Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
Maxim
Leaping onto my serpent’s back, I reach for the tips of his horns, ready for his quick, slithering dart forward before he launches himself into the air.
The magic within his body ripples through his scales as we soar upward, where I can see far into the distance.
All the endless sand dunes.
Endless, blistering heat snatches the breath from my chest.
But then, in the far distance…
My forehead puckers and I lean slightly forward, peering into the horizon at an object that glints and twists and shoots—
Right at me!
Before I can react, a force knocks into me, ramming me off my serpent’s back and into the air, snatching at me, and then—
My surroundings vanish.
I’m crouched on a wooden floor, looking up.
Everything in the background is hazy and blurred, but the Oracle stands clearly in my vision, silver armor hugging her curves from her neck to her feet, where she’s wearing silver boots.
Strands of metal are threaded through her hair, lighting up her dark tresses, making them gleam.
My heart thumps in my chest as she leans slightly over a book resting on top of a glass cabinet located mere inches to my right, its transparent shelves housing numerous books.
I’m kneeling directly to her right, practically at her feet.
Once more, an amber thread extends from my heart to hers, this time already taut in the space between us.
Golden light glows above the book’s open pages while the Oracle’s voice washes over me, serene, as she appears to read from the page she’s looking at, “What was done must be undone… Unmade as it was made…”
Despite how calm she appears, my instincts roar at me because heat rushes from the book, the crackle of flames meets my ears, and a scream builds in my ears, as if the air is compressing and the world is about to shatter.
I don’t know what danger is coming for her, but I know I need to get her away from that fucking book.
As my muscles bunch and I prepare to leap up at her, I register her final words, cut short. “To break the curse, break the—”
With a terrified gasp, she launches herself backward, her hand leaving the page, her cheeks suddenly deathly pale, fear radiating from every tense angle of her body.
I’m already launching myself into the space she created between her and the cabinet.
In that moment, I catch sight of two things.
The first, the open pages on the table to my right.
Flames explode from them, a fiery heat, and worse, shards of golden metal shoot toward her, their edges sharp enough that I’m not certain the Oracle’s silver armor will protect her.
Not when magic streams from the page, exploding around her, threatening to rip at her body.
The second thing, that she isn’t alone. Antony stands only two paces to her left, but he hasn’t reacted to the threat, or even to my presence, although the full body armor covering his body makes it difficult to tell for sure.
It takes merely a heartbeat for me to throw myself into the space between the Oracle and the jagged shards striking at her.
I still don’t know how I’m seeing her, and I’m certain she can’t see me, just like she couldn’t the first time I somehow connected with her across locations, but I’m a hairsbreadth from colliding with her, and my only concern is ensuring that my body becomes a shield for her.
She is my hope.
I can’t lose my hope.
Mere milliseconds from slamming into her, I brace for the impact of the metal shards into my back, ready for the pain, clamping down hard on my power because I can’t fucking let myself burn so close to her.
Tension thrums through her body, her silver armor hugging her so closely that her muscles are visibly coiled in the process of propelling herself backward, but that’s when her eyes meet mine.
She looks right at me.
Her blue eyes widen, and I catch the whisper she exhales, “Fire.”
I’m not sure what else she would have said if she could.
To my horror, the shards fly straight through me as if I’m nothing more than an apparition.
Fucking… No!
My arms were about to close around her, and I will my right hand to move fast enough, attempting to pluck from the air the metal fragment shooting past my head and right at her face—straight at her left eye.
It sails through my fingers.
I can’t stop any of it.
I do the only thing I can think of.
Use the only connection between us that seems to be solid.
I ram my already-swinging right arm down on the taut thread connecting her heart to mine.
The impact yanks her downward, adding speed to her own evasive movement.
She drops to the floor opposite me, but not fast enough for every shard to miss her.
The lowest-flying blade slices across the edge of her cheekbone.
A thin line of blood blossoms as she crouches so near to me that I should be able to fucking touch her.
I should be able to close my arms around her.
If she can see me… But I can’t touch her…
Her chest heaves with rapid breaths.
Breaths that slow and then, for a painful few heartbeats…
Everything pauses.
My hand is wrapped in the thread, my arm bearing down on it, keeping her pinned opposite me. Her right hand has stretched toward me, reaching for my heart where the thread is anchored.
Nothing moves.
Then she exhales.
Her silver-clad fingertips skim my chest, but I can’t feel her touch.
The way her hand hovers near my torso, her fingers curling inward, indicates she can’t feel me either.
My body may as well be made of the smoke my fire leaves in its wake.
“Thyra!” Antony’s roar cracks across me.
At the same moment, I’m aware of a thump as the book flips itself closed on the cabinet behind me, several golden fragments poking between its pages, caught there, writhing, before they melt back into its fore-edge.
Antony dives toward the Oracle.
Toward Thyra.
Finally, I know her name.
The moment he touches her, the thread connecting Thyra and me snaps, a painfully sharp sensation radiating through my chest.
In the next instant, I’m wrenched back to the desert I was flying over.
Only to find myself plummeting toward the ground.
Fuck!
My serpent’s golden body spirals around and around me, coiling along my downward path, as if he’s trying to catch me or at least slow my descent.
His desperate hisses meet my ears.
I reach for him, straining to snag hold of one of his horns, but I’m falling too fast.
The ground rears up at me, and all I can do is wrap my arms around my head before I crash into the hard sand.
Crack. The sudden stop jars through me.
My spine shatters. My ribs cave in. Every bone in my legs and arms breaks.
Agony floods me, more than I can tolerate.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think.
All I have is fire.
Fiery pain. Fiery rage. Fiery…nothing.
Flames spread in every direction around me, roaring across the dead landscape, leaping toward my serpent’s airborne form before I pass out.