I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live—to endure, to fight on for the ones I loved most in this world.
I wanted to live to become his wife, his partner.
His mate.
His queen.
Do it! The dull roar had upgraded to booming thunder, the hissing voice rattling my brain as the pain reached a crescendo.
“No!” I screamed back, then hurled the knife with all my might, tossing it off the edge of the altar’s peak. Teeth gritted, I buckled down to ride out the pain, thinking of Darius to keep myself going. The voice attempted to persuade me once more, instructing me to find the knife, but I stuffed my fingers in my ears and started to hum through my tears.
Suddenly, as quickly as it had started, the pain ceased. As if someone had pressed a button, flicked a switch, it was over. Gasping, I sat up, tears still streaking down my face, my knees and hands coated in red clay. It had started to melt a little beneath me, and Aden caught my elbow when I tried to stand and slipped.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his black eyes appraising me as he started wiping the clay off my knees, my thighs, my forearms. I stood there, taking it, processing that I could, in fact, survive unspeakable acts of torture should I ever need to. Slowly, I wiped my tears away, straightened my shoulders, and nodded.
“Yeah. I’m good.” The pain was gone. No amount of cautious movements in each limb produced even a twinge of discomfort. It was like it had never happened. “What now?”
We both jumped nearly a foot in the air when the altar started to quake and rumble. I darted behind Aden, having no qualms about using him as a djinn-shield, as the table, with its fine silk covering, sunk into the clay. When it disappeared, a rectangular opening sat in its place, with stairs leading down into the darkness.
“Three trials complete,” Aden murmured, and I noticed a slight tremor in his words. “Down those stairs… sits an artifact that will change the world.”
Chapter 9
“I can’t believe it’s almost over,” I said as we peered down the shadowy stairwell, hands on my hips. “I kind of feel like that was too easy.”
Apparently, I’d already forgotten the pain—a bit like some women who forget the agony of childbirth and call it a miraculous experience, or something equally unbelievable.
“Well, you’ve made the only actual wood we can knock on, disappear,” Aden muttered. He then reached over and rapt his knuckles on my head. I batted his hand away with a scowl, which disappeared when he grinned impishly.
Honestly, this guy was going to try my last nerve, but at least he’d make me laugh while doing it.
The djinn stepped around to what would’ve been the shorter side of the rectangular altar table, then bowed low. “After you, blessed hybrid.”
“Gross.” Taking a deep breath, I figured it only made sense that I should lead him into the final catacomb. So, I took the first step, my foot colliding with unyielding stone—a nice change from the somewhat melty, red clay. When no boobytraps triggered, I moved a few steps down. At the sound of Aden’s grunt, I looked back, an eyebrow arched. “What’s up?”
“I can’t seem to…” He crouched down and smoothed his hands over the opening, then tried to push down. Something rippled in the air, like he’d pushed against a ward. To me, there was no resistance. I was able to walk out and back in unhindered, but Aden was unable to follow.
“I guess I’m doing this one by myself,” I said, my heart sinking at the thought. Not that Aden had been much help on any of the trials, but I appreciated the silent emotional support. And, if I had to praise him, I’d say he’d been kind of, sort of… there for me when I wanted to stab myself in the heart with a silver dagger.
“I’ll be right here if you need me,” he insisted tightly as he knelt in the clay, his hands shimmering blue. I was about to ask how he intended to help me if he couldn’t get through the wards, but the hands suggested there was more to his ability than I would ever know. With a stiff nod, I turned and carried on down the stairs, my hands out against the stone walls as I descended into darkness. When I reached the bottom of the stairwell, I glanced up and found Aden peering down at me. I raised a hand to my forehead, and he mirrored the salute.
Okay. I could do this. Whatever was left, it couldn’t be worse than what I had just gone through—right?
Slowly, I moved into the pitch-black tunnel before me, and once I was far enough from the stairs, it was so dark that I couldn’t see my own hand waving in front of my face. In no mood to go through this thing blindly, I called upon my illumination abilities. Slowly, my palms started to glow, and I tempered the harsh brightness with a warm yellow color. Finding that I no longer had to squint, I carried on.
The tunnel I found myself in was tall and narrow. Winding, it almost seemed to curve around the innards of the hill I’d completed the third trial on. Water dripped at a constant rate somewhere unseen, and the cool, dry air made my breathing almost too good. Slowing my inhales and exhales, I made each breath count. Purposeful. Precise. There was no telling if the original hybrids had tainted the air with one last defense mechanism.
But, all things considered, I’d think they’d make this a little easier. After all, only a hybrid could get through their trials. Technically, I was one of them. No hybrid out there would align themselves with someone like Jasmine, so, really, my mixed species background should’ve given me an express pass to the inner sanctum holding the artifact.
It felt like I’d been walking forever, and slowly, I realized the hairs weren’t rising across my skin because of the drop in temperature. I whirled around quickly, hoping to catch whatever creature was staring at me, but found nothing but dead air and tunnel.
“Hello?” Probably the last thing I should say when I suspected I was being stalked, because now knew I was onto them. It might spur whoever it was into action. I waited, holding my breath, but was met with nothing more than the ever-present drip, drip, drip of a leaky tap. Shaking my head, I pushed onward, picking up my pace and hoping that Aden’s promise of being there to help if I needed him, was real.
Finally, after an eternity of walking, I reached the end of the tunnel. Pausing, I shone my illuminated hands into the room, taking it in slowly. About three feet lower than the tunnel, it was the smallest room yet. Smooth marble lined the floors, ceiling, and walls. The only window, a skylight, allowed a single beam of unfettered moonlight to shimmer down on a pedestal, upon which sat two identical objects. With nothing else in the room, I could only assume one had to be this famed artifact.
Rather than waltzing right up to the pedestal and grabbing an artifact like the moron Aden assumed I was, I yanked off my shoe and tossed it into the room. When it hit the ground, I crouched and threw up whatever magical defenses I could. If this was the final test, one last trial that no one knew about, I imagined that the room might be rigged. However, when nothing fell from the ceiling or shot out from the walls or floor, I assumed it was safe to enter.
Slowly, I made my way across the room, grabbing my shoe and shoving it back on my foot along the way. I stopped at the pedestal. Two artifacts. Identical. Aden hadn’t said anything about two artifacts. I frowned. Maybe he didn’t know. Was the choice between them my true and final trial?
“Fuck me,” I muttered. Each artifact could fit neatly in the palm of my hand. Small, round, smooth—there appeared to be a dip in the middle of the polished onyx, as if something went in there. On closer inspection, I noted a tiny tear in the center, too miniscule for a key, but noticeable to my enhanced sight.
Swallowing hard, I cautiously picked up the artifact on the left. Silence blanketed the dark marble room. It weighed more than it looked, and my skin erupted in goosebumps at the hum of its power. Like djinns, there was more to this little circle of onyx than met the eye.
While I trusted Aden to an extent, it wasn’t like we were the best of pals, even after all of this. So, until I could figure out what the second artifact was for, I slipped it into my bra, sequestered safely on
the underside, near the wire.
The moment I gently lifted the other artifact, shit decided to hit the fan. The room began to quiver and quake, and I sprang into action when a chunk of the ceiling crashed down into the floor.
Finally, a trap had been sprung—and I wasn’t sticking around to see the aftermath. With a powerful burst of fae speed, I was out of the inner sanctum like a shot. In the distance, the distinct sound of Aden’s screams filled my ears.
Chapter 10
“What did you do?” Aden snarled as I came racing up the stairs and back into the red clay room of the third trial.
“I got the fucking artifact, you psycho,” I snapped. The chamber below continued to rumble, and as I’d zipped through at fae speed, the walls had started thundering down around me. A quick look back showed the stairwell collapsing in on itself. Meanwhile, all the red clay around us was starting to melt. A humidity gripped the room that hadn’t been there before. Even the altar hill appeared shorter.
“Give it to me,” Aden ordered, but I darted out of the way and slid down the hill.
“Not until we’re out of here,” I fired back over my shoulder. I knew that if he really wanted to, the djinn could overpower me magically, but I had an ace up my sleeve: the second artifact. Maybe both were needed for the full effect. Maybe one was a decoy. There were endless possibilities as to why there were two identical artifacts, and for now, I was keeping all my theories to myself. All that mattered was getting the hell out of there before we drowned in red clay.
Unfortunately, all hopes of a speedy exit came to a screeching halt when we discovered the doorway we had used to enter the chamber was now sealed shut.
“When did this happen?” I demanded, racing forward and slamming my fists against it. Slowly, clay dribbled down the wall like oozing lava, and I stumbled back before it covered my arms. Magic did neither of us any good—just as it had been with the boulder, our powers appeared ineffective against whatever the hybrids had concocted.
“I don’t understand. We’ve completed the trials. This shouldn’t be happening,” Aden growled before hurling a blast of blue-black magic at the door. The room trembled, but nothing opened. Sweat ran down our faces as the humidity spiked, making it more than a little difficult to draw a deep breath.
“Well, it is.” I scanned the room, then squinted up at the ceiling. Still black. Still too high to make out whether that would be a viable exit or not. “Let’s just figure out how to get out of here.”
“Now would be the ideal time to sprout a pair of wings, dragon shifter,” he muttered, stalking by me and sloshing through the clay pooling at our feet.
I bit my tongue, stopping the snarky response I had in mind for him. I couldn’t shift. The added stress and pressure of this situation wasn’t going to somehow make it magically happen. There was no point in even discussing it—but of course he’d mention it now, just to crank up my guilt an extra few notches.
Huffing, I high-kneed my way through the clay, ignoring all thoughts of our impending death by red clay drowning. When my foot caught in something, I stumbled forward. Then I turned back and found my foot snagged in what looked like a handle.
“Aden,” I called, crouching down. A quick blast of white magic temporarily cleared the clay, and I found myself staring at a hidden hatch in the floor. The djinn appeared by my side moments later.
“What?”
“Found our exit strategy,” I grunted up at him. Yanking the door open with all my might, I revealed a steep drop into nothingness.
“Yeah, I’m not going in there.”
“Suit yourself,” I insisted, skirting around the opening. “Stay here and wait for the rescue team that we both know isn’t coming.”
I met his dark gaze quickly, and when he stepped back and shook his head, I held up the artifact I’d had clutched in a death grip in my right hand. He gulped, but merely watched as I hopped down through the trap door, trusting that I’d land on my feet. After all, anywhere was better than the red clay room of humid death.
While I managed to land on my feet all right, it wasn’t exactly solid ground I landed on. Knees bent, for the twenty seconds I fell I prepared myself for a gentle, soft landing, one where I would spring up and spare my lower half the impact of the fall. All that went out the window when I plopped unceremoniously into water—cold, deep water. I went under immediately, but managed to find the bottom with my feet a few seconds later, still holding the artifact tightly in one hand while the other remained safely inside my bra. Pushing up, I breached the surface with a gasp. The choppy water came up to my shoulders. With everything pitch black around me, I called on my illumination, lighting the space with my left palm and sputtering out salty water.
I appeared to have fallen in an underground river of some sort, one that gently flowed in one direction, which suggested to me that there was an exit somewhere. Preferring to hop along rather than swim, I bounced through the frigid water, fighting the urge to chatter my teeth as clay poured down from the hatch and muddied the river.
Moments later, I heard a curt cry from Aden, followed by a huge splash, and the sound of the hatch slamming closed. I whipped around to find him grappling with the same shock I had only moments earlier, wiping the water from his face and gasping.
“Welcome,” I said, grinning as I shone my palm in his direction. He glowered for a moment, the light reflecting off the light blue water, then front-crawled toward me.
“I don’t think this is much better.”
“Is this room steadily filling up with melting clay?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then this is better,” I snapped, turning away with a huff. “I’m sure this water goes somewhere.”
“Wait, wait…” Aden grabbed my arm and wrenched it toward the wall—as if I were his own personal half-fae flashlight. I tried to wriggle free, but stopped when I realized what he’d noticed. While my gut instinct had been to classify what we fell into as a sewer leading to some sort of drain, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The walls were covered in art akin to cave paintings, but incredibly intricate and stylized. Color. Vibrancy. Little details like the ripples in cloth and wrinkles in skin. We inched closer, studying the art as a pair. This wasn’t a sewer at all. It was a passageway that must have flooded at some point.
“It looks like a battle,” I noted. Armies appeared to be meeting head on across green hills, banners flying high, swords drawn, beasts of all kinds in the mix. The figure dividing the opposing sides was a woman, her gown a beautiful cerulean to match her wild eyes.
“She’s a hybrid,” Aden whispered as he continued on without me, eyes wide and hands reaching out to touch her. “They all are…”
While the soldiers were a little more difficult to discern, the djinn wasn’t wrong about our main girl. Wings like an eagle popped out of her back, yet she bore traditional elvish features everywhere else. In one hand she gripped a spear, the orange-yellow hue the most vibrant of the lot, and in the other she held a white shield. She wore a grim expression, like she stood between the battling armies because she had to, not because she wanted to.
I called Aden’s name, then waded through the water to grab his arm when he ignored me. The djinn’s fascination with hybrid lore would keep us here all night if we let it. I wanted to get out; the weight of both artifacts bore down on me more than I cared to admit.
“But…”
“You can come back later if you want,” I argued, tugging him away, my body wracked with shivers. “We need to get out of here before we both catch hypothermia.”
“I am impervious to human ailments—”
“Maybe I just want the pleasure of your company,” I fired back with an annoyed sigh.
His snort made me grin—barely.
I groaned softly, my chin resting on Aden’s shoulders. “We’re going in circles. This is like the eighth time I’ve seen that painting.”
“Oh, are we?” He stopped abruptly, the flood water sloshing against his knee
s. “Would you like to get off my back and give it a go? Does being part dragon mean you’ve acquired an exceptional sense of direction in this never-ending maze?”
Huffing, I shook my head. “No.”
“Good. Then stop complaining.”
“You… stop complaining,” I countered weakly. Okay, so it wasn’t my best banter, but I felt like absolute crap and was desperate for the sunlight.
We had been down here for hours, navigating the underground tunnels with nothing but one of my hands illuminated to guide us. I hadn’t the strength for both. Once we cleared the shoulder-deep waters, I realized the trace amounts of iron present had sliced my energy in half. Barely able to keep up with Aden’s most leisurely pace, he had offered me the opportunity of a lifetime: a piggyback ride on a djinn. At first, I’d refused, insisting that I could carry on without his help, but my knees kept buckling, my eyes wanted to close, and my stomach refused to stop churning. The iron present hadn’t been enough to incapacitate me, but I’d suddenly felt like I’d been smacked upside the head with the flu, but without the snot and phlegm.
So, forgoing my dignity, I’d climbed onto to Aden’s back, but only after he tugged off his trench coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“You’re shivering,” he’d said. While his tone had suggested he didn’t care, back then I’d noted that he wouldn’t look away until I put the coat on properly. Something in the fabric made it quick-drying, and soon enough I was warm enough to stop shivering. So, as much as I hadn’t wanted to give him props for anything, the djinn certainly knew how to step up when I found myself floundering.
Magic Blaze: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 3) Page 9
