His gaze darkened, and we stood there for a minute in heavy silence. Then he brought his hand up and tenderly cupped my cheek. “Caia, I think it’s time I tell you something,” he murmured.
My breath hitched. Somewhere, deep in the back of my head, where all my surprisingly accurate premonitions lived, a crazy thought started to take shape. I had a feeling I knew what he wanted to say. Or, better yet, I hoped I knew what he wanted to say. My heart turned into an Olympic gymnast, performing exquisite backflips and kicking my stomach.
“What? You don’t like avocados? Because that’s a deal breaker for me,” I joked, and mentally slapped myself right after that. What in the world is the matter with you? Let the guy tell you what you’re hoping to hear!
That, somehow, made sense. I was nervous. The thought of hearing him say what I’d been waiting for him to say for days now put me on edge. It wasn’t him saying it that stretched my nerves, actually. It was the crippling fear of disappointment. Of Blaze not saying what I yearned to hear from him.
The corner of his mouth twitched as he stifled a smile. His brows furrowed, and I braced myself. Whatever he says, it’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. No, I won’t. I’m crushing hard on him. I won’t be okay. Disappointment will sting worse than a Lamia’s bite. And I’d had my fair share of those during my early training days on Calliope.
“I don’t know what will happen from now until we get back home to The Shade,” he said, his voice raw, and clutching at my throat. “I mean, let’s be honest. Failure may not be an option, but it’s a possibility.”
I opened my mouth to protest but changed my mind and pressed my lips into a thin line. I gave him a brief nod instead.
“Something might happen, or it might not. We may survive all this, or we might end up in meranium boxes with the others,” he continued. “I think it’s only fair that we maintain a sense of realism here. What I’m trying to say, even though I’m still having trouble finding the right words for it, is that we don’t know what tomorrow holds. Hell, we don’t even know what the next hour holds! I know I’ve sworn an oath of celibacy, and I would like nothing more than to keep it, but I can’t forgive myself if I let another minute pass without telling you that… that I’m head over heels for you, Caia.”
My heart stopped.
Like marbles falling out of a broken bowl and rolling onto the floor, my words left me. I was speechless. My brain was unable to process the statement, even though it was exactly what I’d been longing to hear him say.
I blinked several times, but still, I couldn’t speak. Blaze waited for what seemed like an eternity, carefully analyzing my expression, hoping to see something, anything.
“I know, maybe you didn’t expect this,” he continued, not ready to give up just yet. “I didn’t either. I mean, I’ve had a thing for you since we were kids, back in The Shade. I just never had the courage to speak up, and we barely saw each other, anyway. Then I took the oath, and now we’re here, in the middle of an absolute nightmare, and I’m afraid that if I don’t tell you how I feel now, I’ll never get another chance. I don’t know what I’ll do with the oath, or even if it means much at this point, in these circumstances. But what I feel for you is all too real, Caia. I’ve fallen for you, and I can’t deny it or keep it to myself anymore.”
Without any warning, my heart took over. My heels pushed me upward, and I threw my arms around his neck so I could pull myself closer, and kissed him.
The moment our lips touched, it was over for the both of us. I surrendered, and he yielded almost instantly, capturing my mouth. He wrapped his arms around my waist, and almost crushed me against his chest. I exhaled sharply but didn’t let go.
Blaze intensified the kiss, taking me higher and higher, to the point where I could no longer feel the solid ground beneath my feet. A groan escaped his throat as he tasted everything I had to offer. I took my time with his lips as his tongue worked mine. For someone who’d sworn an oath of celibacy, Blaze was a phenomenal kisser. Not that I had any experience in that department, but it just felt so… incredible.
“That makes two of us, then,” I managed, drawing a breath before reattaching my lips to his. My heart was thumping maniacally, my pulse racing as I ran my fingers through his hair.
I felt weightless, and, despite our current location and difficult predicament, there was nowhere else I wanted to be. Blaze pulled his head back for a brief moment, his dark blue eyes drilling into my very soul. “Good, because I would’ve been so miserable otherwise.”
Only then, as we gazed at one another, did I realize that I was literally off the ground. Blaze held me up, tight in his arms, my toes far from the stone floor. That weightlessness took on a whole new meaning as he bit his lower lip, then kissed me again.
Whatever came next, it almost didn’t matter. For only a couple of minutes throughout the entire fabric of time, I experienced sheer bliss. I’d fallen for a dragon, and the dragon had fallen for me too. We burned bright, consuming one another as if we would never get another chance.
In that precise moment, as he pressed his lips against mine, with one arm around my waist and his other hand coming up to hold the back of my head so he could kiss me deeper, I made a promise to myself—and, secretly, to Blaze, too.
Whatever came next, I was going to make sure that we’d survive it. No matter what obstacles Neraka wanted to raise before us, regardless of all the wrenches that the Exiled Maras and daemons wanted to throw at our wheels, I was going to beat them. We were going to beat them.
I had a dragon to love, and there was no way in hell I’d allow Shaytan or any of his cohorts to tear us apart.
Harper
With our gear and supplies ready, we were ready to deploy. It was mid-morning, and an optimal time for our descent into Draconis, since guards tended to change around noon—a pattern we’d also noticed in Infernis. Fortunately for us, the daemon society functioned on a tight, military-like schedule.
I walked over to the bookcase-door, accompanied by Caspian and Pheng-Pheng. Vesta fumbled with the hidden mechanism until it clicked, then pulled the door open. The tunnel was quiet, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Again, I cannot stress this enough, but please—”
“We’ll look after your parents,” I cut Vesta off with a warm and reassuring smile. She gave me a thankful nod in return. I then looked at Laughlan, who stood by her side. “You two be careful here. We’ll be back as soon as it’s done. Hopefully it won’t take longer than a couple of hours.”
“We’ll be good. I promise. It’s not like we’re rigging the whole place with dangerous explosives—oh, wait,” Laughlan replied with a devilish grin, making me chuckle.
“Don’t blow yourselves up, then. I’m not risking my ass down there to deliver fae parents to a dead fae daughter,” I shot back.
“You’re not dying under my watch,” Pheng-Pheng solemnly chimed in. For a young Manticore who was still a few years from official adulthood, she carried herself with impressive poise and leader-like dignity. On top of that, she’d gotten so attached to me, and I to her, that I couldn’t find it in my heart to let her down. Getting myself killed definitely counted as letting her down.
“Right there with you,” I replied with a playful wink, then entered the tunnel.
Caspian and Pheng-Pheng joined me, and we rushed through the narrow stone passage. Five minutes later, I could hear Hansa and Jax come after us. Another five minutes, and Caia and Blaze joined the loose pack, followed by Fiona.
As expected, the access point at the end was guarded. A uniformed daemon leaned against the cloaked wall, cleaning the dirt beneath his claws with the tip of his rapier. If ever there was an easy target, he was it.
I took out several glass vials, ready for the next phase of our plan. We’d found the small bottles on the other side of the library earlier this morning, and Laughlan had immediately beamed at us. Using the swamp witch spells he’d learned from Lumi, he was able to charm the vials in a manner simila
r to what we’d seen back at the Broken Bow Inn in Azure Heights. We could now collect blood from daemons and keep it fresh in the charmed vials, in case we needed extra for our infiltration of Draconis. Each of our sub-teams had at least a couple to work with. Learning from our previous experiences, we welcomed the extra preparation.
Pheng-Pheng dashed over to the daemon, catching him unprepared. He didn’t even hear her coming until it was too late. He looked up and stilled, the tip of his rapier blade under his claw, as Pheng-Pheng’s scorpion tail stung him in the neck.
The poison worked fast, spreading through his body. He raised his sword to hit her, but by the time his arm went up, he’d already lost control over his limbs. Thirty seconds later, he was collapsed on the floor, spasming. Caspian and I came out to join her. Caspian slit the daemon’s throat, and I filled the vials with the fiend’s warm blood, then handed one to Caspian and one to Pheng-Pheng.
I kept the others for later. We consumed the first ration of our invisibility spell paste, then used a drop of the daemon’s blood on the cloaking spell’s fake wall. We vanished, and put our red lenses on, then passed through as the wall’s surface rippled from the blood.
Knowing that the rest of our team was close behind us, I braced myself for what came next. The daemon city of Draconis unraveled at our feet, with its four support pillars connecting it to the surface and its thousands of meranium prison boxes, riddled with swamp witch charms. In the middle stood the central penitentiary, with Death Claws circling overhead, flapping their leathery wings and occasionally screeching at the daemon guards below.
The narrow streets weren’t too crowded, but there were regular patrols moving up and down. In the wider sections, daemon generals joined the grunts, accompanied by collared pit wolves. Just twenty feet ahead, before the stairs leading down into the city, were a dozen daemon guards covered in leather and metal armor.
They hadn’t spotted us yet and were just chitchatting among themselves—the usual banter since we’d come to Neraka, specifically ways to capture us, so they, too, could get a taste of our souls. As usual, the more realistic of the bunch was quick to point out the bitter truth:
“You losers aren’t getting any of that fancy outsider soul chow. They’re reserved for the higher-ups and royalty. Get that thought out of your heads.”
They grumbled with discontentment, but, in the end, they resigned themselves to his words.
And, as Pheng-Pheng quietly made her way toward their group, I couldn’t help but smirk. No one was going to hold us down. If anything, we were just about to bring them down. All of them.
Down to the last obsidian brick.
Avril
I tried my best to keep track of time as the hours passed. We couldn’t move, encased up to our necks in Dhaxanian ice that refused to melt, and further sequestered in a cylindrical meranium cage with swamp witch symbols carved into its bars.
We’d come to the Athelathan Mountains, hoping that we’d find Dhaxanians still living here. Judging by the permanent snowstorm swallowing the mountain peaks, it had made sense that they’d still be around. We’d hoped we’d manage to sway them into helping us and our new allies, the Adlets. When the time came to rescue the swamp witch, we needed all the help we could get, and having creatures who had the power of deadly frost at their fingertips on our side made sense.
It hadn’t really come as an absolute surprise, but it had still made my stomach drop when Nevis, the prince of Dhaxanians, revealed that he’d reached a truce with the daemons. His people got these two mountains, while the daemons got everything else. According to him, it was in the best interests of the Dhaxanians.
Unfortunately, that also meant that we’d ventured into enemy territory, and didn’t get a chance to escape. Nevis captured us and cast us to the bottom of the mountain, in the middle of an underground crossroads—a meeting point between four tunnels, each leading into a daemon city on the continent. It was only a matter of time before they came for us.
For the first few hours, I tried everything in my power to free myself. We all did. Patrik, poor soul, had his mouth covered in frost, too. He could breathe through his nose, but he couldn’t utter a single spell to get us out of here.
A day passed, and we became more and more aware of how close the end was. We’d tried shouting, hoping the Dhaxanians would hear us, and that Nevis would come down to talk to us. Nothing happened. Hundurr dozed off in hour-long sessions, every six hours, to preserve some energy, I assumed. Patrik caught a couple of hours of sleep, too. There wasn’t much else we could do.
The Dhaxanian ice was cold, but it wasn’t going to kill us. Heron and Patrik were warm-blooded and found it more uncomfortable than Scarlett and I did, but there was no risk of frostbite, surprisingly. It was meant to hold us, along with the meranium cage, until the daemons arrived to take us back to Infernis. I could only imagine how excited King Shaytan must’ve been. It was safe to assume that he’d received the “good news” by now, and that his fiends were on their way to Athelathan.
A thousand scenarios crossed my mind, and none ended with us winning this. We’d made it this far, though, and I refused to let myself surrender. Whenever I looked at Heron, my heart swelled, and I knew he felt the same way. We were just getting started with one another. We’d fallen in love, and there wasn’t a single daemon or Exiled Mara on this wretched planet who could tear us apart. Most importantly, our friends, our families, and the innocent people of Neraka needed us now more than ever.
I gradually became aware of the fact that, if we wanted to win this, we needed a different approach. Brute force and magic were of no use in this situation.
“Guys, how are you holding up?” I asked, after an hour of gloomy silence.
Scarlett let out a long, tortured sigh. “Still here. Still pissed off.”
“Good. We need that energy. Patrik, Hundurr?” I replied, glancing at the Druid and the sulking pit wolf.
Patrik couldn’t speak, given his frosty gag, but the look in his steely blue eyes, combined with the raised eyebrow, told me everything I needed to know. He still had a lot of fight in him. Hundurr growled, letting me know that he, too, was still with us.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I’m doing?” Heron replied with a smirk.
“I have zero doubts regarding your morale, babe,” I shot back, pursing my lips. “You spent years in Azazel’s dungeon. I doubt a day in Dhaxanian ice will cripple your spirit.”
“You know me so well,” he chuckled.
I knew how he was feeling. Deep down, the thought of imprisonment scared the daylights out of him. But he’d been to hell and back during Azazel’s regime, and he’d also promised he’d take me on a real date once we got out of this place. His jade eyes told me that he was going to burn this whole place down, if that’s what it took for him to keep his promise. A day in Dhaxanian frost was nothing compared to decades in a cage. Despair wasn’t something that Heron wanted to feel ever again. He’d made that clear long before we got to Athelathan.
“This can’t possibly end here,” Scarlett muttered.
“Right with you there, Cuz,” I replied. “We need to get these frosty bastards to listen to us. From what I can smell, and from the silence oozing from all four tunnels, the daemons are nowhere near at this point. That might change in an hour, but, dammit, I would prefer to spend every minute we have left calling out to the Dhaxanians, rather than sulking and waiting for Shaytan’s fiends to come get us.”
“We have to get Nevis down here. But what can we offer him?” Heron said. “Our plan to get the swamp witch out and to get GASP here didn’t seem to entice him at all.”
“I think we need to be a little more persuasive,” I muttered. “It’s in his interest to help us. With or without us, Jax and the others will get the swamp witch back. And, once the shield comes down and we reach out to our people, it’s game over for Neraka. Nevis won’t be treated kindly if GASP learns he carted us off to the daemons.”
“No, Avril, you n
eed to be more persuasive,” Scarlett scoffed. “The prince of Dhaxanians definitely has the hots for you. Pardon the icy pun.”
Heron’s forehead smoothed, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “What in the blazes are you talking about, Bullet?” He addressed her by her GASP nickname. He only did that when he was irritated. That made me love him more.
“What?” Scarlett replied. “Might as well use that as an advantage, since it’s there,” she said, then looked at me. “Avril, I’m serious. I know the look I saw on his face. He’s got a soft spot for you. He won’t listen to us. Call out to him. Tell him you want to make a deal.”
“We’ve been shouting our lungs out for hours. No one has come down,” Heron murmured.
“It needs to be Avril. Just her,” Scarlett told him. “It’s worth a shot, I think. What else can we do right now?”
“So, what, I’m just supposed to stand here, literally frozen, and watch my girl walk off into the snowstorm with the prince of Dhaxanians?” Heron scoffed.
A couple of seconds passed. Scarlett narrowed her eyes at him, slowly shaking her head. “You know, for someone who’s pretty much next in line for the Mara Lordship back on Calliope, you’re not too bright.”
Heron blinked several times, and I stifled a laugh. I needed the humor.
“You’re not making much sense, Scarlett,” Heron said.
“Think logically, dude,” she replied. “Jax and Hansa are clearly an item. He’s a Mara, and she’s a succubus. He can’t drink her blood because it’s toxic to him. As much as they love each other, what do you think are the odds that they could have children? Biologically speaking, the baby would be half Mara, at least, in a succubus womb. She wouldn’t be able to carry the pregnancy to term. Their best bet is adoption, and, from what I know, Mara laws clearly state that Lordship is only transferrable along the original bloodline, or if there is a challenger supported by more than thirty percent of White City’s population. Are you with me on this?”
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