“If we all work together, we can get it down sooner,” Ruby said, and the sound of the barrier being hit multiple times followed Emilia, like the specter of death, as she began wading through the sea of golden coins.
Did none of them have faith in her? Or maybe they saw how weak she was. Emilia could not deny how easy it would be to lie down on her treasure and sleep forever. Her head jerked up. That was her fate if she did not accomplish this task. It was a fate she rejected.
With renewed strength, born of necessity to survive and be with her mate and her brother, she began to systematically claw her way through the gold and jewels. Beloved gems held no importance to her as she rifled through boxes filled with jewels and clawed her way through piles of gold interspersed with diamonds and pearls.
The sound of the barrier buzzing accompanied her every step of the way, like an angry wasp she could not shake off. However, it gave her comfort, too, it reminded her they were here, and she was no longer alone. As she worked, snippets of memories came to her. Flashes of dreams that never ended, terrible and haunting. She was locked alone in a castle, like Rapunzel, or she had pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and awaited true love’s kiss. Because only her true love could wake her.
Thorn. He had awoken her. He was the reason she was here now, searching for what? She had no idea what it looked like. One jewel looked like the next as she picked them up and cast them aside.
“Anything?” Magnus asked, knowing full well if she had found it she would tell them.
Gathering her rotting skirts in her hands, she turned to face him. “No. How goes the barrier?”
“Holding firm but weakening,” Thorn called back to her before throwing himself forward like a soldier in battle throws himself at his enemy.
She nodded and returned to her search, holding rubies and emeralds in her hands and then throwing them aside as if they were pebbles on a beach. These jewels had been her father’s before her. Her father who was long, long dead and now a faded memory. No one alive today except Emilia and Magnus knew he’d given his life on a distant battlefield. The stories told by her mother were still fresh in her head of how he died a hero. Even if they knew, she doubted anyone would care. It was all in the past and the past was soon overtaken by the present and the future.
Emilia stopped. There was something here. Holding out her hands, her palms tingled as if something brushed against them. Taking a step forward, she ignored the rush of gold that cascaded toward her. This was it, she could sense its force, sense the energy that fed the barrier.
If only she could find it. There. An emerald so big it would fill her hand. Bending down, she placed her hands over it, and her hands vibrated. This wasn’t hers. It didn’t belong. But her dragon craved it all the same.
I would trade any jewel to leave this dark cave, Emilia told her dragon firmly.
As would I, her dragon took one last lingering look at the jewel, before Emilia cupped her hands around the emerald and picked it up, holding it like an injured bird. “I’ve found it,” she called triumphantly. “What do I do next?”
There was a murmur from behind her and then silence. They didn’t know. Finding it was one thing, destroying it another. Her mother once told her that energy could never be destroyed, only converted to something else. What was she supposed to convert this into? She had no magic of her own.
“Bring it here,” Thorn called, and she turned around and walked carefully back toward them. “Let me see it.”
Slowly, she opened her hands and he peered inside. “It’s the Jewel of Avantar. I once heard Perry talking about it. I believe he funded an expedition to Brazil to bring it back. I thought he failed. He told me he failed.” How many other things had he lied about?
“The Jewel of Avantar. I’ve heard of it before. You’re right, I remember now, Perry mentions it in his journal.” Thorn touched his hands to the barrier. “The current is stronger now.”
“Does that mean it’s weaker over there?” Ruby asked, pointing to the other side of the cave.
“Only one way to find out.” Magnus took Ruby’s hand. “Let’s go and test it.”
Ruby and Magnus hurried around to the other side of the cave, scrambling over rocks and squeezing between the cave wall and the barrier in some places until they stood opposite Emilia and Thorn. Emilia held her breath as Magnus lifted his hand and touched the barrier, only for it to repel him. Emilia’s hope faded along with her strength. “It’s no use.”
“Don’t say that,” Thorn told her firmly. “Look at me.”
She lifted her head, afraid to look into his eyes, afraid of what she would see there. His voice might lie and tell her it would be all right, but she would see it in his eyes if he told her an untruth. “I’m stuck here. Perry wanted me to die here.”
“I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.” Thorn leaned forward, his face close to the barrier, and she did the same. How she longed to reach out and touch his cheek and then press her lips to his. He was her mate, her true love. “If we keep hitting the barrier, sooner or later it will fail.”
“I do not want you to watch me die.” A tear trickled down her cheek as she said the words. How could she have slept for hundreds of years only to die in the presence of her mate?
Was that what Perry truly wanted? Was he so cruel?
Chapter Three – Thorn
“You are not going to die. I can’t believe Peregrine Manning wanted this. There had to be an escape clause.” Thorn pulled back and turned away, rubbing his chin with his hand as he considered their options. “There has to be a way.”
No man could be this cruel. And yet the evidence was hard to deny. Emilia was trapped out of reach of any man. It seemed as if Perry was reaching out from beyond the grave to torture them. With a growl, Thorn turned around and beat his fists upon the barrier, only to be cast back against the rocks behind him.
“Self-harm is not helpful,” Ruby told him bluntly as she and Magnus returned.
“I can’t just stand here and do nothing,” Thorn replied hotly, his arms tingling from where they’d impacted against the force-field.
“You’re right. So, we thought, what if we go and get as many people as we can to beat against this barrier until it comes down?” Ruby’s plan sounded plausible except for one thing.
“Do you want all those people to see your treasure?” Thorn eyed Magnus. This wasn’t just about Emilia, it was about Magnus, too. “Do you want them to know about your dragon?”
“We can get a dozen people or more who already know about us and our treasure. People we trust.” Ruby put her hands on her hips. She was ready to do whatever it took to get Emilia out. Even if it cost them all dearly.
“I cannot think of any other way,” Magnus reluctantly admitted. “I cannot believe that Perry would want this.”
“Exactly!” Thorn said. “We are missing something obvious.” He ran his hands through his cropped hair. “There has to be a way.”
“Well, normally in these situations we’d go with true love’s kiss,” Ruby said. “But since you two can’t touch, I think that’s a nonstarter.”
“Why didn’t the barrier move?” Emilia asked as she looked down at the jewel.
Thorn was trying not to think about true love’s kiss. Yes, he wanted to kiss Emilia, he had since he first set eyes on her. However, he was scared that if they kissed, it would become clear that what they shared was not true love. True lust, and true mates, but not true love. Love was a thing that had to be nurtured and left to blossom, not forced.
Thorn straightened up. “Why didn’t the barrier move?”
“That’s what I just said.” Emilia held the emerald out to him. “If this is what makes the spell work, would it not generate the barrier around it equal distances apart?”
“Yes.” Thorn pressed himself forward and said, “I could kiss you.”
She hid a small smile, which he found adorable. Not that he would ever tell a fierce dragon-shifter she was adorable. Or perhaps
she liked that kind of thing. He had to get this damn barrier down, so he could find out everything about his mate. “So, what is the answer?”
His eyes took a moment to come into focus. “I have absolutely no idea, but that will change.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But give me a minute, I’ll think of something.”
“Pace out the diameter of the circle. Focus on the stalactite and walk in a straight line.” He pointed to the other side of the barrier. “Go.”
His excitement spurred her forward although her legs were weak and after only ten paces her body shivered as if it were winter on a mountain peak. Thorn willed her to keep going, to take one more step and then another.
“Twenty,” she said out loud, looking for the other side as she walked through the gold in the darkness.
“Keep going.” Thorn hated seeing her like this, he wanted to scoop her up in his arms and carry her to safety. Being on the outside looking in sucked. It sucked big time, and his frustration with his ancestor grew.
“Thorn,” Magnus murmured at his side. “We have to act soon. When I woke I was weak. I needed food and water.”
“You don’t think I know that,” Thorn ground out. They couldn’t let Emilia see their fear for her health, they had to stay strong and positive.
“If this doesn’t work, we need to go for help.” Magnus’s voice told him there would be no argument, he had made up his mind. And he was right. They could not waste any more time on experiments.
“Agreed. I’ll stay here, and you go for help.” He nodded. “But let’s try this first.”
“What exactly is this?” Ruby asked, watching Emilia closely as she stumbled but didn’t fall.
“Emilia was right, the barrier should have moved if it were emanating from the emerald. Which makes me think the emerald is feeding something else.” It was a logical assumption. The emerald was the power cell and something else was the generator.
“And we need to find that something else.” Magnus’s jaw tightened, and his fists balled. There was a frisson of electricity emanating from him as if he were about to shift into a dragon and beat this barrier until it succumbed to his wrath.
“We need to find that something else fast.” Thorn shared Magnus’s urgency. “We don’t have time for Emilia to search through all her treasure, we need to scale down the area.”
“You mean Emilia has to find that something fast. We are next to useless to her right now,” Ruby told them bluntly. He didn’t need to hear those words, he knew just how useless he was.
“Fifty paces,” Emilia’s voice sounded thin and far away.
“Count back twenty-five paces, aim straight for us here. When you get to twenty-five, start searching.” He watched her take those first few steps and wished he could be there with her, supporting her.
“She’s too weak,” Magnus whispered to himself as Emilia paused and looked down at the ground.
“She can do it.” She had to do it. If not, he would spend the rest of his life alone, mourning her. Could fate be that cruel?
Raising her head, Emilia looked straight at him and took another step forward and then another. His lips moved as he counted with her. “There. Search around there.”
Emilia dropped down to her knees, and the gold rustled as it slid away from her. Burying her hands in the treasure, Emilia began to shift the gold to one side. Each time she found a jewel or a trinket box, she would check it out and then discard it.
“Come on.” He glanced at Magnus. “You two had better get going.”
“Give her a few minutes more,” Magnus said as he watched his sister digging through the gold.
Thorn’s nerves set on edge, he was scared to leave it too much longer. Despite his belief in Emilia’s inner strength, he could see her failing. Each small movement cost her more than the one before. It scared the hell out of him that she might just fade away, and if they had to wait hours for the barrier to fail, she might be dead of exhaustion by the end of it.
“She’s got something,” Ruby said, ducking down and tilting her head to one side.
Emilia held something in her hand and then pushed herself up to a standing position. She swayed a little from side to side, summoning her last strength and then took a step away from them.
Thorn held his hand up to the barrier. It wasn’t there, he reached out until his fingertips made contact with the barrier. It had moved a foot away. “That’s it,” he said quietly, before lifting his head and calling, “That’s it.”
“What do I do?” Emilia asked.
“What if she smashed it?” Ruby suggested. “That would work, wouldn’t it?”
Thorn hated the idea, the object was a relic, a powerful relic from another age. It went against everything he worked for, everything he believed in. The past was theirs to preserve, to learn from and wonder at.
Thorn nodded. “That should work.”
“Are we sure? Because once she destroys it… If that’s the wrong thing…” Magnus dragged his hand through his hair. “I can’t lose her, not after all this time.”
“Neither can I.” Thorn summoned his composure, blocking everything out apart from the facts. His life’s work had led to this moment. It was a decision he would spend the rest of his life with. Good or bad.
“So?” Ruby prompted.
“I need a closer look at it.”
“But she can’t move without the barrier moving.” Magnus frowned at the impossibility of the situation.
“Emilia will have to be our eyes.” He called out to his mate. “What do you see?” His voice traveled through the barrier and reached Emilia. She sighed and staggered forward. Thorn raised his arms as if he could reach out and catch her. He wanted to protect her, to help her, but he couldn’t. Not physically at least, but he had knowledge and that knowledge would set Emilia free.
“It is an amulet, I have never seen anything like it before.” Her voice was weak, but there was a strength to it, too. She wasn’t ready to give up. “The back of the amulet is encased in some kind of precious metal and has a dragon and some runes carved into it.” Emilia ran her fingers over the artifact. “I do not think I could smash it if I tried.”
“Runes. Anything more specific?” His voice rose with frustration, if only he could hold it in his hands he might be able to translate them.
“Wait, there is a mechanism.” The three people outside the barrier held their breaths as Emilia focused fully on the amulet. “There is a sleeve of the same metal that is retracted.”
Suddenly, with a crackle and a fizz, the barrier disappeared as if it had never been there.
“We did it!” Magnus rushed toward his sister. “Emilia.”
Thorn glanced across to Ruby, who studied him closely. “Not bad for a bear.”
“Thank you.” He smiled weakly, not sure how he was supposed to react. Emilia was his mate, and his need to be with her and protect her was profound. But she was a stranger not just to him, but to the world he lived in. “I don’t want to make this harder for her,” Thorn confided.
“Then don’t.” Ruby pushed him forward. “She needs you as much as you need her.”
Thorn nodded and walked forward, slowly at first and then with purpose. He took the pack off his back and placed it on the ground beside Emilia as Magnus held his sister in his arms. “I have food and water.”
He dug out the water bottle and removed the stopper. His hand trembled as he passed it to Magnus, who took it gratefully and offered it to Emila. “Thank you. Emilia, you have to drink.”
Emilia pressed her lips to the bottle and Magnus tilted it up. She swallowed and for a moment Magnus simply stared at the woman who was his mate. She was beautiful.
“Here, eat this.” Thorn opened an energy bar and passed it to Emilia.
“Thank you.” She sat up, her face pale and drawn. “And thank you for your assistance with the barrier.” Her voice caught in her throat and she swallowed down a sob. “I’m sorry, I truly am grateful.”
“It must have bee
n a shock, waking up in here.” He kept his voice calm and low.
“It was.” She looked up at her brother. “What happened, Magnus? How did I sleep so long?”
“Perry cast a spell over you and then over me. He had it all planned.” Magnus glanced up at Thorn. Surely, he could not hold Thorn responsible for Peregrine Manning’s actions. “You have set that right today, Thorn. Thank you.”
“I was not exactly acting selflessly.” Thorn gave an ironic smile. “I was on my way here even before I sensed Emilia’s presence.”
“You sensed her, even through the barrier?” Magnus sounded surprised.
“Yes.”
“You have accomplished what I could not.” Magnus pulled a small vial from his pocket and held it in his open hand. “I was given this potion to wake you, but we could not reach you through the barrier. Nothing we tried would penetrate it, we did not know it could only be brought down from the inside.”
Emilia looked at Magnus and then to Thorn. “Thank you both for all your efforts.” She eyed the energy bar in her hand. “What is this?”
Magnus chuckled, excitement rising in his expression. “It is one of the many wonders of the new world waiting for you. Eat and begin your life anew.”
“As you have, brother?” Emilia nodded toward Ruby who stood back patiently, watching the scene before her.
“As I have. We are both blessed to find our mates. Now eat and we can get you out of here.” Magnus stood up and moved across the cave to talk to Ruby.
“This is food?” Emilia asked, indicating the energy bar.
“It is,” Thorn replied. “It could taste better, but it will give you energy. Once we’re down off the mountain, we can eat properly. You must be starving.”
“Not as much as I would expect after so long with no food.” With a sigh of resignation, she bit into the energy bar and chewed slowly. “I have never tasted anything like it.” She took another bite, chewed it and swallowed before asked for more water.
Treasure Bear (Return to Bear Creek Book 19) Page 3
