Chapter 42
Nix gaped in horror at her gargoyle mate. Thierry’s chest did not move with breath. His eyes were hollow and empty. Stone.
From head to toe, he was stone.
“Ah, yes,” Lemmuns said. “I was testing some of my new elixirs. Did you know, with the right ingredients, you can create a potion to make any alpha shifter feel as if their mate has died?”
He explained, “It sends most shifters into a catatonic state, leaving them completely vulnerable. On the gargoyle…it did that.”
“What the FUCK?” Nix yelled, feeling her own heart lurch at the sight of her mate. Breathless stone. Hard, lifeless… “I’m going to FUCKING KILL YOU,” Nix screamed and thrashed in the restraints.
Her back wound pulsed with pain; she surely ripped one of the stitches, but nothing could calm her.
A few feet from Ryker were Persius and Bael, both unconscious, drugged, and strapped to other metal tables matching the one Ryker laid on. Both men wore tense expressions and shifted their heads in their sleep like their weakened bodies sensed their mate’s sorrow.
“WAKE UP,” Nix yelled to them, even though they would awake with no ability to help her.
Was this what the Goddess meant about time being angry with phoenix shifters? Was this Nix’s punishment?
“Let’s see how we can rid you of that pesky fire, yes?” Lemmuns spoke to Ryker as he picked up a small metal drill.
Ryker’s body trembled under his restraints. She watched as his throat bobbed on a thick swallow. Lemmuns had inserted some type of mouth guard to keep Ryker’s lips wide open for his twisted experiment.
He planned to drill…
“NO,” Nix warned loudly, her voice going hoarse. “DON’T YOU DARE.”
“After that, we will try my new sterilizing potion. After all, we don’t need any more dragon shifters popping up. Not when they are nearly extinct. It has been a long-term effort.”
Even though she was not a dragon shifter, Nix felt her fire rising inside her, up her throat as she screamed and screamed for him to stop. She promised she would kill Lemmuns in the most horrific way he could imagine. But no fire left her.
Lemmuns hummed to himself as he continued guiding the drill into Ryker’s mouth, pointing it down his throat.
“Nix,” Persius groaned.
As wild tears ran down her cheeks, Nix turned from watching Ryker’s body shake and sweat to see her pegasus mate stirring from the poison-induced sleep.
“Ask for…their help,” Persius said softly, as if he hardly had the strength to speak.
Bael’s body twitched, as if he would awaken soon as well, his system fighting off the additional dose of Evernell.
Confused by Persius’s words, Nix asked, “They?” Their help?
Persius strained his voice to add, “Call upon them.”
Who was “them?”
Bael’s eyelids shot open, and his red eyes connected with hers instantly. “The Gods,” he told her weakly, clarifying for Persius. “You…are favored by the Gods.”
Nix frowned at that; she didn’t feel favored. Time had provided her worst nightmare—the capture and torture of herself and her mates. The helpless knowledge that her choices led them to this.
Ryker’s chest rumbled with a low, guttural whimper of pain.
Nix’s rage boiled from inside her as she screamed, “GODDESS.” She called to the woman who had appeared to her in the “in between.” She pictured her as she screamed, “GODDESS.”
Lemmuns turned on the metal drill, and it whirled awake. The sound of Ryker’s scream was muted by his gargling on blood as Lemmuns explored with his torturous tool.
“GODDESS. HELP ME. GODDESS, PLEASE,” Nix yelled. “GODDESS. GODDESS. GODDESS.”
The air warmed and warmed. The back of Nix’s neck began to sweat.
Suddenly, the scene around her froze and turned orange, coral-tinted as if someone had just slipped glasses with reddish-colored lenses over Nix’s eyes.
Lemmuns, Ryker, everyone was perfectly still. Unnaturally still. Like a photograph.
The red-haired Goddess appeared in front of Nix, as transparent as a half-here, half-elsewhere ghost. The hem of her orange-red dress swayed around her ankles as the Goddess floated closer to Nix.
And the Goddess looked pissed.
“You, insolent phoenix,” the Goddess snapped at her, glaring. “You dare call upon me? I am not to be summoned like an animal.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Nix cried hoarsely. “But please help me.”
“I warned you against your choice; yet, still, you chose this,” the Goddess reminded her.
“Yeah. I messed up. Clearly,” Nix replied nervously. What were the rules when it came to asking a Goddess for help anyway? “Did you, uh, pause time just now?”
The Goddess scowled at the stupidly obvious question.
“Right,” Nix murmured. “Um, I…I need help.”
“You wanted your mates to feel your pain.” The Goddess shrugged. “Now, they do.”
“I would never wish f-for this!” Nix glanced at where Thierry stood, lifeless stone. Surely, the elixir was reversible. The collar still sat around his statue neck. Upon removal, would he heal?
“Why did you call upon me, phoenix? I have little time.”
“Please, help me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because we are trying to take down the bad guys.”
“Good, bad—you speak like a child,” the Goddess tsked. “Gods are not to interfere,” the Goddess said, fading further into the background.
Hadn’t she burned a civilization down before? Why was interfering to help Nix any different? “No, wait! Don’t leave! Please. Just…”
“I should not be here. Time chose this for you.”
Nix cried as she begged, “Please. I—I am a phoenix. A favorite creation. I—”
“You are not our favorite,” the Goddess replied matter-of-factly. Nix felt the words slice through her heart like an arrow. “Do not assume that due to your mother’s status, you should be treated above others.”
“My…my mother?”
“You—” The Goddess shook her head. “—have been a disappointment to her.”
Nix could hardly breathe through the pain.
“You allowed yourself to consume poison every day, for years.” The Goddess closed her eyes. “You allowed yourself to be weakened and captured and hurt.”
Her eyelids swung open as she glared at Nix. “After all the pain carved into your bloodline—you beg for my help? It infuriates me that you seek permission.”
“Please, I just need help—”
“You have the power to fix your situation; you always have—but you do not believe it belongs to you. You—the most powerful shifter alive—cry and beg for help? Why?”
Nix clenched her fists and stared at the ground where the Goddess floated. Embarrassed and ashamed, Nix admitted, “Without these powers, I…I was only ever taught to be meek.”
“And meek you were. You listened when they told you that you were powerless and small. In your first life, you cowered. You apologized for taking up space that was carved for you by ancestors who were silenced, beaten, and dismissed. Ancestors who faced false protectors who struck them and laws written to cage them.”
The Goddess told her, “They survived a world that wanted them erased. Every bruise they carried, every injustice they endured—that is your inheritance. That rage. That resilience. That searing, inextinguishable spark.”
The Goddess continued, floating higher above Nix, so she had to crane her neck. “Long before you, they were told to quiet their voices, and yet they screamed. They were pushed to their knees, and yet they rose. They bled so you would not have to.”
She asked Nix, “Do you feel that heat in your chest? That spark behind your ribs? That is their fire. It has waited generations for you to notice it.”
Nix closed her eyes, feeling it. Deep inside her, between her lungs. A strong, resilient flame.
The Goddess snorted in disgust. “Your mother would be ashamed to learn she raised a daughter who swallows her screams. Who clenches her teeth instead of biting.”
“I…I want to, b-but the collar,” Nix whined. “It mutes my powers.”
The Goddess slapped Nix’s cheek with her ghostly, transparent hand. Nix’s face flung to the side, and she ground her teeth in anger.
“The blood running through you is ancient. There is nothing more powerful. You think a man-made piece of bewitched metal can extinguish the fire of your line? One was created by the gods, the other by fearful men.”
A tear trailed down Nix’s cheek as she strained, trying to use her powers that remained dormant.
The Goddess hmm-ed. “The daughter of my favorite… You could have been great, you know?”
Nix exhaled slowly. Daughter of the Goddess’s favorite? Did that mean Nix’s mother was the all-powerful phoenix shifter her mates had described earlier? The one who could slow time by heating the air?
Nix ground her teeth as she admitted, “I…I am not as strong as her.”
“Your mother was not killed because she was powerful. She was killed because she dared to teach others how to wield power.” The Goddess stated, “Being powerless is a choice. Do you choose it?”
A bead of sweat trickled down Nix’s forehead as she exhaled heavily and growled, “No.”
“You are angry with time’s choice to punish you? Then, change it.”
The Goddess began to fade, as did the orange tint to the air.
“Wait! About m-my mother—”
“Phoenix spirits leave behind embers—echoes waiting to be reignited. If you wish to know more, listen.”
Listen? To what? Nix might be able to speak to her mother?
Before the Goddess disappeared, she said, smiling coyly, “Burn it all down, phoenix. And maybe, you will be our new favorite.”