“See?” He cocked his head to the side, grinning. “Perfectly safe.”
Rather than flip him off like I wanted to, I curled my hands into fists and stalked to the edge of the water. While my face wasn’t dotted with burns, that didn’t mean I could trust him. Still, the sun had been hot all day, the water looked refreshing, and I wouldn’t have minded dunking my head under the surface for a bit, if only to get some clarity. So, I peeled off my jacket and walking shoes. Setting them in a neat pile beside me, I stuffed my socks into my shoes, rolled up my jeans as best I could, and stuck my feet in.
Beautiful. Cool. Revitalizing. Not a trace of iron present. Just what my exhausted feet needed after today. I wasn’t sure how long we planned to stay here, or what Aden had in mind for food, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment by asking. Instead, I dragged my feet through the water, its surface a nearly perfect mirror. Taking a moment, I studied my reflection, noting that even though I’d been poisoned, I didn’t look terrible. All things considered, I’d take that as a win.
Suddenly, a figure joined my reflection in the pool—and it wasn’t Aden. My eyes widened, but before I could react, a lead-soled foot booted me into the water, kicking me in the middle of my back. The muddy bank gave way and the water embraced me like I was a long-lost child, falling into its depths before I had a chance to gulp down a breath. I kicked for the surface, only to be met with two huge hands on my shoulders, holding me under.
Fuck this. I’d survived a fatal djinn poisoning—twice; I was not about to die today because some asshole wanted to drown me. Clamping down on my attacker’s wrists, I emitted a surge of white magic. At such close range, it would feel similar to a flame licking the skin, and although slightly muffled, I heard a scream above the surface. His grip loosened, and I managed to push off the muddy bottom and shoot for the surface. When I breached it, sucking in air as hard as I could, I found Aden dragging my assailant away from the pool, an arm locked around his neck.
A demon. I front-crawled for the water’s edge and lifted myself out.
“Another assassin,” Aden grunted, struggling to keep the monster down. He tightened his chokehold, teeth gritted. “I told you they were everywhere.”
Red eyes glowered back at me, ashen skin stretched thin over protruding bones, lifting to reveal razor sharp teeth. The demon thrashed about, then snatched a serrated blade from his belt and thrust it back and up, but Aden managed to dodge it. His lithe body moved with surprising grace—like a dancer.
“Fucking Jasmine,” I hissed, ready to blast this creep into the next realm. “Lemme at him.”
Just as I raised my hands, magic gathering in my palms, an arrow whizzed toward me from the trees. I dodged just in time, feeling the faint brush of its black feathers against my cheek. The next one launched my way was met with a wall of magic, which it bounced off and disintegrated on the spot. Stalking across the soft grasses, I left Aden to grapple with the demon, knowing a djinn was more than an even match. Then I hurled a disorientating hex at the dark elf perched on the branches of a massive maple lookalike. Okay, so apparently, not every elf was a supernatural pacifist. The creature toppled from the tree and landed in a heap at the bottom. His navy-purple hair obscured his features, though I knew in an instant from the silvery skin that this was a dark elf from the haunted forest.
Apparently, they were a team. Either that or two of Jasmine’s hired assassins had found us at the same time. Maybe Aden wasn’t full of shit when he lectured me about spies being everywhere.
Before he could get his bearings, I hit the elf with another hex, and this time the force of it slammed his head into the tree trunk, rendering him unconscious. Good. Fucker.
“Kaye!”
At the mild panic in Aden’s voice, I whirled around, the world stuttering into slow motion. There, some ten feet away, was the demon—upright and free. He hurled that jagged blade at me, his aim straight and true. Over and over and knife flipped, as though clawing its way through the air to claim its victim. My arms shot up to block, but I knew it wasn’t fast enough.
Drop, Kaye. Drop!
Then, blue fog materialized in front of me, slowly, filling the space, blocking me. The blade cycled closer. The fog became a man. The blade found its target.
The world came crashing back to full speed in the blink of an eye, and Aden dropped to his knees before me, the blade embedded in his chest.
“Aden!”
The demon sneered, but one step toward me earned him an eviscerating curse straight to the gut. He stumbled back as black blood spilled down his body before crashing into the pool.
“Oh, my god,” I stammered, dropping down and carefully rolling Aden onto his back. “What were you thinking?!”
“The hybrid can’t die,” he managed through gritted teeth, maroon blood spilling over his lips as he spoke. “You are the key to… to finding it…”
“And you have the map, you idiot,” I snapped. I had no right to be angry with him, of course, but it was the first emotion that surfaced. Fear and panic were a close second and third, followed swiftly by gratitude. He had thrown himself in harm’s way to save me. Maybe I could have avoided the knife, but while it wouldn’t have buried itself in my chest, it might have hit my shoulder.
Unwilling to lose him after such a sacrifice, I told him to shut up—he kept rambling on about how I had to save her, save them, and I couldn’t concentrate on healing him with all that pressure on my shoulders. Slowly, carefully, I removed the blade, blocking out his cries, and pressed a hand over the gushing wound. Tossing the blade aside, its aura riddled with dark magic, I set to work on saving him. White, healing magic poured out of me, one hand over his wound, the other on his forehead. In my mind’s eye, I saw the white light suturing the wounds, closing the shredded muscle, and stopping the gushing blood, until finally Aden gasped. He drew in an enormous breath, his chest rising swiftly beneath my hand, and rolled over, hacking up a storm.
“Thank you,” he croaked, as I collapsed onto my backside, wiping the dark purple blood on my pants. My heart raced and my mind became a blur. Exhaustion threatened to set in, so I flopped back to catch my breath.
“Now we’re even,” I told him. He shuffled across the grass so that we lay next to each other.
“Now I trust you,” he countered. “Seriously. Thank you. I could’ve died if you wanted me to.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks for a moment. “Well, we’re on the same team, right? Nobody on my team gets left behind.”
And maybe, just maybe, the djinn had shown why he might just be trustworthy after all.
I closed my eyes and willed my body to calm down.
No. The jury was still out on the whole trust thing.
For now.
Chapter 6
“So, you’re cool with just breaking into and desecrating a tomb?” I asked, my eyes widening as they adjusted to the darkness. I mean, yes, Darius and I had gone rooting through a graveyard back when we were first searching for Zayne, but that was different. The grave we eventually settled on wasn’t a grave at all, but a secret passageway down to the Hive.
“It’s not a real tomb, Kaye,” Aden insisted. Although I couldn’t see them, I could easily hear his hands smoothing along the walls of the long, dark tunnel we suddenly found ourselves in. Dirt, wet leaves, and something vaguely manure-y filled my nostrils, and I opted for breathing through my mouth. A good fifty feet behind us, the partially opened wooden doorway let some of the dying light filter in, but soon it would be just as dark in the forest as it was in here.
Mercifully, we’d only needed to hike half the day to find the tomb, excluding our rendezvous with Jasmine’s assassins in the woods. The demon had bled out and sunk to the bottom of the pool. We had handed the dark elf over to a band of curious light elves, who accepted our gift with devious grins, dragging his unconscious body into an opening at the base of a weeping willow.
“Sure feels like a real tomb,” I muttered. “What stinks?”
“I don’t know,” Aden said, sighing. “Death?”
“You said—”
“Just because it isn’t a real tomb doesn’t mean people haven’t died in here.”
I rolled my eyes at the sound of his trademark scoff. This djinn, despite taking a metaphorical bullet for me not all that long ago, was forever unimpressed with my ignorance.
“Perfect.”
“You think we’re the only ones who’ve come looking for this rumored artifact? Ah, here we go…” Moments later, bursts of light popped up along the walls—the torches seeming to ignite on their own. I knew better. A pulse of magic so powerful it made my knees weak washed over me, crashing in both directions like a tidal wave, igniting torches as it went. Djinns. Never to be underestimated, even if I had saved one from dying. The guy standing before me was a powder keg of magic. I, on the other hand, had only just recouped all the white magic I spent healing him, but given that he’d nearly died to save me in the first place, I couldn’t hold it against him.
Aden dusted his hands on his trench coat, then looked back at me. “Shall we?”
I nodded. Although my inner voice hadn’t uttered a whispered warning in a while, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was all some elaborate trap to murder me in a tomb. Maybe this was supposed to be my tomb?
I shook my head. No. If I allowed myself to wander down that road, I might as well make a run for it now and try my luck with the unknown.
This was for Darius. This was for the Sanctius clan. If the artifact really could protect them, and we found a way to potentially replicate it, shifter communities around the world could be kept safe from marauding assholes like Jasmine and her goons.
We hadn’t walked all that far before arriving at our first obstacle: a giant boulder blocking the passageway in its entirety. Almost, anyway. Around the edges, light flickered, suggesting an opening behind it. I stood back with my hands on my hips, as Aden pressed an ear to the boulder, running his hands over it, eyes closed.
“Can you hear the ocean?” I asked, smirking when he glared.
“This is it. The first challenge.”
“Trial?”
“Whatever.” He took a few steps back, nodding. “Look, there. You see? The glyph?”
I moved in closer, squinting. There, in the dead middle of the boulder, was a single carved glyph. Much to my surprise, it was an old fae symbol for power, or, in some interpretations, strength.
“I think we need to move it,” I remarked, stepping back to appraise the enormous obstacle with a sigh. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Aden shaking his head in disbelief.
“No kidding.” He offered two sarcastic claps. “So glad I brought you along. Sheer genius—”
“Oh my god, shut up.” Carefully, I placed just the tips of my fingers against the boulder. When no electrical current raced up my arms, I pushed harder. “Help me move this thing then.”
“On to that,” Aden noted with a nod.
On the floor, off to the side, totally inconspicuous, sat a raised panel. Aden pushed at it with his foot, and while I heard a rush of click-click-clicking in the walls, nothing happened. The djinn huffed, then came to my side and squatted low. “I suspect our weights won’t be enough to trigger a release. The rock needs to go on the panel. Probably to open a door of some kind.”
Still annoyed at his unhelpful sarcasm earlier, I gritted my teeth and tried to lift, push, and pull when he did. We tried every angle we could, coming at it from all sides, but none of our efforts paid off. The damn thing wouldn’t budge, not even with a surge of magic from both of us.
“Inconceivable,” Aden grumbled, a bead of sweat rolling down from his hairline when we stepped back. “I have superhuman strength. This… is perhaps not meant to be moved.”
I winced when that sweat droplet rolled right into his eye, but the djinn seemed not to notice. Instead, he turned his full attention to me, a glimmer of madness twinkling in those black orbs.
“Shift,” he ordered. “Our combined strengths, you as a dragon, should be enough to move it.”
I blinked rapidly, suddenly flustered. “I…”
“If the nudity bothers you, I won’t look.” He placed a hand over his eyes, but peeked through his fingers, smirking. “Pinky promise. Come on, now. Give us a show.”
“I can’t shift,” I admitted softly, and his arm dropped to his side. “I don’t… I can’t do it yet.”
Especially not on command. Besides, the first time I shifted would not be with Aden. I wanted my first shift to be with Darius, if it ever happened at all.
“Are you serious?” Never had he looked so unimpressed with me—and that was saying something. “You can’t shift?”
“It’s complicated.” My eyes narrowed when his features morphed into something more along the lines of annoyed. “Try something else.”
Before he could argue, I turned away and scanned the torchlit corridor. Roots and cobwebs lined the ceiling, and damp dirt made up the floor. Another push at the panel yielded nothing, and behind me, Aden appeared to be using everything in his magical arsenal against our boulder foe. No dice. Nibbling my lower lip, my scrutiny moved onto the torches themselves, their flames dancing in a wind I couldn’t feel.
Concerning.
Beyond that, however, I noted that the structure of the torches themselves were made of metal—long, thick metal poles, in fact.
The sort that could be used for leverage when lifting an insanely heavy object.
“Aden…” I rushed forward and yanked a torch off the wall, pulling a massive chunk of earth and dust with it. Extinguishing the flame on the floor, I held the metal bar up, grinning. “Lever?”
The djinn stared at me for a moment, eyebrows twitching downward, and then rushed for another torch. We then stuffed the ends under the boulder as best we could and situated ourselves so that if we managed to lift it, the relatively round rock should roll straight onto the panel.
“One,” Aden said, meeting my gaze. I nodded.
“Two.”
“Three,” we said in unison. Seconds later, our grunts and groans filled the corridor as we pushed down on our makeshift levers with all our might. Still, the boulder refused the move. A string of Arabic curses flew out from the djinn’s mouth, and I had to bite my cheeks to keep from laughing. Sure, I was frustrated too, but I preferred watching him lose his cool. Besides, Arabic swearing was hilarious. You mother goat fucker? Hilarity. Perhaps, he’d forgotten that faes were blessed with the gift of gab—language comprehension came easy for all of us, even if we’d never heard the dialect before.
Sweaty, hot, and more than a little upset, we took a break a few minutes later. Aden let go of his lever first, and suddenly the boulder moved. Barely, but with my hand still slightly pushing down on my metal pole, it twitched.
“Wait,” I said, realization hitting me like a baseball bat to the head. I was the one who needed to pass these trials. “Wait. You said the hybrid is the only one who can do these trials. I… Don’t touch it!”
Aden stepped back from his pole, hands raised, and I seized the moment to prove my worth. Pushing down on the lever with all my might, I let out a victorious cry when the boulder moved, rolling out of the way like it weighed next to nothing. I managed to guide it onto the panel, and a series of loud clicking, clanking, and knocking erupted around us. Moments later, a door embedded in the wall creaked open some ten feet behind us.
“You were right before,” I sneered, yanking another lit torch off the wall and heading for the door. “You should be glad you brought me. Sheer genius.”
“Indeed,” Aden muttered. His lips twitched into a little half smile, and he followed me through the dark doorway, my torch lighting the way.
One trial down, two to go.
Chapter 7
The hall steering us from the first trial to the second was a tight fit. In fact, slowly, the walls seemed to be closing in on us, and the air thickened with the scent of wet dirt and dead flesh. Gripping my torch tightl
y, I took one last deep breath, then shot off with a very gentle burst of fae speed. Behind me, Aden shouted my name, and I knew I should have been more cautious, but I had to get out of there—immediately.
I stuttered to a crashing halt, however, when I came flying out of the claustrophobic hallway and into a dark room, lit only by a chandelier made up of candles hanging from the ceiling. Wax dripped slowly down the stalks, then fell to the floor like rain, hardening on impact. A chill ran up my spine, and I gasped at the sight of a specter hovering directly across the room from me.
“For fuck’s sake, Kaye,” Aden growled, his footfalls barely making a sound as he caught up to me. “We need to stick together in here!” His hand clamped down on my shoulder, but I didn’t even flinch. “You never know what kind of boobytraps those hybrids set. You could have been impaled moving at that speed, and then where would I be? Shit out of luck, just like your dragon—”
“Shut. Up. Aden,” I hissed through gritted teeth. He stepped around me, his glaring eyes not leaving my face—until he must have felt it too. The chill. The presence. His features went slack, and slowly, he turned around to face the shimmering ghost on the other side of the room. I swallowed hard and gripped the torch firmly—not like it would do much against a ghost. Suddenly, the flame extinguished, and my breath fogged before me.
“Is that—”
“A ghost?” I offered. “Maybe. Is this the next trial?”
The djinn seemed just as unsure as I felt, and I watched him take in the otherwise empty room, his gaze lingering on the chandelier for a moment.
“Possibly. The next trial is… wisdom.”
With no glyphs in sight, not like the one I saw etched into the boulder, I stepped forward cautiously. However, as soon as I’d taken a single step, the specter’s eyes snapped up, honing in on me.
In life, she must have been beautiful, this ghost. In death, hauntingly so. Dark straight hair flowed down her back, forever touched by an unseen wind, fluttering delicately. Her dress, fitted around the waist before exploding out into some ballgown monstrosity, appeared moth-eaten and torn. It too shifted about, as though caught in a breeze. Once again, I felt no wind, no soft caress of nature against my skin.
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