Aviva
Twenty minutes is all it takes to get fully suited in my Endovian shifting clothes, halter, and knife belt. Misty watches me examine each blade before sliding them into position, metal gleaming in the star soaked darkness. She’s dressed similarly, and her eyes hold a silent promise.
We already lost Maeve.
We’re not losing Logan, too.
We have no idea why he ran away to, but I’m sure as hell about to find out.
Cole’s staying with the kids, and Ryan’s staying behind to gather his troops to begin the search for Maeve.
It’s probably close to 3:00 A.M when Misty and I set out, following Logan’s scent. He doesn’t leave the village by the road, however. His scent follows the trail toward the lake.
I stand on the edge of the dock in my wolf form. He was here, but his scent is faint. He was on the move, that’s for sure, and as we follow his scent up and over the mountain, past the hot springs, I start to wonder what he was following this way.
Hours pass following the boy's scent. Misty and I stay silent, neither of us speaking through the mind-link until the space around us starts to look and feel all too familiar.
Two miles from the clearing where the forge rests two dozen feet below ground, I stop our progress and shift back to my human form, Misty following suit.
We stare into the darkness of the woods all around us.
“The birds aren’t making any noise,” she whispers.
“I know,” I reply, unsheathing my bow.
I’ve lost Logan’s scent in the soft breeze, but whatever drew him here has to be the same pull both me and Misty are experiencing right now.
We walk the next two miles in our human forms with weapons drawn and a shared, terrible feeling settling into our bones.
Half a mile away from the clearing, we both smell smoke.
Misty lets her powers erupt, covering her body in her mist-like armor. I draw my blades, one in each hand, primed to strike if we come across a camp, or Goddess willing, Kyra.
But when we reach the clearing…
Misty gasps. I have the sudden, overwhelming sensation that I’m about to faint.
What was once a small hole leading down to the temple is now a crater that’s absorbed the entire clearing. The trees all around are burnt to a crisp, smoldering with odd looking silver embers that cast the space in an eerie, almost moonlit, glow.
I look down. One step, and I would have fallen to my death, for sure, based on the rock and ruins twenty feet beneath us. More of the temple is now within view… including the entrance, and the pile of ash in the center of the hole.
And a pair of women’s boots that look vaguely familiar.
Before I even have the opportunity to ask, Misty raises her hands and lets her powers fly.
The mist filled figures of Kyra, clutching a screaming Maeve to her chest, appear, floating above the gaping crater. She’s screaming at Maeve, taunting her, demanding the baby use her powers to get rid of the dirt and soil burying the temple.
“I’ll throw you in the forge, you sniveling little demon,” she screams, gripping Maeve so hard the baby screeches and smacks Kyra across the face.
Kyra grunts in pain and holds Maeve over the original hole, threatening repeatedly to drop her, but then a small wolf–a pup, by all means, darts out of the wood and launches himself on Kyra with his teeth bared and claws extended.
Kyra, Logan, and Maeve fall into the hole, and the entire clearing erupts in flames of mist as Kyra’s scream fades.
“Oh, my Goddess,” Misty breathes, hisses against the pull of her powers as they fan around us, showing us the moment Maeve’s powers of silver fire ignited the clearing in flames that breach the top of the trees.
The ground around us falls in as her powers show us how the hole widened. It was Maeve, somehow. She did this.
And Logan…
“He killed her,” I whisper, anguish lacing each word, as I watch the pup clamp his jaws around Kyra’s neck and squeeze, breaking the skin.
Kyra screams, but her voice shudders to a broken cry of pain before she slumps. Silver flames begin to lick up her legs, but Logan shifts to his human form, tearing Kyra’s cloak from her body and wrapping himself in it before whirling toward where Maeve’s wailing in fear behind him.
“It’s okay,” he says in Firestone. “You’re okay now.”
Maeve blinks at him, going silent with surprise, like she understands every word he just said to her. She reaches for him, and he picks her up, dusting soot and mud from her cheeks, then looks up at us.
But Maeve points to the sky, mumbling something in the language of toddlers no one but their own mother understands, and in a flash of mist, they’re gone.
“She jumped. She spirited away with him,” Misty gasps, her powers burning out. The clearing goes totally dark again.
“How long ago was this?”
“I have no idea,” Misty says rapidly, shaking her head as she takes a step closer to the edge. I grab her arm to stop her from tumbling over as dirt gives way only a few inches away from our toes. “Recently. Very recently. We missed them by an hour, maybe.”
I try to mind-link with Ryan, but the connection is hazy, likely because of the conflicting magic in the clearing.
I feel my body gravitating toward the edge of the hole like I’m being pulled toward it by some unseen force.
“What if they’re inside?” I ask.
“In the temple?”
“You feel that too, don’t you?”
“That pull? Yes.” Misty swallows hard. “How do we get down?”
I look back down. Moonlight coasts over the rocks and the scattered ruins of what must have been part of the temple that was crushed inward over the years. “Carefully,” I answer, deciding our plan of action. “Very, very carefully.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, and covered to the neck in mud, Misty and I look at each other, both leaning a shoulder against an ancient wooden door that’s been closed for at least three thousand years.
We have no idea what’s behind it. We both know this probably isn’t a good idea. We’re also well aware that our mates are going to be wondering what the fuck is wrong with us when we go through it to face some other unseen, terrifying force of magic that probably should have stayed covered… but those are problems for another day.
If Logan and Maeve are in here, we’re going to get them out. Plain and simple.
“Ready?” I ask in a strained whisper.
“Ready,” she says, sounding far more confident than I am, but in my defensive, she crushed the fuck out of me when I inadvertently broke her fall after our plan to get down here went sideways.
We lean away from the door and slam back into it, our combined weight and force almost snapping the door free from its ancient hinges.
“Again,” she hisses, choking back a note of pain.
Again. Then again. And… again.
On the sixth try, Misty goes clear through the door’s center in a yelp of pain and surprise and lands with a crunch on the other side.
I step through the crack her body left in the wood and squint into the total, all-consuming darkness.
She rises, dusting herself off, mumbling a few curses under her breath before she raises a hand and lets her powers shine like a makeshift lantern, lighting our war.
It’s a narrow space–full of dust and stale air. A long hallway leads to nowhere for what feels like a mile before we reach the end of it, and a wide, spiral stone staircase leading down into sucking, empty darkness comes into view.
“I think we’re very high up,” she says, lowering her hand. “That door might have been off an upper level balcony or something.”
I’m not sure I want to go down there, but what choice do we have?
Misty leads the way, lighting our path down deep into the castle until the air becomes so thin we both start feeling light headed and woozy.
Eventually, we reach the bottom of the staircase and find another wide, cavernous, completely dark, and empty place.
The magic pull is far more intense down here, though. So much so that we know exactly what door to pass through and what staircase to take next.
A thick, sulfuric smell breaches us, rendering me even more dizzy. I cover my nose with my arm, squinting into Misty’s soft light as my eyes water.
I can barely breathe down here.
“We can’t stay long,” Misty gags, choking on what little air she can find.
“LOGAN!” I shout, my voice echoing off the walls. Misty’s light doesn’t reach the far end of the cavern, but we’re obviously not in the right place yet, based on what she showed me when we first came here and saw the forge through her powers.
“They can’t possibly be here,” she says as we continue forward. “Aviva, I’m getting really–” she screams as the floor falls out from under her.
“MISTY!” I jump for her, grabbing her arm at the last second, but it doesn’t matter.
The stone pavers beneath us give way, and we careen into empty nothingness.
My life flashes before my eyes. I imagine the moment I locked eyes with Ryan for the first time the day Shoshanna put an arrow through his shoulder. I remember mornings with the girls flipping pancakes, and evenings spent mending my tattered hunting clothes while Mercy worked on her loom. I see my mother in startling clarity, smiling widely at me as I run into her arms while we walk in a field of strawberries blooming.
I see the clearing where Ryan and I slept together for the first time after finally acknowledging our mate bond and feel Lexa wrapping her tiny fist around my finger after she was born and–
I scream in agony when I collide with the floor, the air ripped from my lungs. Misty moans in pain a few feet away, coughing into the total darkness. Pieces of debris hit the ground all around us but miss our bodies by some miracle.
Now we’ve really done it. We’re fucked. Broken—and fucked, leagues below ground where our mates can’t find us.
“Wild thing, we’ve been waiting for you.”
I freeze as an unfamiliar, ageless, and genderless voice fills my head like someone screaming in my ear.
“Warrior of the ages, the gods call you. How they gossip about your victories. I believe they’re right. Come to me, child of blood and vengeance. The dawn of the Firestones is upon us. Your destiny has been written in the stars, and now it’s time to answer to your calling.”
“Misty,” I rasp. “Misty, who is that? Who’s speaking?”
Misty groans, coughing and wheezing. “I can’t–I can’t breathe–my ribs–”
I roll onto my belly, blinking rapidly to try to clear my vision and… light. Light ebbs in a faint glow from the… Oh, my gods.
“Rise, Warrior of the Goddess. Breaker of chains. Commander of Her chosen army. Your time is now.”
It’s the forge. It’s speaking to me, speaking into me. I feel its power, unaware that I’m slowly rising, my eyes locked on the wide stone pool in the center of a cave of crystal.
Somewhere behind me, her voice choked and faint, Misty’s calling out my name, telling me to wait, to stop, but I… I can’t.
“The bow was a test,” the voice echoes. “It only ever had one owner, and it found you again. You passed the test. Come, we’ve missed you. Come, see who you were in another life, another body. You, an ageless soul.”
Gooseflesh erupts all over my body. My eyes widen as I approach the edge of the forge, expecting fire and heat, but… it’s water. Clean, crystalline water. It smells like salt and humid air–like ozone–like the sky after a storm.
“You don’t remember, do you? What you sacrificed in another life–”
An image flashes across my mind–a memory I can’t claim ownership of–but I know the man, the unfamiliar man, turning to look at me, his eyes wide and resigned as he lifts a battered hand and sword, his body coated in heavy army.
Ryan in another body. Another life… long ago. My mate.
An epic battle rages. The last battle. A battle our kind lost, when Eastonia fell, marking the end of the Firestone witches who protected us.
“He promised to find you again in another life. He walked thousands of lives to find you, and you, him. You succeeded at last. Come to us, Angel of Death. Bringer of Justice. Come home.”
My legs give out as Misty’s scream tears toward me. I slump, my belly wrapped over the edge of the forge as I fall in and down… and down.