Chapter 34
The moment after Xavi made his choice, the doorways disappeared.
But no one spoke, and there was no other immediate indication whether he had won or lost—only silence that grew louder with time, as a strange, cold wind from nowhere tugged at his hair and nipped at his skin.
Where was Ryn? What choice had she made? Was the fae tormenting her as she had tormented him?
When the rage within him grew too great to ignore, he stalked forward, circling the walls, searching for any opening or weakness that he could exploit. But it was as if they had been formed not with hands but with magic itself, and he could sense nothing.
No longer caring whether the fae was watching, he shifted into an immense silver-white gryphon and launched himself towards the lofty ceiling, but there were no cracks there either.
Perhaps he would have to use magic to force his way through…
Xavi?
Kel!
I can hear you, Xavi replied fiercely. But I do not know what has happened to Ryn.
I do not believe the fae will harm her. Not before the end.
Relief made him weak, but only for a moment. This was Ryn they were talking about. She was likely to start wrestling another cave viper or drawing a dragon as it prepared to eat her.
Wait…
Kel, how much have you remembered?
A great deal.
Even his mental voice sounded grim.
The fae’s attention has been elsewhere, as has the bulk of her power, and so I have remained more aware of my surroundings since the moment you and Ryn disappeared. And with that awareness, I have recovered many of my memories of the past.
Why did he not sound as if that were a good thing?
There is much I still do not remember, but none of this is as we thought. The volcano was a lie. The brides were a lie. All of it…
The volcano he knew, but the brides as well?
The fae was abandoned here, Kel went on. By her own people, for practicing twisted magic and gaining power through pain.
So their hunch had been correct. She had created the trials for the purpose of benefiting from their suffering.
With every moment of pain or uncertainty, every rejection, every reminder of past hurts, every fear of friendship lost, she gained power.
And she had designed these trials around the most painful memories he and Ryn possessed.
“So she trapped you here in order to torture you?” Xavi mused aloud. “Then why force you to sleep the centuries away?”
There is more to it than simply suffering. She offered me a bargain, and I rejected it, but I cannot yet remember why. I fought her, but our powers were too closely matched, and as a result, she trapped me in this cursed sleep and turned to you as her unwilling pawn in breaking the stalemate.
Fury shot through his bones, heady as wine, dark and crimson as spilled blood. “That’s why she placed me under a geas,” Xavi murmured. “To bring sacrifices who would feed her magic. But they were not enough. She needed more in order to defeat you—to force you to bend to her will.”
He would deal with the horror of that later, along with the agonizing guilt of wondering whether he could have broken free of her power if he’d only tried hard enough. With the grief of recognizing the lies he’d unwittingly told and the innocent lives that had been sacrificed as a result.
In this moment, he had but one priority. One goal…
He had to get to Ryn before she became the next sacrifice.
Xavi, you must promise to remember this. No matter what happens, this evil must never be released into the world again. If she is freed, her magic will be immense, and her desire for power insatiable. It will truly be as if a volcano laid waste to these lands and to every land beyond them.
“I do not need more reasons to ensure that the witch no longer breathes,” Xavi growled. “The moment she comes within reach of either my teeth or my blades, she is mine.”
It is not so simple, Kel cautioned. I have slept all these centuries because my power was not enough to escape her, let alone kill her.
I could only hold her back and thus fell victim to her curse.
But her power has been growing with every moment you and Lady Camryn have been trapped within her enchantment.
It may be enough now for her to overwhelm me, unless we can find a way to stop her.
For centuries, Xavi had believed himself to be serving his king—by keeping him alive and saving their people from destruction.
Only now did he learn that his every waking breath had been spent in service to an unspeakable evil.
One that had trapped him, used him, stolen his memories, and co-opted his will.
It was a mortal wound, to one who had never known mortality—to have lived for honor and duty, only to realize that both had been so thoroughly corrupted.
Was this then the true nature of Lesh? Was it the fae’s power that drove that creeping numbness and caprice that stole over him whenever he left the valley—beyond the reach of Kel’s efforts to bind her and suppress her magic?
In the end, the answer mattered not at all.
If needed, he would become Lesh again, if only it would give him the strength to end this creature forever. If only it would help him save Ryn from whatever the witch had planned for her. He would throw himself into the fire a thousand times if it meant that Ryn would go free of this curse.
“If there is even the smallest chance that we can end her, I will not hesitate to take it,” Xavi promised. “I swear that on my very life.”
Promise me, Xavi. Promise me you will not…
But whatever Kel said next, Xavi never got the chance to hear it.
With a roar and a flash of light, he was ripped off his feet and flung between worlds.
For what seemed an agonizing eternity, he hovered and spun in cold, empty darkness. Unable to speak, unable to see or hear, until it finally spat him out again…
In the chamber beneath the mountain.
But the vast space was no longer silent and empty. No longer lit only by torchlight.
The floor, the walls, the pillars—all were wreathed in flames.
Kel’s resting place alone remained untouched, but for the first time in over a thousand years, he no longer slept. Instead, he stood tall and strong at the front of the dais, clad in his battered armor, with his blade at his back and unwavering purpose flashing from his golden eyes.
A single flickering memory flashed through Xavi’s mind—of the words written on the stone.
When the fated mortal bride appears, the king will awaken.
And there, standing on the dais a half dozen paces to the king’s right, was Ryn. Her clothing was torn and bloodstained, but she remained upright and defiant, her expression both focused and determined.
Was this the choice she had made? Xavi’s heart finally resumed beating and broke in half all in the same breath, but it did not matter.
The moment he saw her, his fear vanished, leaving nothing but icy resolve.
Whether she had chosen to bond with Kel or had met the fae’s terms for victory, she was here, she was alive, and that was enough, so he turned his attention to the final participant in this legend none of them would have wished to be a part of.
The fae stood on the left side of the platform, clothed in gleaming white, and now nearly as tall as Kel. The patterns written across her skin glowed almost too brightly to look at as she gazed at them with fathomless dark eyes from a cruel and ageless face.
The same, and yet different from every previous guise. Just as Ryn had said—and just as Xavi himself had done countless times—she’d appeared to them as something small and soft and harmless. Someone needing help. And they’d taken the bait, only to find that they’d become her prey instead.
But he would be neither prey nor pawn any longer. With the end of this torment in sight, no geas, no curse could ever hold him.
Even if the price demanded was his life.