CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX #2
Ronan closed the distance to Callum in a heartbeat. “If you knew how to lead, commander,” he spat the title, “you wouldn’t have rotted in that dungeon.”
The rage came then, blazing hot in Callum’s glare. Ronan’s smirk only grew broader.
“Alright—" I shoved myself between them. “Let’s put the egos away.” My eyes found Callum and I reached for him, through the dying threads of our bond, but they had already melted. He had shut me out completely. “Cal…we’re in Ryuu. I think we should trust Ronan here. Just this once.”
He didn’t look at me, his eyes stayed locked on Ronan, gilded fury burning hotter. I rolled my own, exhaling, catching Ronan’s arm, and dragging him with me toward the mountain’s gaping maw. “Fine,” I muttered. “Lead us into the godsdamn creepy cave.”
The cavern's mouth loomed before us, vast enough to swallow dragons side by side and still have room to spare.
Claw marks scarred the stone around the opening, deep, jagged, undeniable proof of what had once passed through.
It was hard not to balk. Hard not to feel so immensely small compared to the grand power that Ryuu claimed.
I stopped, reaching for Elva behind me and squeezing her wrist gently. “If anything happens,” her fingers folded over mine as she moved close enough to hear my whisper, “run.”
Saying nothing, she tapped my hand in understanding before I dropped her wrist and continued forward.
Ronan didn’t comment or even glance at the scars covering the walls.
Ford, however, whistled low. “Nothing screams trap like a cave big enough to feast on three dragons and my dignity all at once.”
Ronan just adjusted his pack, walking on.
Ford threw his hands up as he scoffed. “See! Very reassuring.”
Shadows crowded close as we entered, the air damp and heavy, the mountain itself disapproving of our intrusion.
Ford’s voice continued to carry anyway. “If something jumps out of the dark, I’m throwing Verena at it first. She’s scarier.”
My chuckle came out more of a snort.
Ronan halted mid-step, turning his head just enough. “Enough quivering, Ford. Or you’ll make that darkness think you’re prey.”
Ford muttered under his breath, falling silent shortly after. That was when Callum moved, shoulder squared, his stride subtle as he slid ahead of Ronan.
I saw it. So did Ronan.
“What’s the deal with the bird, anyway?” Ford asked.
Not his first, or fifth, question since we’d entered, but anyone’s first time wanting to bring it up.
“Is it your pet?” He lifted his finger toward where it was perched on Nezra’s shoulder, snapping his arm back when its eye swirled.
“Some winged companion to soothe your soul or keep your secrets?”
Nezra giggled as we filed through the narrow path one by one. Although the front opening had stretched wide, the deeper in we went, the more the ceiling had fallen in over time. Forcing the cave to devour us whole.
I swallowed as the flame in Callum’s hand caught nail-sized etchings along the walls. This had all the makings of a terrible idea, but if someone wished to vanish, a cave hidden beneath the ocean floor wasn’t a bad choice.
“No,” Nezra muttered, ducking under a low-hanging ledge, the part ready to collapse at the next flick. “He is not my pet. We found one another when company was necessary.”
Ford stopped dead, forcing my face to collide with the pack along his back. Callum’s light carried on and the passage shrunk tightly, consuming everything but the dark. “Wait, you can actually understand it?”
She glared at him.
“I mean him.”
“Ford.” I lovingly shoved him forward with a hiss as Ronan groaned behind me, his broad shoulders scraping the sides and ceiling. “Keep moving.”
Nezra’s voice drifted back. “As much as I need to.”
“So...” Ford uttered. “You speak bird?”
“He is a raven,” Nezra corrected. “They have their own tongue. And I speak all of them.”
The markings along the wall vanished, all the scratches gone, as if whatever had been dragged had lost its grip on the stone. A sick weight leveled in my gut. Darkness shifted under my skin, up my neck, savoring the taste of it.
A sound drifted forward, soft, almost delicate—
The raven shifted on Nezra’s shoulder, its head cocked, eyes glowing as a low hum spilled from its throat. It lilted through the cave like a half-remembered lullaby.
I froze, my blood chilling to ice as recognition raced up my spine.
I knew that song.
Somewhere buried in my memory, in nights of forgotten dreams. The darkness stopped, constricted, coiling tight around my lungs.
Nezra only smiled, letting the sound float by like the reminiscence had been caught on its tide, and she was waiting for me to remember.
“Opening.” Callum’s voice broke me from it all. “Ten feet ahead.”
The entrance was crushing, the edges grating our backs as we bent low to squeeze through. Ronan and Killian struggled worst of all, their ample frames twisting and contorting to fit.
When the rock split wide, when Callum’s light illuminated my path once more, the worry evolved to wonder.
The walls inside were made of clay, rouge and slicked with moisture that pooled against the rutted ground. My breath fogged with stale air as I looked up, where stalactites hung from the tarnished ceiling, all poised and protective above what unexpectedly lay dormant in the center below.
Tombs.
My hand shot out instinctually, but Elva was nowhere near me.
Callum lingered at one as I searched for her, his fingers brushing the carved figure sleeping in stone against the lid.
A flame still flickered in his palm, throwing shadows long across the chamber as water slid down the walls in thin rivulets, catching his flare until they looked like streaks of blood streaming over the divots.
Bones cracked beneath my boots with each footstep as a whiff of rose let me know Elva was close. The scent of fresh mint mingling with it told me I wasn’t the only one watching over her.
“How many?”
Of course, Ford hadn’t finished his interrogation.
“Why are you so godsdamned nosy, Ford?” Callum mumbled, not even glancing up from the tomb.
Ford threw his arms wide. “What? Have you met anyone that speaks to a bird?”
I circled the tombs, letting my eyes shift, a flash of viper blue, gone before my next blink. “A raven, remember?”
But Ford’s attention was on Nezra, her own focus on the open arched doorway leading further into the cave. Though she didn’t seem to mind the inquiries, her voice aired with caution as she noted, “I speak every tongue the world has ever known.”
Ford whistled. “Why, though?”
A shiver threaded down my spine as I gravitated toward a looming statue that guarded a small tomb at its feet. A soft hiss hummed under my breath as my shadow shifted wrong, nearly throwing me off my feet at the shove against my skull.
Nezra sighed. “How dull would it be if I could only lure one kind to the depths to drown, strip bare, and then feed on what remains?”
Ronan and Killian both stifled a laugh, though Ford’s posture locked tight as steel. My hand brushed the small, slate tomb beside us, clearing dust from the faded etching on its face.
Nezra giggled. “I’m teasing.” Though her eyes lingered on the bones scattered among the stones. “We’re far more selective than that. And truth be told,” she leaned closer, letting the words bite, “it’s the marrow we savor, not the bones.”
Even I gulped at that one.
Elva startled, clutching the pendant at her throat when Inessa’s sudden laugh rang across the chamber.
My head tilted as the tomb before me shifted into the glow, a sliver of words on it now visible. I leaned down, blowing away the remaining dust and cobwebs clinging to the rest. “Nezra?”
She strode toward me, her raven launching from her shoulder as they neared.
“Do you read this language?”
She bent down, gloved fingers brushing over the extinct lines. Her breath caught as she swallowed, and then whispered, “Life fears Death. Death fears Nothing.”
Fuck.
My stomach dropped as every vein iced. That was when I knew exactly where we stood.
A burning smell rose as Callum stepped beside me, his flame dipping low. He said, voice as deep as the carvings, “The tomb of Keres.” His eyes lifted to mine. “The death spirits.”
The death spirits were souls who had been sacrificed, condemned to watch the damned in the afterlife. Those too evil even for the Aureveil.
Rocks loosened, clattering across the floor as the others gathered around the tomb. Blue fire roared from Callum’s hands, splitting into twin orbs that hovered above us, igniting the entire chamber at once.
And what it hid.
We saw them then. Hundreds of tombs. Some small enough for children. Others built for Fae grown and hardened. Each engraved with the same words.
Life fears Death. Death fears Nothing.
My fingers ghosted where the curse mark stained my chest. “Ronan, what mountain are we in?”
His eyes shot to me. “Druin Mountain.”
Mine fluttered shut, my breath faltering as I reached to bring Elva closer, her lips moving in soundless prayer as she watched Elysian’s eyes glaze over in a blue as bright as Callum’s glow.
“Deimos,” I whispered.
The ruler of Hel. This was his mountain.
And if that didn’t just damn us all.
My glare met Ronan’s again. “Why would you bring us here?”
“It’s the only way,” he answered.
Callum moved ahead, eyes scanning every shadow, toward a tomb with two figures with vast wings stretched wide. One raised a sword against an unseen enemy. The other reached for him, no weapon, no defense, only his arm. As if to stop him. To hold him back.
Killian slipped closer, falling into step beside him, an unlit torch gripped in his hand. He didn’t speak. Neither of them did as they stood there, only watching.
I took a few steps back, wondering what it was about this grave that bound them both in such stillness.
Hungrily, Callum’s palm swelled, building into itself until it became a pyre within his grasp. The light spilled on the stone, shadows sprawling as the silhouettes of the stone wings painted the wall before them.
For a moment they did not crown the statues, but Killian and Callum—haloing them as if the dead had lent them their ghost.
It was hauntingly beautiful.
Until Callum’s fire guttered out and only his eyes burned, liquid amber in the dark.
That darkness liked to play tricks, but from the corner of my vision I saw it—movement. It was cold. The kind so bone-shattering even the Viper shivered in its wake.
My chest locked, my body betraying me as the room spun, my vision collapsing. Not to the curse, but to blindness.
And then I was suffocating.
I couldn’t get air. Couldn’t feel anything but the prickles of my skin.
Something was wrong.
This place—we weren’t meant to be here. It was as if breathing in the air reminded my body of something my mind had forgotten.
I felt myself slipping back, back into the walls made of blood, back into that empty well I had been trapped in—
Until strong, warm hands caught me, guiding my body away from the chokehold of dread.
“Breathe, love,” he urged.
I tried. But gods, it hurt. My lungs were like stones, refusing to expand. My legs became weightless, then my body.
“Deeper.” Fingers swept stray curls from my eyes, his form taking shape as the blur receded and he carried me toward the cave opening.
“That’s it. Slow. I’m with you.” His inhale was sharp, pulling air, in hopes I would follow the rhythm. His exhale brushed across my face, cinnamon and flame. “Now let it go.” The words sank into me. “Good girl.”
I hadn’t even realized I was obeying him, hadn’t realized breath had already found my lungs.
There was a voice in my head, not his, not the Viper’s, but another—filling my throat, filling my mouth.
“Again, Verena. Life in. Death out.”
My stomach soured when I rushed through it, breathing too rapidly too soon. I bent forward, lurching from his hands and falling to cold stone, retching until nothing remained.
It didn’t burn up my throat, I could barely feel it, could barely feel anything. Not the bite of the mountain, or the shock of fresh air.
He held my hair back, tucking strands behind my ears.
Only then, when I lifted my head, my vision finally clear, did I see him.
Only then did every feeling, every sensation, come rushing back into me all at once.
Ronan stood above me, one hand gently gliding up and down my back, the other securing my own shaking hand as I pushed myself off from the ground.
He rose with me, the sky beyond still grey but darker now, the moon’s half glimmer struggling against the veil of cloud.
There was no movement at the top of this lost fortress except wind, fog, and two hearts thundering too close.
The way my body yielded to his voice, the way it calmed at his touch, that pull—I was beginning to believe it stemmed from something other than hatred.