weren’t on the woman closest to her, who was juggling sparks of orange fire in her palm, or the man a few feet behind her, the dagger in his hand wrapped in a sheath of flames.
It was on the pale disk rising into the purpling sky and the stars twinkling to life outside the cave.
Nightfall. The forty-eight hours were over.
And Lory hadn’t returned to the outpost.
If no one reported her death, the Triad might very well choose to believe she was alive and had fled—and that would mean Khayrivven’s end.
Turning her back on the men and women eyeing her with both suspicion and expectation, Lory faced the leonthor, stomach sinking and heart racing. She didn’t know those people or the creature who had brought her here, but she did know she couldn’t live with herself if Khayrivven died because of her.
“It doesn’t matter what people have foretold,” she said, eyes locking with two lilac orbs filled with wisdom. “I need to go back.”