by LJ Andrews
Mitch was already buried in heavy quilts to fight the chill. He snored softly, and clutched two sheathed knives against his chest. I touched the stone wall and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine Gaia. What did she look like? I’d never asked. I knew she had marks like me, and that was it.
Although I couldn’t picture her in my mind, before I removed my hand there was a sting that shot through my palm. It was familiar, warm, but harsh in the same vein. Before I settled in my thin quilt, I was overcome with the sense that Gaia was waiting—that she would be ready whenever we found her.
Pale light painted the snowy mountains as a frigid canvas.
Thane scanned the distant horizon from the top of the cave. Most warriors were in wyvern form that morning. Thane remained in human form, hoping to help sense any mage energy as we went. He was dressed in thick pelts again, his arms covered with bracers and his waist lined in knives. Thane had two swords tethered to his back like mine. The mage who were coming looked similar. Each one carried at least one weapon. Others carried more supplies that would help them manage their energy, like bags of soil or ash.
Mitch stood by Athika. At first glance, I wouldn’t think him anything but a mage or dragon. He wore a gray pelt around his shoulders, and he’d allowed someone to shave the sides of his head, so the points of his ears showed in full. Only his thick curls remained down the center of his scalp. I couldn’t even tease him—he looked so much like the wyvern warriors who tightened their hair in braids, or painted their faces, if they remained in human form.
Raffi huffed behind me, his looming dragon body towering over me. He nudged me with his snout, and his fiery eyes glanced toward Thane.
“All right,” I muttered. “Quit shoving.”
I climbed the side of the cave in a few minutes. I hadn’t worn a pelt, but had a thick woolen wrap tight around my shoulders. The jade blades were already a frenzy of energy, as though the weapons knew what was to happen.
“We found their trail to the east last time. What do you feel?” Thane asked without even looking at me.
I stared in the direction he’d pointed and closed my eyes. Within one deep breath, the warm spark shocked my system again. I glanced at him, a smile spreading over my face. “That’s the direction.”
Thane nodded and clapped his hand on my shoulder, his smile coming in cautious pieces. “Then lead the way, Teagan. Let’s go get your mother back.”
Raffi took Mitch and me on his back. Thane rode on Leoch, but I sensed the head warrior didn’t particularly enjoy riding and would rather be flying.
“This is where we lost them,” Thane said when we’d crossed back over the border and were somewhere in the upper United States. The warriors stayed above the clouds while we landed to take in the area.
“The energy is different,” I explained, brushing my hands along the soil. Thane watched me, arms folded across his chest as he waited. “There is something that is trying to redirect the trail. It’s confusing—the distraction causes the energy to feel like the right way to go, but . . .” I glanced to my right, then to the rear, and back again to the right before pointing toward a thick grove of trees. “This is the way.”
“You’re certain?” Thane asked, a slight hint of desperation in his voice.
I nodded. “Yes, every time I catch the energy I feel this . . . shock. That way—” I pointed in the direction they’d gone before. “It almost feels right. Part of me wants to go in that direction, but then this way—there’s the shock.”
Thane grinned wickedly and stomped back toward Leoch. “Hurry then, the sun will be lost in a few hours. We don’t want to meet lindworms at night.”
Raffi flew with renewed passion, as did more warriors, but after a few miles more I doubled over, clutching tight to my middle.
“What’s wrong?” Mitch shouted through the rush of wind.
“I just . . .” I groaned a little and tried to adjust my position. “It’s getting stronger, but it hurts now. It’s like I feel. . . agony.”
I rested my head along Raffi’s neck, absorbing the warmth from his molten blood, and closed my eyes. I wasn’t certain how long I stayed that way, trying to survive the ache in the pit of my stomach, when all at once, it stopped.
I shot up, my arms tingling in sharp pin pricks. My heart burst like an explosion in the center of my chest, and the air seemed to have a hushed whisper with every gust.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Raffi’s wings billowed like a parachute, and he hovered for a moment. Leoch stopped next to him. I leaned over to speak to Thane, but he was looking to the ground. He must have sensed it too.
When he met my eye, he had a wildness about him that was a cross between anger and bright joy. “They’re here.”
I nodded, my mouth dry and my pulse racing in my ears. “Right below us.”
Thane bellowed a cry and stood on the back of Leoch. The warriors roared and shot streams of fire into the sky. Leoch dove through the clouds, pummeling toward earth. Raffi wasted no time in following, and thankfully, Mitch had enough sense to clutch Athika’s waist, or I was certain he would have rolled right off the back.
When Raffi’s claws thundered against the soil, I leapt from his back without a pause. Every inch of my body was on fire from the inside out. I expected to see them, the energy was so breathtakingly strong, but when I looked around an empty meadow stared back. The place was surrounded by trees with scorched ruins of what looked like a house near the edge of the forest.
“Where are they?”
I stepped into the clearing, but Thane ripped me back, shaking his head. He sniffed the air.
“Is something out there, Teagan? It smells rancid.”
He pointed to the center of the meadow. I narrowed my gaze, then my throat tightened. There, slithering in the distance, was a large, disgusting zomok. I saw the way its tattered wings flapped over slender bones.
“Yes, a zomok is there.”
“Then the mages are here. They’re concealed,” Thane said. “But they’re here. We will make ourselves known. We find the barrier, break through whatever enchantments Bron has placed to keep them hidden, then we take them back.”
Thane turned to the warriors. They were remarkably skilled in stealth. For such enormous creatures to hide without hardly making a sound in the thick trees was impressive. Thane lifted a blade, his voice powerful yet eerily quiet.
“We fight for our lost people today. We take them back. Warriors, fight honorably, fight with passion, and kill as many lindworms as you can.”
The forest billowed with steam as the wyvern warriors acknowledged their leader and rose to the fight.
I faced the meadow. Numbness settled in my hands; my body trembled with a new desire.
She was there, I knew it, felt it. I removed the green swords from my back, honed my focus, and promised I would not leave this place without freeing Gaia from her prison.
Thane stepped to my side, his eyes alight with passionate fury. With a single glance, he nodded, and together we darted into the meadow.
Chapter 24
I’d had moments in my life that would be forever engrained in my memories. The first time Aunt Liz had taken me on an overnight camping trip. My first fistfight. The first kiss with Jade. Now, this moment.
As I burst from the trees with my blades, my skin drenched in flames. It was strange, but I boiled inside, furious, terrified, dangerous.
The warriors roared into the sky, and the meadow instantly burned with the scent of smoke from their fiery breath. I knew I cried out, my throat grew raw, but as my wild power took hold sound blurred into movement and action.
The zomok sprawling through the tall grass hissed at Thane and me. Green pyre shot from its fangs, but in a matter of seconds, two mages on Thane’s flank thrust jagged knives through its skull until the slithering beast stopped squirming and let out a gurgled noise as it choked on its poison.
Silence enveloped the meadow, the muffled sound settled as my energy centered like
an electrifying ball of lightning in my chest. Thane glanced around, the skin on his knuckles white as he clutched his blades.
“We fight together, Teagan,” he said fiercely, eyes on the clouds. “Even if I change forms—you remember?”
I nodded, rolling each blade in my palms and scanning the trees. “Yes. Together.”
The earth shook first, then a wave of screeches echoed around the forest. Like a treacherous shadow, in the distance a swarm of black scales, yellow eyes, and dripping fangs darted right for us.
Lindworms. The worst sort of lindworms.
Each dragon had fangs longer than my arm, a gleam of hatred for the elemental warriors in their gaze. But there was more. Atop each serpent dragon rode a mage. The mages were perhaps worse than the dragons. Wild, dark eyes and their skin had armor of the blackest pitch I’d ever seen.
Thane rolled his shoulders. I expected him to raise a blade, instead he roared a name. “Gaia!”
He faced the place where the zomok still bled. His voice echoed, stilling the meadow for half a breath. If the High Priestess were near, doubtless she heard his voice.
I grinned, understanding. He’d signaled them, urged whatever mages were trapped to begin fighting for their freedom.
An enormous lindworm dropped a dark mage near Thane. I rushed toward him as the lindworm snapped at Thane’s sword. The mage tried to pulse whatever mutated energy he held at the warrior’s back, but I caught the mage first.
My blades sliced through the air without a sound. The mage shrieked, lowering his palms from striking Thane with his energy. He clutched his arm where I’d cut his skin, glared at me, then ripped a black dagger from his belt and threw it at my head. I crossed the two jade blades in front of my face, and with a single thought, the dagger turned to ash at my feet.
The mage staggered back, his face painted in stunned hatred. “The High Priest blades. You are supposed to be dead.”
Something about this plot of ground built my power tenfold.
I sneered and rolled the swords a full turn. I didn’t answer the mage, instead used his stun to run him through the chest.
The dark mage gasped, blood on his lips. The sword through his heart trembled and his energy, all the darkness, seemed to absorb into the steel.
I tugged, so his body fumbled nearer, then pressed my forehead against his. “I guess you were wrong.”
I ripped the blade from his body and watched the mage crumble in a heap on the earth. Thane and Leoch battled nearby. Thane’s blade slashed into every lindworm neck as they swooped toward him. With the gaping wounds exposed, Leoch would blast the lindworms with angry fire from above until the serpents practically combusted. Thane moved like the sword was another piece of his body. Dodging low, he reeled back against the scaly flesh until, at his feet, were lumpy corpses toppled in stacks.
The closer I stood to Thane, the more the electrifying shock of power riled through my veins. From him, or the soil, I didn’t know. I simply embraced it.
A snapping hoard of zomoks darted toward my legs. Stabbing the blades into the ground, I pressed my hands along the soil until a crack fissured across the meadow. The zomoks hissed and spat their pyre at me, but I held. The ground obeyed and swallowed up the fury of serpents until their shrieks and cries were only echoes in the dark soil.
Dark mages rushed to stop my attack. Like a flood of shadows, they shot dark magic at the opening. They roared their anger as they tried to shut the gap.
One hand deep in the soil, the other pointed at the sky. Thane advised me before leaving, he’d told me I’d know what to do if I let the full magic in. A white, hot spark coated my palms. The magic morphed into something like a flame of energy. Ruby held fire in her palms, and by all accounts I was, too. The balls of spitting energy coiled around my fingers, my wrists, as though I’d ripped lightning from the sky.
The dark mages stopped, eyes wide. One spun on his heel, fleeing, while others fumbled to protect themselves. With a loud cry I flung the fiery energy at their faces. Flames enrobed the mages, but unlike ordinary fire, this sunk into their mouths, their eyes. They screamed and flailed as my magic devoured them, body and bone.
A few moments more of their otherworldly screams and they fell to the ground.
I stood above a huddle of the dark mages. One still twitched, burned, and made sick, gurgled noises as dark blood trickled from his mouth. I smiled; my body alive with more to give. As if this place held endless energy.
I reached for the blades stuck in the soil, but stumbled. A violent shudder shook the meadow, then ceased at once.
I peered around, but I wasn’t the only one who’d fallen. Dark mages and wyvern hadn’t paused, even for a moment. Thane met my eye from where he stood. He’d felt it too. I shook my head, telling him it wasn’t me. Then, a glimmer shone in the center of the meadow. A fleeting gleam, like an illusion. But above us the air shimmered as a mirror, then faded again.
I stepped closer to where I’d seen the shift. Nothing was there.
The roar of a lindworm drew my thoughts and focus back to where I stood. The beast came behind me and spilled a long stream of molten breath at my back. I tore away from the blast, but the dragon only darted after me.
Thane held a knife in one hand and his sword in the other as he and Leoch fought against four lindworms and a mage. He saw the beast come for me. With frenzied strikes, Thane slit his dagger across the throat of the mage, his sword coming atop the neck of one of the lindworms.
He kept me in his sights, and me, him.
We’d vowed to battle with each other, and somehow it behaved like a bond, keeping me aware of Thane. I wheeled on the smaller lindworm in my wake. Its fangs dripped with yellow saliva, and its scales were jagged like shark teeth along its jutting shoulders. I cut my swords at its head with a violent strike. The lindworm towered over me, but it backed away, notably anxious around the green steel. It roared a stream of dark fire. The blades crossed and formed a shield around me, blocking the pyre.
“Teagan!” Mitch ducked behind my blades in a huff. Mitch’s face was coated in grimy smoke and sweat, but his smile was euphoric. Athika followed close behind, sliding along the grass on her knees. Athika’s body burst with such power I could practically see crimson energy covering her skin. My armor was dormant—Jade was not here, after all—and Athika’s ruby markings were simply designs on her body. There was something feral and powerful about fighting without the aid of our armor. I used it to add to the shield created by the crossed blades.
The lindworm roared when the last of its molten breath ceased. I lowered the blades, glaring at the beast as Athika and Mitch rose next to me.
Mitch sort of chuckled like a maniac and then lunged toward the dragon.
One scale-penetrating knife lodged just beneath the lindworm’s tattered wing when Mitch threw it. The creature shrieked angrily and tried to spew more fire, but he seemed out of spark.
Mitch wiggled his fingers and ropes of sod and wildflowers spun around the hind legs of the snake, holding it in place.
The fae shouted his amazement and tightened his fist. If anyone doubted fae magic would be useful, he’d proved them wrong. With a nod toward Athika, we each took a side of the creature while Mitch weakened it by tossing two more knives into the thick neck.
Athika and I said nothing to each other, but together we shoved our hands to the ground. I couldn’t see her once she dipped behind the opposite side of the dragon, but I felt her power rumble beneath the slithering body of the great snake. Like a crashing wave over jagged rocks, our energies collided. The lindworm was covered in bursts of dirt and grass as the ground beneath it erupted from inside the soil.
When it settled, a gaping hole in the ground stare back at us. At the bottom, torn, bloodied flesh was all that remained of the beast.
“That was incredible!” Mitch screamed, his hands raised to the sky.
A dark mage rushed behind Athika, and she narrowly missed the blade.
I ran next to her
, blocking the next strike with one sword. Mitch sprinted to Raffi for a new fight as the warrior rained white fire over a new wave of poisonous zomoks.
The mage who’d tried to kill Athika backed away, rolling the black dagger in her hand. Her hair was like the night, but there were pieces that had a gilded look, and I wondered if her coloring might have been different before joining with King Nag and Bron.
She chuckled, staring at the blades, then at the jade markings showing through my torn shirt. “The jade mage really has returned. I didn’t believe the High Priest at first. Those blades don’t belong to you.”
Athika stood at my back, faced away, ready to fend off another mage who’d come to battle. I tilted my head at the mage before me. “Don’t think they belong to me, huh? Want to hold one? Let’s see what happens.”
The sneer washed off the mage’s face, and she snarled at me like a rabid dog. “You know he has her.” The mage cackled. “Actually, he has both the women you seek. After this, I’ll make sure the former High Priestess and your little dragon queen meet a slow, torturous end.”
I knew she used the words against me intentionally, but I’d had enough of her voice. One blade carved her shoulder, the other her middle, as Thane had taught me. A smooth power rushed from the edges of the blade, but she blocked the middle with her dagger and dodged my top strike.
When her dagger locked with mine, my palm ached with night energy. Like ice and fire mingled in one, it fatigued my body. It empowered me.
Clenching my jaw tight, I pulled out of the hold, and the comforting agony ceased.
The mage crouched low and swung her dagger, striking against the jade swords with expert aim. Those lessons with Thane, how to use my weapons and magic, reeled through my head. I blew out a long breath and tightened my grip on the two blades.
My chest burned, but the same flesh-ripping sensation didn’t come from the jolt of her strike. I slashed one sword, the cutting edge hit her dagger, then I swung the other across her thigh.
