Page 37 of Damned and Broken Gods (Labyrinth of Gods #2)

It’s Getting Hot In Here

LEELA

T he journey from Shantivan to Jvalantar was a blur of sea spray and nerves. Bhartina took me across on one of the fishing boats. Araz helped with the sails, making sure they were angled right as Bhartina steered.

I wanted to help, but they both insisted I sit on the bow and conserve my energy.

Energy I’d be using inside a mountain that housed a volcano, doing…I didn’t even know what. I distracted myself by watching Araz’s muscles ripple as he pulled and held the ropes that mastered the sails.

He was glorious, and he was mine, even if I couldn’t have him.

Yeah, that sounded odd, but it was the truth.

Araz looked over, and our gazes locked for a beat that sent heat spiraling through me. It seemed that I could feel desire even when about to potentially walk to my own death.

A giggle climbed up my throat, but I swallowed it.

Now was not the time to lose my shit.

“Land ahoy!” Bhartina yelled. I looked over my shoulder to see Jvalantar looming. The volcano, its only inhabitant, reached for the sky, dark and ominous, surrounded by a rocky beach, woodland, and not much else.

My stomach flipped and trembled as the splash of the anchor filled the space between my breaths.

“Leela.” Araz’s warm hand descended on my shoulder. “It’s time.”

I nodded mutely.

He scooped me up and climbed into the sea, carrying me to shore, his gaze locked on mine the whole way, reassuring me, lending me his strength. It unfurled in my chest, vibrating warm and certain below my ribs—his presence.

We got to shore too soon, and I clung to him for a moment, forgetting my resolve.

His brows pinched. “If you’ve changed your mind?—”

“No.” I forced myself to let go, boots kissing the pebble beach with a finality that made my teeth ache. “I’ll see you soon?”

He cupped my face in his warm hands, his gaze intense and hot as it skipped across my features as if memorizing them. “I will see you soon. I’ll be waiting right here, but if you need me, all you need do is call. And Leela, I will come for you. No matter the consequences.”

I believed him. But calling him to help would forfeit this challenge.

“I’ll be fine.” I smiled up at him, injecting confidence into the beam.

“I’ll see you soon.” This time, my words didn’t come out as a question, but as I made to break free of him, he tightened his grip and lowered his mouth to mine—soft, reverent, a promise sealed in heat and breath.

My pulse hummed, warmth trickling through my limbs.

He broke the kiss, his lashes at half mast, his lips still grazing mine. “Please come back to me,” he whispered, and the last of my resolve, the last of my will not to love this male, melted.

I pulled away, trembling and weak with the revelation, boots grinding on rocks and stone, mouth quivering, aching to say words that would undo our vow of friendship.

It hurt to push them back. To swallow them, smile, and say, “Always.”

I turned and hurried away before my will weakened, striding up the rocky beach toward the treeline.

Don’t look back. Don’t fucking look back.

But something tugged at my solar plexus, and I broke.

I looked back.

He stood, arms loose at his sides, watching me walk away.

This time when I turned away, I ran.

Not from him.

From myself.

The forest closed in around me, stopping at the trail that led to the mountain, as if the track was sacred and nature dared not impose on it.

My boots made no sound on the hard-packed earth as I hurried toward the mountain.

It wasn’t far, maybe a fifteen-minute walk.

This whole island was practically a mountain.

Silence pressed in on me, and a cracking sound to my left brought me up short.

As far as I’d been made aware, there were no animals on this isle. Maybe a few birds, although now I stopped to listen, the usual sound of nature was absent, as if the whole isle was holding its breath.

Goosebumps pinched my skin, and I picked up the pace. If there was something lurking in the woods, then I wasn’t about to stand around to make its acquaintance.

A tunnel in the mountain sounded real good about now.

The track widened, and I spotted the marker that Bhartina had told me to look out for—five stones stacked atop each other.

I took a left, the path taking me around the mountainside, past outcrops of spindly trees with bare branches, until, just as promised, there appeared a crevice in the stone—five feet wide and six feet tall.

A tight squeeze for an Asura but perfect for me.

This was it. The beginning of the journey.

I took a deep breath and stepped into the gloom.

The air was dry but had a strange smell to it that I couldn’t define.

A network of slender lines appeared in the walls, glowing soft orange and spreading like veins across the rockface.

Moths fluttered in my belly as I went deeper.

A shift inside me warned that I was approaching something important.

The tunnel widened, the ceiling rose, and the glow intensified until a wall of obsidian stone blocked my path. Not a dead end, because there was space around it and a little above it, just not enough for me to squeeze through.

What was I supposed to do now?

Had I taken the wrong tunnel?

No. Bhartina hadn’t said anything about a second tunnel.

Strange lines cut across the wall of stone.

Why was it so different from the rest of the tunnel?

I took a step toward it, and the orange glow flickered. A low groan filled the air, and the stone wall in front of me moved.

I leapt back, heart slamming against my ribs, breath trapped in my throat as the wall shifted and unfurled. Arms, legs, a blocky head.

A stone body.

Crimson fractures bloomed across its form, and two glowing red eyes opened on its face.

It stared at me unblinking.

Unmoving.

Okay…This had to be some kind of test, right? I cleared my throat. “Um…Hi. I’ve come for the ember thing…” I smiled and shrugged.

A grinding sound filled the air, and the ground beneath my boots vibrated.

“You walk on firebones, Flameborn.” The stone man spoke without a mouth, the voice somehow emanating from its body. “Few enter this throat and leave with breath.”

“Um…good to know…But I’m hoping to keep my breath if it’s all the same to you.”

It regarded me steadily for several beats in which I felt my lungs tighten, as if it was measuring my breath by drawing it out of my body.

The odd feeling passed, and it spoke once again.

“I am the guardian, the witness of becoming. To pass through my heart, you must burn away that which does not belong. You seek the ember of self, the seed of awakening, then you must forge your own path to it and place your soul bare upon the stone.” His eyes flared. “Do you commit?”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

“Do. You. Commit.”

Fuck. “Yes, I commit.”

His eyes dimmed then brightened as if he’d blinked. “Very well. Answer correctly and keep your breath. Fail and relinquish your life. You have three chances.”

Ice gripped my nape. “Wait, what?”

“I have no weight, yet I shape stone. I cannot be seen, yet I burn in bone. I die if held, I live if freed. Name me, Flameborn, and you may proceed.”

Shit, a riddle. A fucking riddle. Okay, breathe. I was good at riddles. I’d read a few. Played enough games with riddles in them. Watched movies with riddles and known the answers.

Wait, what had he said?

Have no weight, yet shape stone? Something about not being seen and burning bone…

die if held…live if freed. Ooooh. I had the answer.

Fire. It had to be. It could shape stone, right?

Burn in your bones, like pain, and it died if you covered it up.

It had to be. I took a deep breath. “The answer is fire.”

He was silent for several moments, and then his eyes did that dimming and brightening thing which I’d come to associate with a blink.

“Fire burns, it does not bare. You name the heat, not the heart. Two chances remain.”

Shit. My pulse thrummed in my throat. Come on. Think. I ran the riddle through my mind again, over and over.

I have no weight, yet I shape stone. I cannot be seen, yet I burn in bone. I die if held, I live if freed.

Not fire.

Then what?

What can shape stone but has no weight? Not seen…burn bone. I exhaled, exasperation tightening my chest.

My chest…My breath.

Air and wind. Stone eroded over time against the elements, right? Breath wasn’t seen. Could it burn bone? If I held it, then it felt like my body was burning. And then it would die…It had to be.

I lifted my chin. “I have an answer.”

“I am listening.”

“The answer is…Breath!”

His eyes dimmed and glowed. “Breath is vehicle, not the knowing. The expression, not the essence. One chance remains.”

“What? No! That has to be right. It’s unseen, and you can feel it in your bones, and it dies when held and…Fuck.”

“One chance.”

If I failed, then the guardian would kill me.

I looked over my shoulder, back down the tunnel. Please come back to me … Araz’s voice filled my mind.

I couldn’t die here. If I did, then all would be lost, but if I walked out, then…

all would be lost too. I pressed my hand to my solar plexus and focused inward.

To the space where Araz waited. To the hum that connected us and had grown stronger with every truth we’d shared.

Those truths hummed inside me now, heating my bones and…

My eyes snapped open, and a calm settled over me. Because I knew the answer. Not a guess, but a marrow-deep certainty.

I’d approached the riddle too realistically and not metaphorically enough, and now that I switched my approach, the answer was clear.

“I know what the answer is now.”

The guardian remained still and silent, his eyes glowing steadily as he waited.