36. Vera
Vera
“Care to explain what’s happening here, Vera?” Tessa asked warily.
“I have no idea.” Holding my breath, I carefully slid away from the skeleton in front of me.
When he made no move to attack, I shuffled the rest of the way to where Odessa knelt over Kieran.
He was unconscious, but still breathing.
Odessa cradled her injured arm to her chest and tried to stem the bloodflow.
Everett unlatched his sling and, with one arm, pulled his white tunic over his head.
I was so unprepared for the motion, I couldn’t stop my mouth from falling open. The fabric peeled off his toned, dark arms. His muscles flexed, still damp from the ocean, and a sprinkling of black hair trailed down his hard chest, disappearing into the cut of his hip bones.
But that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye. Over his heart was a tattoo of a bird. Delicate black wings stretched to his collar, with a pointed beak opened upward as if in song.
My chest tightened. He didn’t have that tattoo last time I saw him. I was frozen, my gaze locked on the ink. It wasn’t until Tessa nudged me that I shut my mouth with a click. Everett hastily wrapped his shirt around Odessa’s injured arm, then knelt to check on Kieran.
“What are we supposed to do about these things?” Starke asked, brandishing an arm toward the skeletons. They all stood facing me, unmoving.
“Why don’t I just ask them?” When I took a step forward, they shifted in unison to follow. “Umm…” I paused, swallowing. “Who are you?”
“We are the guardians.”
I jolted at the voice—no, voices. It sounded like a multitude of deep, gravelly voices speaking all at once, rumbling off the cave walls.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “And why are you here?”
“To serve the Fates.”
I pursed my lips. “Well, that’s great. How do we get out of this cave?” I asked them, taking a step toward the hole we fell through.
The two skeletons nearest me instantly reacted. They held their spears in midair, crossing each other to form an X. I came to an abrupt halt.
“You cannot leave this place.”
“Why not?”
“No one may leave once they have entered the flame.”
That humming sound was back. “The flame? As in, the lost kingdom?” I asked eagerly. “Does that mean we’ve found it?”
“You cannot leave this place,” they repeated.
My head jerked around, searching the cave walls. “We’re close,” I said, mostly to myself. “The entrance must be here somewhere.”
“What about where we found them?” Tessa suggested. “They were all in front of that wall. Maybe they were guarding it.”
She was right. I started back down the tunnel, toward the room with the phoenix, but Starke grabbed my arm. “What are you doing? You can’t go back there.”
For what felt like the hundredth time that day, I extricated myself from his grasp.
“I’ll be fine. This might be our only way out.
We need to get help for Odessa and Kieran.
” I gestured to the two of them. Kieran was still slumped on his back, and blood was seeping through the shirt wrapped around Odessa’s arm.
Starke’s jaw ticked. “These things could try to kill you any second. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. And Mortep, he—”
A hard, husky voice cut him off. “I think she can take care of herself, Captain.” Everett glared at Starke’s hand on my elbow, and he hastily dropped it.
Everett drew closer to me. His bare-chested shadow fell across the cave floor, and his scent, like aged leather and pine, washed over me.
I closed my eyes, unable to stop myself from breathing him in. “Are you going to try and stop me, too?”
“You’re far too stubborn for that,” he murmured. “I’ve never been able to stop you from running straight into the fire.”
I opened my eyes and met his stare. “I am the fire.”
His eyes dragged from mine down to my lips, skating over my shoulder until it reached my hand. Slowly, he bent to retrieve the sword he’d dropped. His callused fingers found mine as he pushed the hilt into my hand.
My fingers curved around the weapon, and I forced myself away.
When the humming of the cave found me again, I focused on that instead.
This force inside of me, this tugging, pulling, yearning to follow.
My feet moved of their own accord, and the skeletal creatures didn’t stop me when I passed.
But when footsteps tried to follow, the guardians’ spears clanged in the air.
I whirled around to find them blocking my friends.
“You cannot enter,” they rasped.
Tessa huffed. “What, does Vera have the magic touch?”
“I’ll be right back,” I assured them. I didn’t know why the guardians only let me pass, but I needed to hurry before they changed their minds.
That same phoenix sigil loomed ahead as I rounded the corner into the smaller cave. My stomach twisted. I drew in ragged breaths as the humming grew to an incessant drumroll, beating at my chest.
Rise.
I took a step closer. The musty scent of old dirt clogged my senses.
A drop of blood dripped from my arm to the floor.
I turned my arm over, brow furrowed as I took in the small gash.
It was bright and gleaming, blood pooling to the surface of the jagged skin.
This was what the skeletons had reacted to.
Rise.
Another step. The beady black eye of the phoenix stared at me, drawing me in. Calling to me.
Rise.
I sensed the others somewhere behind me, could hear their worried voices saying my name.
Rise.
The drumbeat grew louder. One more step, and I was at the phoenix’s feet. I slid my fingers along its feathers, and the movement caused another trickle of blood to fall to the stone.
Rise.
I dipped my finger in the cut on my arm, tilting my head at the blood glistening on my fingertip. With one last breath, I raised it to the wall.
“Vera, no!” Starke yelled.
Rise.
The second my blood touched the phoenix, the world exploded.
I was thrown backward, through the tunnel and into the larger cave as golden light flooded everything, obliterating the guardians. Molten sunlight seared the backs of my eyes. Power burst over the space, thick and choking and alive.
I hit the wall with a gasp. My spine arched as heat blossomed in my chest, white-hot and starving, as if my heart was trying to burn its way out. I cried out, fingers digging into the rock. My blood sang to the power rolling through the cave.
Something sparked in that dormant well inside of me. It wasn’t my normal magic—not quite. This was something older. Something that had been buried.
Flames flashed down my arms, licking over my skin without burning.
It curled around my wrists and up my shoulders in ribbons of gold and crimson.
My magic drowned me. Devoured me. And it was the most euphoric thing I had ever felt.
Like every nerve in my body had been set alight at once, pleasure and pain blurring until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
My arm and ankle instantly healed. Magic crackled around my torso in a violent light, and my shoulder blades were on fire.
I threw my head back with a roar as my phoenix wings ripped free.
Massive, radiant feathers blazed gold at the edges and deep orange at the heart.
Fire cascaded from the sharp tips, scorching the stone beneath my knees as the cave shook around us.
“Vera!” Everett’s voice cut through the chaos, raw and frantic.
I lifted my head, vision swimming, and saw him braced against the ground.
His jaw clenched as the same golden light wrapped around him.
Ribbons traced their way to Tessa, who let out an ear-splitting scream that morphed into a growl.
Her body elongated and her limbs shortened.
Claws ruptured from her fingertips, and black fur emerged on her skin.
Her tail swiped through the air as she fully shifted into her sleek black and tan jaguar form.
Nearby, Kieran groaned and rolled onto his side. Gold ribbons circled him and dove into his chest. He bolted upright. Gleaming white fur erupted along his body, and his hands and feet morphed into hooves. He, like Tessa, had been forced into his white stag Shifter form.
The four of us, the four Veridians, stared at each other in shock. Our magic was back.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls of the cave, stone splitting with deafening snaps. Chunks of the ceiling crashed down around us.
“Get clear!” Starke shouted, his face pale as a sheet as he stared at the crumbling cave walls.
There was nowhere to go. I raised my wings in a dome over our heads, squeezing my eyes shut as stone battered the outside of them. With a resounding boom, the world lurched, and the walls surrounding us were sucked into oblivion.
Water rushed in from all sides, pulling the cave apart piece by piece.
The floor tore into fragments and spiraled upward as more water surged inside.
Everett reached for me, but all of us were ripped from each other in the torrent.
Wind whipped across my cheeks, and my body went tumbling in a vicious corkscrew.
The cave was gone. Stars flew above me in long, warped streaks. The ocean itself was dragging us farther and farther into its spiraling clutches.
We were inside another whirlpool. But this time, we had no ship to pull us out.
Water slapped my wings, the force of it bowing them back at a painful angle.
I shifted them into my body with a tug of my magic.
I could barely keep my head above the surface as I frantically searched for signs of the others.
I spotted a black and tan feline head bobbing through the cyclone; white antlers reaching above the waves; a tricorn hat being torn apart; brown curls whipping in the wind.
And a few feet away was Everett, clawing his way toward me.
“Everett!” I screamed, and saltwater rained down my throat. I grasped for him blindly, throwing out my shadow magic to wrap around his body like a rope. It laced around his waist, and I pulled him closer.
His hand slammed into mine. “Don’t let go,” he said, eyes blazing.
My heart beat in a frenzy as the ocean sucked us deeper. I couldn’t tell which way was up, couldn’t see past the flood, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except grip Everett’s hand tighter.
But then the water began to glow. It wrapped around us, no longer ice-cold but warm and smooth, like standing out in the sunlight.
It glowed a bright gold as it spun faster and faster.
The roaring in my ears grew louder, pressure pushing my chest, and for a single, terrifying heartbeat, I was completely weightless—
Until it spat us out.
We burst out of the waves, crashing onto solid ground as the whirlpool kept spinning behind us.
Everett and I skidded across sand. I shifted my wings out to catch the air and bring us to a halt.
Nearby, Tessa rolled in her jaguar form until she shifted back to human and landed on her back.
Already on his feet, Starke staggered in the soft sand.
Kieran helped Odessa get to solid ground, both beaten but alive.
We were the only ones here. Karye, Lenny, and the rest of the crew must not have been close enough to the whirlpool to be sucked in.
For a long moment, none of us moved.
“I hate to state the obvious,” Tessa finally said, out of breath, “but this was not here a second ago.”
We were standing on a large beach under a pitch black sky.
There was no hint of the stars or moon that had been there previously.
The only light came from the water lapping at the shore.
The waves were no longer midnight blue, but a bright, iridescent gold, as if something was lighting them from beneath the surface.
But everywhere else…darkness.
“What just happened?” I asked on an exhale.
Beside me, Everett slowly stood to face the opposite direction. “I don’t know, but I think whatever it is, you did it.”
I swallowed hard as I turned. Before us stretched a vast city of stone and gold.
Towers reached to the black sky, their spires wreathed in a halo of golden firelight and mist. Rivers of both fire and that same gold water lay beneath bridges, lighting the otherwise dark streets and buildings.
Heat shimmered in the air, alive and pulsing to the very beat of my heart.
My phoenix wings expanded of their own accord, as if breathing in the life of the sunless city. I instantly knew where we were: the lost kingdom.
It felt like it had been waiting for me.
“The kingdom of the eternal flame,” Odessa murmured in a reverent tone.
The air shifted. The sound of rushing water grew louder, and wind picked up speed, blowing blonde strands of hair in my face. We all turned to the golden waves as the whirlpool spiraled more and more violently.
A dozen figures poured from the vortex in a flash of light. They rushed onto the shore and fell to the ground as we had, then righted themselves. At first I thought it was more of the skeleton guardians, but then I saw their distinct human features as they faced us.
They parted down the center to reveal a man. Pale skin, mane of black hair, a ribbon tied around his eyes. At my side, Everett froze.
Even with a ribbon covering his eyes, it was as if this man’s gaze was trained on mine. Searing, burning, needling its way down deep.
With a tilt of his head, Malek Mortep smiled.