Chapter Five
Chapter
five
We ride for several hours.
I have not been beyond the limits of Caeldera for well over a month, and am surprised to see whatever odd weather patterns plague the capital city have spared the rest of the plateau.
The kingdom is in the full throes of late spring.
The deep snows I’ve come to expect have melted away, leaving behind a world of lush grass, flowering shrubs, and thickly leafed trees.
After weeks spent beneath constant cloud cover, I find myself looking around in a mix of confusion and wonderment as we ride through the sun-dappled forest, passing the occasional guard tower and checkpoint.
Each is outfitted with soldiers clad in Dyvedi brown, armed to the teeth.
King Pendefyre is taking no chances with another invasion.
The morning slips away. I do not ask where he is taking me, and he does not offer up the information.
I content myself with savoring the rarity of the moment—pushing aside the obligations that await us both in Caeldera as I slump back against Penn’s warm chest and allow his ever-present heat to sink into my spine.
It is not enough to drive off the chill that has settled over me since Fyremas, but it helps.
I feel the maegic singing in my bones even before the forest yields to a craggy coastline where the wild ocean meets the western shore.
It has been so long since I saw the sea.
My heart cries out for the comforting rhythm of crashing waves and tidal breezes I knew for all my youth.
But the strange cove that comes into view is as unlike Seahaven’s white sands as I can fathom.
The frothing bay is ringed with dozens of oddly shaped tidal pools, the waters within them still and shiny and tinted a greenish-yellow hue.
The air smells strongly of brine and sulfur, stinging my eyes until they gloss with tears.
There is no dune, no beach. As Onyx slows to a stop his hooves crunch on crystalline salt deposits thicker than frost. Closer examination of the shallow pools reveals they are not home to any darting, jewel-scaled creatures or tough-shelled crabs; they are stagnant and steaming, their viscous surfaces belching occasional puffs of boiling vapor.
“What is this place?” I ask, tasting fumes on each breath as I look around.
“Blister Bight.”
With that succinct answer, Penn swings down from the saddle, then offers me a hand to help me dismount.
My fingers tingle with warmth as they clasp his, but he releases me as soon as my feet hit the ground.
Leaving Onyx to wait beneath the battered trees at the edge of the forest, we pick a path between the bubbling vats, our boots crunching in the thick salt.
Deep beneath the surface, a thick chord of power pulses through the earth, like a mallet on a drum.
Like a heartbeat. Something alive, something ancient, vibrating up from Anwyvn’s very core, creeping through the cracks between the pools.
I shudder as I gulp pure maegic into my lungs with each breath, feeling it fill my veins and permeate my bloodstream.
The Remnant mark on my breast throbs with suppressed power, an icy burn against my flesh—so antithetical to the air, which grows hotter and hotter as we move deeper into the ring of odd sulfuric pools.
I have been in places of natural power before, from Seahaven’s Starlight Wood to the portal at the heart of the Forsaken Forest to the warded chamber tucked away behind Caeldera’s great falls… but this is by far the most potent.
Penn’s shoulders move visibly beneath his cloak as he breathes deep. The maegic is affecting him, too. I can see the flush of it on the exposed skin at his neck, reddening the sharp cut of his cheekbones. His hands are fisted tightly at his sides, and I know his control is being sorely tested.
“Is there a portal here?”
Without answering aloud, he points to the left.
My eyes follow the gesture beyond the field of pools.
I spot it almost instantly—a jagged arch of slate gray rocks, stacked one atop another to form a nondescript doorway.
A faint shimmer disturbs the air around it, the only indication of the glamour that conceals it from mortal eyes.
“Are we using it?”
“No.” Penn answers without breaking stride.
“Why are we here, then?”
“I want to show you something.”
My brows lift. “What?”
“You’ll see.”
I heave a sigh.
“Not much farther,” he notes, sounding somewhat entertained by my impatience.
We come to the largest of the pools, set at the edge of the bight, just out of reach of the waves’ spraying foam.
Twice as wide as the others and several feet deeper, it is a vivid orange color striated liberally with yellow and green.
To my utter delight, it is surrounded by dozens of lounging lizard-like creatures with bodies of near-identical coloring to the pool.
A natural camouflage. Some are small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, others are the size of a house cat.
They pay us little mind as they doze on the superheated rocks.
A smile stretches my lips wide as I watch one of their black tongues flick out—and, with it, a small fireball that floats up into the sky.
“Are they dragons?” I ask, enchanted by the sight.
“No. They are fymandridae. Fire salamanders.”
I drop into a crouch, wanting a closer look, and am rewarded with fiery warnings from the creatures closest to me. Several tiny fireballs shoot in my direction and I jolt backward into Penn’s legs, nearly knocking him over in the process.
“Sorry.” I giggle as he helps me regain my feet. “They surprised me.”
He stares at me for a long moment, his eyes intent. They are swimming with fire maegic, two pools of molten lava that scorch me where I stand.
“Don’t apologize,” he whispers. “It’s been a long time since I heard your laugh or saw your smile.”
The smile slips off my mouth. I swallow hard, ignoring the way my stomach clenches. “Is that why you brought me here?”
“Is it so inconceivable that I would seek to make you happy?”
“No,” I murmur. “I just…”
He sounds suddenly tired. “Just what, Rhya?”
“You have avoided my presence for weeks now. For months, in fact. You have gone out of your way to create distance between us, ever since—” My teeth dig into my bottom lip, containing the rest of my words.
“Since?” he prompts.
Since you kissed me. Since I felt your body against mine, your hands in my hair, your fire in my blood. Since you held my pleasure in your callused palm, and I in turn stoked yours to a searing blaze I can still feel each time I close my eyes.
I want to say it, but embarrassment stills my tongue. My cheeks are burning. I tell myself it is from the heated air off the pools, not my deep mortification.
“Since Fyremas,” I finish weakly. “Since the battle. It’s like we are strangers again.”
He is silent for a long time, absorbing my words. I can see the toll they take on him as much as I can feel his tension through our bond. Eventually, he breaks eye contact and looks out over the bight, his gaze scanning beyond the bubbling pools to the dark blue sea.
“It’s not you I’m avoiding,” he says finally. “It’s everyone. Everything. The entire bloody kingdom. The entire bloody world, and all who inhabit it.”
He shakes his head, weariness stealing over his features. The shadows beneath his eyes are so deep, I ache to trace my fingertips over the hollows, to soothe them away. I knot my fingers together behind my back to keep from doing so.
“Since that night,” Penn continues in a rough voice, “all I do is replay my mistakes over and over again. Each failing. Each life lost. I cannot be in the present. Not while I am consumed by the past. Not while I am haunted by the future that still awaits.”
“Efnysien, you mean.” I chew my lip. “You want payback.”
“He will pay for his crimes, Rhya.”
“Soren has returned to the Northlands. Perhaps—”
“If Soren had succeeded in killing him, we would know about it by now. You think he would deny himself the opportunity to crow about his own success?” Penn shakes his head, still not looking at me.
“No. Efnysien lives. Hidden away in his shadowy spires. Biding his time until he can strike at us again.”
Anxiety stirs deep in my gut. “I know you fear another attack on your people. I know that’s why you’ve been so fixated on strengthening the wards. But, Penn, surely we are safe. At least for a time. Surely—”
“Safe? We are not safe.”
“But—”
“It’s not just the threat of Efnysien or his red army.
Violence gathers in the air. With the Reavers to the southwest and the Frostlanders in the northeast, we are penned between two enemies eager for our demise.
” His teeth grit together as his jaw ticks.
“The blight worsens more each season. Our fields are failing, our crops dying on the vine. Between the increase in quakes and the influx of all manner of vile creatures coming down from the Cimmerians…we are vulnerable in ways we have never been before. Our troops are already stretched too thin as it is. I fear we are living in a house of cards. The faintest breeze will cast us into utter ruin.”
“This burden is not yours alone, Pendefyre.”
“No?” He scoffs bitterly.
“It does not need to be. Not if you would let me help you. Let me take a turn charging the wards.”
His response is instant. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“You will not risk your life for my kingdom.”
“But you’ll risk yours?”
“As I said,” he retorts flatly, “it’s my kingdom.”
I push aside the hurt those words—however accurate—births inside me. It is true, Caeldera is not my home. Not really. I do not have a home anymore. But his blunt reminder of that fact wounds me far more deeply than I will ever admit.
“Promise me,” he demands. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the wards. Promise me you won’t put yourself in undue jeopardy.”