The stewardess brought us a feast of steak, green beans, and roasted sweet potatoes. It was an odd hour to have dinner, but I was starving.
“What kind of mage is he?” I asked, shoving a piece of steak and sweet potato into my mouth.
“Iron mage.”
“I assume that’s why he’s so good at forging binding spells, huh?” I’d never met an iron mage before. They were experts at binding and bonding spells, as well as alchemy and enchanting metal items.
Damian nodded. “He’s something else, too, but I haven’t prodded. He likes his privacy.”
I could understand that. Damian undoubtedly did as well. He hadn’t exactly announced that he was a fallen angel. I eyed him intensely. What else was he hiding from me? There was something, for sure.
“Tell me more about this place in Cappadocia where we’re headed,” he said.
I filled him in on the details I had learned at the library. “From what I can tell, the box is hidden somewhere in the underground city of Gizli Tepe. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to track it, being a seeker and all.” I pulled out my notebook. “These are the coordinates, according to Soviet military maps.”
“This lost city was recorded on Soviet maps?”
“Yup. The only good thing that came out of colonial efforts in the region were the maps. They recorded everything on the ground. Roads, hills, archaeological sites. Gizli Tepe still exists. But nobody has explored the city yet because the whole region of Cappadocia is honeycombed with underground cities.”
“Why?” Damian plugged the coordinates into his handheld GPS unit.
“Well, the region was once the frontier between the Byzantine and Islamic empires. Yearly raids and skirmishes by the Muslim armies required the Cappadocians to hide. And what better way than to build underground cities in the chalky substrate, totally invisible to outsiders?”
“Wow, that’s fascinating. And you learned all this…today?” Damian looked surprised.
I smiled and nodded.
Lie. I was a total nerd and had previously taken some deep dives into the history of Turkey. The ancient lost city and the magical box were the only new additions. But if he wanted to believe I was a super sleuth and walking encyclopedia, I wasn’t going to stop him.
We finished dinner, and I opened Secrets of the Djinn. I flipped to the section on summoning air elementals. There was a lot of good info in there. No wonder the djinn had it hidden away in his treasure vault.
Damian had offered me the bed in the stern cabin, and I happily obliged. I sank into the pillowtop mattress and recounted the day. The portal, the library, the imps, the great flour battle, Potions & Pastels…Damian. Those broad shoulders and rigid muscles. His perfect jaw. Those deep, mysterious eyes. I drifted off into slumber, thinking of him.
I dreamed again. This time, they were good dreams.
I woke as the plane began its final descent to Kayseri Erkilet Airport.
The low, sonorous sound of Damian’s voice greeted me. “Good morning.”
I groaned and pulled the pillow over my head. This was how I normally greeted the day. Also, I wasn’t sure what state I was in. My mouth was dry. Hopefully, I hadn’t drooled.
“I have a cappuccino.”
That changed things. Normally, the morning didn’t greet me so kindly. I sat up, pulling the sheet around me, and let my red hair drop forward as he passed me the cup.
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Mm. It’s nice and hot.”
So is he, my traitorous libido reminded me.
Damian flashed an unexpectedly disarming smile. “We aim to please when you fly Malek Air.”
I blinked. Was the ice angel starting to open up?
I maneuvered the sheets, trying to manage them and the coffee. Clearly, he was enjoying this.
“What time is it?”
“Just before dawn. You slept through the refuel.”
He was sitting on the side of the bed. The way his torso was turned pulled his shirt taut against his solid chest. Was he doing that on purpose? It was getting quite hot beneath the comforter. Thankfully, my lower leg slipped out of the sheets and into the cool air. Damian did not fail to notice.
Was he really looking at me like this? Fallen or not, with his angelic form, he could have anyone he wanted.
The captain’s voice came on the loudspeaker. “Beginning final descent. Buckle up, sir.”
Thank fates.
Damian headed forward, and I bolted to the bathroom to wash the sleep off my face. What was it about him that turned my stomach into knots? The cold water brought me back to my senses. I rested my hands on the vanity and inspected my reflection. Not bad after an international flight.
The world outside was dark, and the lights of Kayseri flew by as we touched down. Gizli Tepe was only about hour and a half’s drive from here.
As I wondered how we’d make the trip, I spotted a black Range Rover parked on the tarmac. The driver stepped out wearing a black suit.
Damian was prepared for everything. The nice stewardess handed me a breakfast sandwich on the way out of the plane, and I scarfed it down while we walked to the car.
Damian greeted the driver with a hug, and they exchanged a few words in Turkish. He turned and gestured toward me. “Selim, this is Neve. Neve, Selim.”
I nodded and smiled. Selim opened the car door for me, and we set off.
While the car wove along the winding road that cut through the high steppe, I made myself comfortable in the back. “You speak Turkish?”
Damian looked up from his GPS and nodded. “A little. It helps to be multilingual in my line of business.”
This guy was full of surprises.
The landscape was surreal, almost alien as dawn crept over the world. The chalk hills were broken by bizarre spires of rock, some of which towered a hundred feet in the air. Guidebooks referred to the spires as “Fairy Chimneys.” Some were thin spindles, while others looked like rows of pointed tents. I was traveling through another world as strange and alien as the Realm of Air, with its floating islands and cloud palaces.
We passed by a few villages incorporated into the Fairy Chimneys. The soft rock was easy to work, so over the millennia, villagers had carved houses and structures into the bases of these rock formations. The countryside was honeycombed with such caves, comprising homes, monasteries, churches, and even entire underground cities.
As we rumbled over the washboard roads, I watched several colorful hot air balloons drifting through the sky in the distance as the sun rose. I longed to drift upward through the clouds again. “I’ve always wanted to try a hot air balloon flight,” I murmured.
“Well, now you can fly all on your own,” Damian said.
“Maybe. I haven’t tried flying since we returned from the Realm of Air.” A part of me was scared to even attempt it. What if I could only fly in the Realm of Air, and not here?
I turned and met Damian’s gaze. His green eyes searched mine.
“My control over the wind in the library of Alexandria was nowhere near as strong as it was in the Realm of Air.” I’d be crushed if I was grounded, no longer able to lift myself off the earth. I looked out the windows, longing for the power and courage to chase after the balloons.
Damian reached over and took my hand. “Give yourself a break, Nevaeh. It’s only been a few days since you learned to fly. You’ve come a long way since your first flight in that square in Tayir.”
How many times had I hit the pavement?
I glanced at Damian, whose lips were pulled up in a smile. I started laughing, and he shook his head.
“There it is.” Selim’s voice interrupted the moment. He gestured to a large hill in the distance that towered over the surrounding mounds. Grasses and a few scrubby trees covered the surface.
I shook off the hypnosis of travel and looked around. “Not a village in sight. That’s good.” We could be in and out without anyone ever knowing.
The car dropped us off at the base of the hill. Damian mutte
red something unintelligible to Selim, and the car drove off. “He’ll be back in a couple hours. I don’t want to attract attention with him parked here.”
I nodded, adjusting the laces of my boots so they were snug. I couldn’t risk twisting an ankle.
“Where’s the entrance?” he asked.
“Good question.” I inspected the hill. It rose several hundred feet and was narrower than it was tall. It sort of looked like a massive Fairy Chimney, minus the pointy top. “My guess is that the entrance is on the north side.”
“Your guess?”
We started up the hill. “More like an educated guess. The entrance wasn’t marked on the map. We should be able to find it. I reason that the prevailing wind is from the north. If I built an underground city, I’d want a breeze blowing through the front door.”
“Clever thinking. Let’s see if holds water.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to spot it.”
Famous last words. It turned out that finding the entrance wasn’t hard—it was impossible. We searched among the rocks for half an hour, slowly spiraling around the formation. It wasn’t on the north side, or the east, or the south or west.
We worked our way down the hill. It was hot, dusty work, and I was hot, dusty, and tired. “How is it that every spire around here is literally honeycombed with holes,” I groused, “but thi—”
“Quiet. I see something.” Damian grabbed my wrist and pulled me down behind a shrub, pointing to something on the slope above. A murmur of voices carried on the wind.
I peeked around the bush. Two short figures stood about fifteen feet upslope at the entrance of what appeared to be a rock overhang. One of the figures raised his hands in exclamation. They were arguing.
“Dwarves,” Damian whispered.
I’d never met a dwarf before. They inhabited cave systems and were prolific in the Realm of Earth—not to be mistaken with the real world. They weren’t typically benevolent, but they weren’t necessarily evil. If the dwarves lived here, they must know something about the underground city.
I stood and tromped up the slope toward them. “Neve,” Damian whispered after me, but I ignored him.
The dwarves were so engrossed in whatever they were arguing about that they didn’t notice me approaching until I was a few feet away. “Hi!” I said, startling them.
The dwarves stopped mid-sentence and turned to me, otherwise frozen with shock. I guessed they weren’t used to visitors. They wore dirty trousers and tunics cinched around their round midsections by leather belts. Their braided mustaches hung down a good six inches. Though I’d never seen a dwarf before, these were pretty much what I imagined.
Damian appeared at my side. One look at him, and the dwarfs scuttled into the space under the rock overhang.
“Hey! Wait!” I shot after them, but they were gone. I felt around the rocks hopelessly, looking for a door, but there was nothing there.
Well, crap.
17
As I castigated myself, Damian stepped forward and swept his hand in front of the back wall. The air rippled like a mirage, and then the glowing outline of a doorway appeared in the rock face.
His lips pulled up in a smile. “Perfect.”
“How do you do that?” I demanded. “Is it a seeker thing?”
“It’s a detection spell. It only works for a very limited area.” He motioned for me to take his hand, and I obeyed. It was warm and soft.
The door hadn’t opened, but the rock had become translucent. It reminded me of Damian’s secret vault in his office. We stepped through the rock door together and appeared in a dark, damp chamber. The air was stale and heavy and smelled of dust. Damian flicked on a flashlight.
“Can you teach me to do that?” I asked.
He handed me another flashlight. “No. It’s seeker magic.”
I sighed and inspected the chamber. It was worth a shot. “Sometimes, I just wish I could absorb other people’s magic, you know?”
Damian frowned. “You shouldn’t.” He paused, as if lost in thought, then continued. “You’ve been blessed with your own talents.”
“Easy for you to say. I’ve spent most of my life mostly powerless and afraid of what little I can do.”
“Not anymore. You were incredible in the Realm of Air. You did things I’ve never seen before.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between us, and looked down at me. “I bet we haven’t discovered half of what you can do.”
The way he said it made my breath catch. I didn’t dare let it out. My gaze flicked to his lips. He could kiss me at any moment.
Did I even want that? I had that night in his hotel room. But now…I had no idea. I slipped around him but let my fingers linger for a moment on his side. “So, what next?” I asked with forced nonchalance.
The bare room was hewn from the chalk bedrock typical to the region. The walls were incised with ancient chisel marks left from when the space was carved out of the earth. Two passageways veered off in different directions, one continuing down a set of four stairs.
I eyed Damian playfully. “Should we split up?”
“No. We stick together.”
“Thank fates. Because splitting up is how everyone dies in the movies. Can you use your seeker skills to find the box?”
“Not from here. I can sense it, but the signature is too vague to say which way will lead to it.”
“Alrighty. Then let’s take this one.” I motioned to the corridor on the right and led the way down the stairs.
Conveniently, humans had constructed the city, not dwarves. The ceilings of the passages and chambers were tall enough that we didn’t constantly bump our heads, though Damian had to stoop, and the space was pretty constricting. The darkness didn’t help. Walking carefully, I shone my light on the floor ahead.
“Careful.” I motioned to a hole at the base of the side wall, shining my light down into the bottomless abyss. “Don’t want to fall in there.”
“Any particular reason you chose this way?”
“Not really. It looked less creepy.” I usually relied on my gut instinct. Often, it was wrong, but sometimes—sometimes—it was right.
“Look at this,” said Damian.
I turned and found him standing in front of a niche in the wall, looking at a small ceramic object perched on the ledge. There were lots of nooks and crannies in the walls. Some were storage cubbies, while others were nothing more than hollowed-out cavities.
I recognized the object immediately. “A lamp! Must’ve been left here ages ago.”
I’d seen lamps like this in museums but never in their original location. Soot stains covered the nozzle where the flame once burned, and a molded design of a cross decorated its surface.
Damian reached out to take it, but I slapped his hand away. “No! Don’t touch it.”
“Why? It’s not a trap. I’d probably sense it if it were.”
“It’s an artifact, and this is a heritage site. We shouldn’t be disturbing or taking things.”
Damian looked at me skeptically. “Aren’t we here to steal a box?”
“A magic box. One created by Magica. Plus, it’s an emergency.” I pointed to the lamp. “That is not an emergency.”
Pebbles fell from the ceiling down the way, and Damian flashed his light around. “I’d hate to be in here during an earthquake.”
“Yeah, this is not exactly the place you’d want to build an underground city.”
He paused. “What do you mean?”
“It’s at the junction of the Arabian and Eurasian plates, so it’s prone to earthquakes.”
“Great. So it’s a death trap. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic.”
Unfortunately, I was. Or, more accurately, having taken a moment to contemplate the immediate consequences of global tectonic drift, I had suddenly become claustrophobic.
“Let’s get a move on.” I marched on at a faster pace.
The air grew moist and stagnant as we descended into the mountain. It wasn’t a steep drop
, but the floor was definitely declining at a gradual angle. A few rooms opened before us, but they led nowhere and appeared to be storage space.
Vivid thoughts of being buried alive kept me moving. I turned a corner and bumped into something. I’d have toppled over if Damian hadn’t grabbed my shoulder.
A muffled grunt sounded below me.
Heart racing, I shone my light toward the sound.
A dwarf stared up at me, wide-eyed and gaping. His attire matched that of the dwarves we’d ambushed outside, but unlike them, this fellow had a long beard interwoven with gray crystals. The short man took two steps back and pulled a hammer out of his belt, holding it menacingly above his head.
Damian stepped in front of me, raising his arm in a non-threatening gesture. His other hand appeared at his side, revealing a marble-sized purple gem that flickered under the flashlight. “Easy…we’re looking for something. Can you help us?”
The dwarf’s eyes narrowed on the gem, and he lowered his hammer. “Slag!”
It appeared to be a curse.
“Don’t you know sneaking up on a dwarf can be deadly? You’re lucky I’m the kind type. What do you want?”
“Sorry to intrude, but we’re looking for a magic box that was hidden here many centuries ago. Do you know where it might be?” I asked.
The dwarf scrunched his face and raised his hand, demanding payment first. Damian dropped the shiny gem into the dwarf’s chubby palm. “I don’t know of such a thing. But…if you are right and such a thing is here, then it might be in the sunken pits. Our people do not go down there.”
The sunken pits? Nope, I decided, we aren’t going there.
“And where might those be?” Damian reached in his pocket, probably for another gem.
The dwarf pointed down the passageway. “Straight ahead, turn left at the junction, right twice and follow the way down. You’re not in your right mind to go down there.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
The dwarf shook his head. “You won’t come back.”
Damian handed the dwarf another gemstone, this time yellow. “Thanks for your help, friend.”
Wicked Wish (Dragon's Gift: The Storm Book 1) Page 13
