Page 37

Chapter 37

Rev

The rhyzolm hummed.

Roared .

Slid across my fingers while I attempted to peer into the oblivion of the Blightress’s portal. The dark abyss would lead us straight to that cavern where she kept her heart from the world.

I dropped the stone back into my pocket with one name on my mind.

Saelyn .

This act was for Saelyn , the children on the isle, and those who would come to be.

Our home had its measures of issues, but it was peaceful. This woman, this ancient being, would continue to disrupt that peace. She’d already harvested channelers into macabre trees, siphoning their power for what?

She had a purpose. One I believed we did not yet see or understand.

One I feared.

So there we stood, two Barons , three channelers, and one centuries old lapis conduit, sister to the woman whose heart we sought to destroy.

The black portal swirled as an inky wall at the end of the dark tunnel. Karus had led us here, underneath the forest, where the Blight had permeated Felgren before she destroyed part of it the first time. This is where the Blightress had taken her months ago, and where her path led once again.

Karus pushed her hand through the portal, pulling it back quickly and confirming, “ Ilyenna , we can go through this. It’s not like a Baron portal.”

I bit down so hard, the force of it rippled through our companion bond. I didn’t know how to make these portals. Whatever portal magic that had been taught down the line of Barons was not what the Blightress could produce. Her portals allowed anyone in, regardless of how many hearts were within their bodies, whereas mine allowed just one. Her portals could remain open when a person went through, whereas mine would close.

Karus touched my shoulder, addressing all of us. “ Remember , to leave this portal, show your truest, innermost desires. Your emotions must be faced. When I was trapped, I left by giving into my anger.” She heaved a sigh. “ I don’t know how long we’ll be inside, but we wait. We wait for everyone before moving forward. I’ll go first.”

“ You will not,” I countered, finding her hand in the dim tunnel and pulling her toward me. “ I will go and meet you on the other side.”

“ I’ll go first, Baron Revich ,” Lia spoke, pushing her way forward. “ I understand my sister’s magic better than you. I will go to the other side and meet all of you there.”

Karus nodded and Lia stepped forth, disappearing in an instant into the endless black.

“ How long do we wait?” Philius asked.

“ We don’t wait,” Karus said, attempting to take her hand from mine.

“ Let me go before you,” I murmured. “ Please .”

Her shoulders slumped. “ Alright . I’ll see you on the other side.”

I cringed. It had been the exact thing my mother had said to me before her death. Karus , realizing this, squeezed my fingers with a sorrowful look. I took a deep breath and kissed her softly. Without another word, I let go of her hand and stepped into the portal.

* * *

“ Illuminare . ” My orb of blue lit the space around me which held no substance. No grit, no earth, no walls, nor anything to ground me. I walked on air if I walked on anything at all.

This is where Karus had been.

For who knows how long, she had wandered through this existence before screaming her way out of it.

I felt for the rhyzolm in my pocket, curious if I could still feel our daughter. She was there. Just a small hum like a beacon in the far distance, pulling me back out of this place.

“ And what is it the Baron of Felgren desires most? ” The voice of Adaynth came to me in the dark, sounding as if he was there, next to me in the space that was not space.

I shrugged, taking one more look around at the absence of everything. Squeezing the rhyzolm and thinking of my family, I said, “ I simply desire to love them. To keep both of them safe. Of any future I’ll live, I’ll live it for them.”

I stepped out of the portal easily. No shove like Karus had described, but a light force of wind at my back, my boots landing on wet stone of a dim cave.

Karus was already out, wrapping her arms around me, her cheek pressed to mine as she spoke low into my ear. “ I said us. I just want the three of us together.”

I held her tightly. “ I voiced the same.”

She pulled away to kiss me. “ You took a bit longer to get out.”

I swept a hand through her white hair. After that last Simulair Solum spell, which rid the entirety of Felgren from the Blight , we’d never get her chestnut color back. “ I just wanted to know what it was like for you. What you went through in there last time.” I shook my head and kissed her again.

Philius all but flew out of the portal, Lia ready, catching him at the back of his vest and holding him steady. “ Fuck , that was awful.”

Karus chewed her bottom lip, whispering, “ C’mon Ilyenna .”

But it was Talon who came next, catching himself before he hit the wet stones of the cave we’d all entered.

“ By the…” Philius murmured, standing in a stupor at the pulsing heart hanging from the cave ceiling.

It was difficult to ignore the steady beat that filtered through the dank air, but I managed, waiting for Ilyenna to join us.

Talon paced in front of the swirling black with one long dark braid swaying at his back.

A minute passed, then five.

“ I have to go back in there,” he said.

“ No .” Karus grabbed his vest, jerking him from where he’d started to force his way back in. “ She can do this.”

“ I’m not waiting two weeks for her out here.”

Karus visibly winced.

I stepped in front of him. “ Ilyenna is perfectly capable of getting out of there. Give her more time.”

He stared me down. “ Would you wait for your companion? The mother of your child?”

We both knew the answer.

“ You wouldn’t find her in there anyway,” Karus explained. “ She has to leave of her own accord. It’s why none of us saw each other. We don’t exist in there together.”

I jostled his shoulder, bringing his focus back to me. “ She’s going to figure it out, Talon .”

Nodding , he stepped out of my grasp to set himself against the wet rock.

Karus slipped her fingers through mine and we turned our backs on the portal to behold the cave together. It was just as she had described—a vast underground cove of damp rock, and a crimson pulsing heart, wide as the dining hall, which hung from what looked like a dozen arteries at the top of the cave. I noted the staircase that led upward to a small opening. It had to be the one Karus had climbed to get out of this place and wander through the Blightress’s lands just months ago.

“ It’s grown,” Karus said, gazing out into the open cave, watching the pulse of the heart which she could find in herself any time she wanted to.

“ It grows?” Philius mumbled in disgust.

Lia hovered behind him. “ It was once the size of a human heart. She’s been feeding it for a century.”

Philius’s face scrunched. “ Feeding it with what?”

Lia’s tired gray eyes shifted to Karus .

Karus didn’t return her gaze, instead replying, “ Fear . She feeds this heart with fear.” She let go of my hand and stood at the outcropping of rock that led down to the cavern floor. “ Her wrath is fed by what she fears most.”

A stale breeze sifted through the air, pulling at her white hair and bringing a sharp trill as it drifted over the hole above.

Philius asked in a whisper, “ What is it she fears most, Karus ?”

She didn’t turn, didn’t drop her shoulders at her answer, she only looked on at the crimson heart, sharing a beat with hers. “ Being alone…forever.”

* * *

“ So ,” Philius started, breaking the silence. “ What was your favorite century?”

Lia huffed in a chuckle, and Karus rolled her eyes.

The four of us sat, our backs to the rock wall at the portal’s exit while Talon stood, still staring into the swirling surface.

“ Many of them blur together,” Lia began in answer, “but I do remember certain times, certain people who were special in my life.”

“ Did you ever have a family?” the Prince asked next. I tuned in to listen, also curious about Lia’s centuries on the isle.

“ Children ? No .” She held up her left wrist, displaying the curved l still inked on her skin. “ I never wanted children, and when the liberum mark was created, I was first in line.”

Philius nodded, glancing at his own mark left on the stub of his wrist. “ Has it been lonely, then? Never aging, everyone you love around you growing old and dying?”

A numbness crept over my skin. I slid my arm around Karus , pulling her tighter to my side so she could lay her head on my shoulder.

Lia thought for a moment. “ At first it was difficult to endure. I loved, I lost, and then I’d love again only to lose once more. So , I started leaving before the end.”

I narrowed my eyes. “ You just left the people you loved?”

“ It was easier on all of us.”

“ Or was it easier for you?” Karus murmured.

“ You do not know the pain of watching someone you love wither in body and mind, Baron Karus .” Her voice came sharp, a lesion meant to dig deep. “ Though , maybe someday you will.”

Karus sat up at that. “ What do you mean?”

“ Only what you yourself already suspect. The Blightress gave some of herself directly to you. It may be long life she gave as well.”

Karus froze and her face paled.

“ What about Barons ?” Philius questioned. “ Karus told me a Baron’s power comes from the first Baron who got it from the Blightress . Wouldn’t a Baron live forever then, too?”

I shook my head, having already asked myself the same question. “ Adaynth was able to find a way to pass on his power, Baron to Baron . He does continue to live”— I tapped my temple—“in here. Barons have unnaturally long lives, but the power does not allow them to live forever.”

“ You’re saying the first ever Baron of Felgren lives in your head?” Philius looked stunned. He huffed, awkwardly folding his arms at his chest. “ My sister might live forever and has an ancient man in her mind.”

“ He doesn’t like me,” Karus admitted, picking at the edge of the rocky floor. “ I don’t hear him often, not like Revich .”

Lia swallowed hard. “ Adaynth speaks to you?”

I leaned my head back against the cold rock. “ Sometimes . And only recently.”

“ He is coherent?” she asked.

“ Yes .”

“ How did he diminish her power before?”

“ He said it doesn’t matter. It won’t work the same again. He kept this heart contained with the Simulair Solum spell under the Fortress for centuries. It dampened her power until she convinced a Baron to bring it to her.”

“ Ereyth ,” Lia finished.

I nodded.

“ So how do we destroy that thing now?” Philius asked.

“ We pierce it,” Karus answered, “ We use our power to cut it down, let it bleed and die, your flames to burn it.” I squeezed her waist at the words of violence, but she continued, “ She’s lived long enough. Destroyed enough lives. As soon as Ilyenna is out of the portal, we?—”

A gust of wind poured from the wall of black, shoving Ilyenna to the rocky floor, panting with tears streaming down her cheeks. Talon was there a moment later, pulling her to him, shaking as he held her.

Talon soothed her tears, rubbing her back and whispering repeatedly to her that she was out. We all stood, readying our nerves for what would come next.

Ilyenna’s eyes rose to Karus . “ I — I don’t know how you endured it. I don’t know how long I was in there, but it felt like days.”

“ You got through it. You’re out,” Karus said.

Ilyenna fell into his chest once more. “ I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to admit it, Talon , I’m so sorry.”

He soothed her again. “ Whatever it was, it’s alright now. You did it. You’re here.”

“ It’s not alright!” she cried. “ I didn’t want to admit what I desire most. I didn’t want to say it.”

“ What was it, child?” Lia asked, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket.

“ Our baby,” Ilyenna started, wiping her eyes, “ I don’t want our baby to have magic. I don’t want our baby to go through any of this.” She wrapped her arms tighter around Talon’s shoulders. “ I don’t want the Blightress to have a reason to make our child into one of those trees.” She wiped at her face. “ And I am sorry for it. I don’t want our baby to share this gift, and?—”

Talon shook his head, kissing her cheek before she could continue. “ You wish to protect our child. There’s nothing to be sorry for. There is nothing to forgive.”

Philius jumped to the highest rock that looked over the expanse of the cave mouth below, leading to the heart. “ I hate to be the one to say it, but we’ve been here an hour and have pushed our luck already.”

Talon moved to interject, but Ilyenna stopped him. “ He’s right.” She wiped her eyes and nose one last time. “ Let’s get this over with.”

Karus flicked her fingers, her green tendrils of power forming half of a longsword, sharp and deadly if she willed it.

I was not a violent man, but violence I would embrace, if it meant we’d be free of that ghost.

My own longsword, a deep blue, aligned to complete the other half of hers, forming the weapon we’d use together to cut down the heart that haunted us.

A golden hunting knife took form at the end of Talon’s swirl of power, a serrated knife at the end of Ilyenna’s . Philius flicked the stubs of his wrist, pulling bright orange sparks of flame and Lia’s power misted around her in sharp, silver wisps.

Karus instructed, “ We cut it down and leave when the pulse is silent. Run back to the portal, and we will wait for everyone to get out from there.”

Nods coincided all around and we began our descent down the rocky path leading further into the cave and closer to the heart of the Blightress .