Chapter 9 #3
Across the glade, Lechuza, in her owl form, had the phantom ancestor pinned.
But the demon wasn’t done. The air around the phantom shimmered, and for a moment, its true form showed through, the patchwork monstrosity, the shifting faces.
It looked from the enraged owl to the newly transformed eagle, its expression one of dawning, furious calculation.
It had made a critical error. It had attacked them separately. It had forced them to awaken their true power together.
"Premature," a voice like a wail cut off mid-breath echoed through the glade. The phantom dissolved, its presence retreating not with a bang, but with a chilling, calculated silence. It was gone.
* * *
The glade was silent, save for the ragged breathing of the team and the soft rustle of two sets of impossible wings.
She was aware of him, a presence of brilliant, kinetic energy across the glade.
The fierce need in him to kill anything that threatened her.
For a breathtaking moment, their forms connected, through a shared current of the same raw power.
It was a recognition that went beyond thought, a silent, soaring communion of two halves of the same whole, flying together in a sky that had no limits.
His awe, his shock, and the sheer, unadulterated power of the eagle form mirrored her own.
Her form dissolved, the power receding from her limbs like a tide.
The strength, the clarity, the predatory certainty, it all vanished, leaving her hollowed out and shaking.
Her knees gave out, and she collapsed onto the mossy flagstones before the font, the inert stone basin suddenly just a rock again.
The eagle vanished. The light folded in on itself, and Flash was left on his knees, his body wracked with ragged, gasping breaths.
He looked up at her, and the expression on his face wasn't one of power or triumph.
It was haunted. His gray eyes were wide with a shock so deep it was terrifying.
He looked at his own hands as if they belonged to someone else, as if they had been used for a purpose he hadn't consented to.
In that moment, she understood. The power had been hers.
She had called it from the font. He hadn't transformed with her.
He had been transformed by her. The raw, untamed magic she had tapped into had surged through their fractured bond and forced his Veil form into being, a violent, unwilling evolution.
The realization was a gut punch. She hadn't just failed. She’d hurt him...
again. It wasn’t bad enough that she was killing him emotionally and physically, twisting him up mentally, but now cosmically.
She had forced him into his form, violating the very autonomy she cherished most in herself.
The cosmic indifference of the basin was nothing compared to the shattered look in his eyes.
She pushed herself up, her body aching with a loss she couldn't name, and approached the dais. She set her palms flat against the cold, pitted stone. The chakana on her ribs answered with a faint, hopeful warmth. She bent her head, and the Quechua came up out of her without her choosing it, the high formal register of her ancestors. She spoke to the font. She spoke as the keyholder’s descendant. She told the font to open.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, pressing harder, her voice rising with a desperation she couldn't contain. She invoked her bloodline, and the fate of the world. The stone took none of it. It answered her body but not her command.
A cold dread washed over her. She switched to English, the language of her terror. "Open. I'm here. I'm her. Open for me."
The basin remained silent, impassive.
She stumbled back from the dais, her hands shaking. The chakana on her ribs was still warm, throbbing faintly, a constant reminder of the piece she didn’t understand how to bring to the equation.
She made herself turn and face the team.
They stood at the entrance of the enclosure, their expressions a mixture of pity and grim understanding.
She made herself look at Flash last. He was still at the threshold, his face composed, giving her the dignity of her failure without a word, and she tried to ignore that devastated look in his eyes.
The failure twisted in her gut. She looked from the indifferent basin to the man whose presence was the one thing she couldn't allow herself to need. "All right," she said, her voice the flat, controlled tone of an operator delivering a sitrep on a failed mission. "What the fuck do we do now?"
She didn't look at Flash. She walked past him, out of the enclosure, and didn't stop until she was alone in a stretch of overgrown courtyard. She bent at the waist, pressing her hands against her thighs, forcing her body to breathe, in and out, until the shaking stopped.
The chakana on her ribs throbbed the whole time, a steady, insistent reminder how connected she was to him, how much she still wanted him with a gut-level ache that was buried in her bones.
How were they going to get past all these broken pieces?