Chapter 65 Electra
Electra
“Go.” Tarian’s rough voice makes my heart jump.
But only my heart. The rest of me doesn’t move.
“Electra, Gaea says you can come see her now.”
I twist around to make sure I’m not imagining Tarian’s voice.
His lips shift over more words. “She says she’s done.”
“Done with what?”
“I don’t know. She just told me that you can enter.”
Please don’t let it be to pick up Reeve’s corpse. Please, please, please.
I stand slowly, my bones feeling like they’ve fused together from how long I’ve knelt on the ground. Though my black sweatpants are covered in sand, I don’t bother sweeping them.
For a long heartbeat, I don’t move. I just stand there, peering at the hole in the earth, my pulse swooshing, propelling the blood through my veins at a dizzying speed.
Scenario after scenario unfolds through my mind. There’s always blood. Always cracked lenses. Always unseeing eyes.
I steel my spine and ball my fingers, then take a single, tentative step. When the earth doesn’t throw me down, I take another. And another.
Too soon…not soon enough…I reach the entrance and—and…
“Reeve?” My voice squeaks past my chattering teeth.
He looks up.
There’s no blood.
His lenses are intact.
His eyes are bright.
So bright.
Unnaturally bright.
I take one more step and drop into the magical abyss that didn’t steal Reeve’s life. “You’re not dead.”
A slow smile tilts his mouth before climbing into his stare.
“Your eyes…”
He ambles toward me, so at ease it sets my nerves on edge. “What about them?”
“They glow?”
“Do they?”
“Turn.” My whisper is urgent, yet his pivot is excruciatingly unhurried.
I comb my fingers through the wavy strands at his nape. As I press them up, my anticipation transforms into confusion, because no runes brighten his skin. “I don’t understand…”
“I’m not worthy of the Atlantean brand—yet.”
“But you’re alive.” My hand plummets to my side. “And your eyes…”
He turns back to face me, the gray so reflective it resembles platinum.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
He holds out one hand. I frown, assuming he wants me to take it until I catch the carved glow of a rune at the heart of his palm. A rune that reads…
“Shield,” he says.
My eyes don’t just rise to his face; they bounce. “How do you know what it says?”
“I just do.”
“Can you speak it?”
“I don’t know. Say something.”
In Atlantean, I tell him, “The earth shook and wouldn’t stop. It was Gaea’s doing. That’s why I couldn’t get to you sooner.”
His throat dips. His chin too. “I thought you abandoned me.”
I suck in air because—because… “That wasn’t English.”
Another swallow jostles his throat. “I don’t deserve this gift. I don’t deserve you.”
I grip his jaw. “She thinks you do, and our goddess is never wrong.”
His palms slide around my bare waist. I startle because his branded hand is hot while his other palm is ice. He must realize the reason for my gasp because he pulls his magic-laden hand away.
But I press it down.
His jaw tenses. “What if it hurts you?”
My nerves finally, finally settle, and a smile hits my lips. “It says shield, not slash.”
“Do you think it’s to shield myself or others?”
“I have no clue, but do you mind if we test out your new sigil at some other time? I don’t feel like hurting you or letting anyone else— Actually…” I crane my neck. “Tarian!” I call out.
“I’ll get him,” Calanthe says. “Baby!” Although her hat casts her face in shadow, I don’t miss how wide she smiles.
“How long have you been squatting there like a creeper?” I ask when she looks back down at us.
“If you must know, I was worried. Which is why I peeked. Shoot me.”
“Don’t give that one any ideas. She’s too trigger-happy.” Tarian mutters, appearing on the reinforced stone lip of the mine.
I roll my gummy eyes.
Malachi appears at Reeve’s side, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. “You made it out in one piece, Rafferty, and an improved one at that, apparently.”
“No one’s more shocked than I am, Hadez.” Reeve’s unbranded hand curls around my hip in a show of possession that hits me square in the heart—and other places. Which I should probably not be thinking about in this sanctified space.
“Tarian, send Gael down,” I tell him.
“Don’t you want to get out first?”
“No. I want to try something. Tell Gaea not to intervene, okay?”
The blue glyphs around us ripple.
“She heard you. She says she will only float him down once you and Reeve rise.”
I pout. “I wanted to test out his rune,” I explain. “See if it could shield a person from magic.”
“As long as he wants them protected, it will,” Tarian says with such certainty, I understand that he’s gotten the lowdown on the rune straight from Gaea.
“So he’s immortal?” Calanthe asks.
“Not immortal. He’ll still age. He just won’t croak as long as I don’t remove the rune.”
“Which you won’t…” I plead.
“Not without an actual reason, no.”
I exhale the air caught in my lungs before guiding us back to the thick beam of light linking the mine to the world above.
Reeve’s mouth grows slack with awe as Gaea floats us up.
I smirk. “You wear a rune on your hand.”
“Just because you’re blasé doesn’t mean the rest of us are,” Calanthe says. “I knew you’d survive,” she tells Reeve, backing up to give us room to step out.
“You couldn’t have known. Tarian didn’t even know.”
“I dreamt he was at our wedding, so yeah, I knew.”
Her conclusion draws a rush of air from me.
“Not everything in our dreams is real, Callie,” Tarian reminds her gently.
“Am I—or am I not—currently housing triplets? Triplets I dreamt about.”
Our overlord glows with pride.
“Here I thought you’d gotten the timeline and details wrong,” I tell her.
“What dream?” Malachi asks.
“She saw Reeve in Atlantis.”
Reeve gapes at Calanthe.
“Dreaming is my superpower,” she declares.
“She has a lot of dreams. Very vivid ones,” I explain.
“Why are you grimacing?” Tarian asks.
“Because I’m subjected to their vividity more often than I’d like.”
Tarian hikes up a brow. “How much vividity are we talking?”
Calanthe joggles her head. “I leave some details out.”
“She doesn’t,” I tell Tarian with mock despair. “I wish she did.”
“No, you don’t wish I did. You live for those details.” Calanthe’s grin turns incandescent when a flush stings my cheeks. Thank Gaea my back is to my parents.
“Not to interrupt this intriguing conversation,” Dad says, “but any final words before we dump Gael in?”
When I turn, I find Gael standing beside his open cage, studying the shrub at his feet as though it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Although my parents don’t touch him, their magic does. It blows against him, catching in his grimy hair, forcing his spine straight.
“No,” I say.
“Rafferty?” Tarian says.
Reeve tips his head to the side. “You had everything, Monta. You were married. You had magic and an extraordinary daughter who was ready to build something with you. Why did you waste it all?”
Gael lifts his gaze off the plant and fastens it on Reeve. “Attachment is a liability. Might want to remember that. Also, careful about takin’ bites of the apple, for it never falls far from the tree. In case my analogy ain’t landin’, I’m Electra’s tree.”
“The hell you are,” my father growls. “You’re not even a dried-up piece of bark. You’re nothing, Monta. To her. To us. You’re nothing.”
A crazed grin seizes Gael’s mouth. “How many Hunters did you kill, Yosef?”
“A person’s worth isn’t measured by the number of lives they’ve claimed,” Tarian says. “Only by the number of lives they’ve enriched.”
“Says the greatest murderer of us all,” Gael drones.
“Stop engaging him,” Mom snipes. “He’s obviously lost his mind.”
“Losing it implies he had one,” Malachi chimes in. “Can we expedite this? I need a drink.”
“No, you don’t,” I say at the same time as Calanthe says, “No drinking for you. Ever. Under no circumstances.”
At Reeve’s frown, I whisper, “Mal’s allergic to alcohol.”
“I’m not allergic,” Malachi grumbles, then grumbles again when he finds Quinn standing on the dirt road mere feet away, hair glinting gold in the afternoon sunlight.
Although she’s looking at all of us, her eyes keep returning to Reeve.
“Tarian?” Mom says. “Tell us when.”
“Now.”
My parents shove Gael’s body as though he were a golf ball on a putting green. He drops.
A shrill scream rises from the mine, followed by the acrid tang of burning flesh. Even though my face is turned away, I seal my lids.
Large callused hands pull me into a thundering chest, before gliding around me and wrapping me up.
I bury my face against Reeve, only peaking once Tarian declares, “It’s done. Let’s go.”
And just like that, a man was unmade and another…made.