Page 22 of Mantle (IMMORTAL FLAME #3)

Well, when he felt something, he didn’t exactly hold back. But he didn’t normally toss it out there like this. With the trauma of his time in that lab coming to the surface, he was obviously a little off-kilter when it came to employing tact.

“Talking about what ?” Kai asked him.

Nyx lifted a shoulder. “Time’s almost up at the Academy.

” He looked at me. “You’re only here for this one year too now.

Although, you don’t even need to stay now if you don’t want to, given the break between you and your family—but we’d rather you did.

Really rather you did. We need to stay together.

So, yeah, the time to talk about all of this is now. ”

“ Right now, while we’re in a Rifted Cradle on a mission and very likely about to do battle with magically-generated fearsome creatures at any moment?” Ariana pointed out.

“While this place is certainly something, I don’t see it,” Kai deadpanned. “Not for us.”

“Plus, it doesn’t exist on the mortal plane,” Ariana said, humoring both him and Nyx, and chuckling.

“That too.” He eyed her intensely. “I was thinking Solumira.”

Ariana arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“I brought you here because I want this house to be a place of escape for us all when the world gets too loud and insane. I want it to be our sanctuary.” He grinned back at her. “That’s what you told me when we were there last.”

“And I meant it. Deeply.”

“Sounds perfect,” I spoke. Off their beaming looks, I added, “With a few renovations, of course. Right now it’s barely big enough for one person, let alone all four of us. I do take up a shitload of space.”

“And Kai’s messiness with his magical research is another level where vast space is concerned,” Nyx said, eyeing him.

Kai tucked him into his side and ruffled his hair. “You love it when I’m in magical research mode.”

“Because you’re always shirtless in the midst of it?” I questioned.

“That’s part of it,” Nyx admitted. “ Obsessively smoking-hot badass mode is what I call it.”

Kai smirked. “Well, I can’t argue with that.”

“Of course you can’t,” Ariana giggled.

Nyx wiggled his eyebrows. “And he gets super horny afterward, too. Works out hella well for all of us. His dirty mouth comes out to play in a major way when he’s that worked up.”

A low rumble cracked through the sky above us.

It was followed by a shiver in the ground that drew our immediate attention, refocusing us on the task ahead of us.

With violent pulses of pink light, two creatures blasted into being.

Their bodies were tall and gaunt with cracked gray skin.

Their limbs were too long for their bodies, their fingers clawed and twitching creepily.

Their heads were partially humanoid but jawless with a wide cavity where the mouth should be.

Instead of eyes they had two slits either side of their head that pulsed intermittently.

Their legs bent backward at the knee, and they hovered like ghosts overhead.

“What the fuck are those?” I called out to the group.

“Threniths,” Kai informed me.

“Maven Academy is fond of using them in combat training scenarios,” Ariana said.

“They are elemental phantoms,” Kai told me. “They attack when they sense powerful magic. And when that attack happens, a piercing shriek bursts forth that can rattle bones, disrupt spellcasting, and send some beings to their fucking knees.”

“Lovely,” I groused.

Ariana pointed into the distance, and there, in the center of the landscape, was a radiant pedestal—visible for only seconds at a time before phasing out again. Upon it sat a golden medallion. “There,” she said.

“It won’t be as simple as snatching the medallion from the pedestal,” Kai warned, as we all took it in. “Morrigan is fond of employing magical puzzles that require precision, out-of-the-box solutions and teamwork to solve.”

Ariana nodded, then turned to Nyx and me. “Nyx, head up there with your Incubus abilities and investigate, read the spell. Vorzyr, assist with your more ancient-based Dracoryn magical knowledge and cover him, while Kai and I dispose of the Threniths.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, giving a respectful salute, and really enjoying her issuing orders and being all commanding. In fact, it actually had my cock stirring, in spite of the fact that we were technically in class, and dealing with this chaotic scene before us.

“With pleasure,” Nyx answered, already moving in the next moment, his coat billowing behind him. He vaulted over a fallen pillar, scaled a curving wall, and leapt onto a drifting platform without pause.

Hot as fuck.

I followed, employing my magical flame, and creating a rich crimson glowing path beneath my feet, tracing my every step.

Shifting into dragon form was my other option, but I didn’t want to do that because it would limit communication with the three of them too much.

It was possible for me to just summon my dragon wings, but it was uncomfortable to do so, and they were unwieldy when I was otherwise in human form.

Not seconds after I’d invoked my magic, and the Threniths burst forward through the air, descending, and headed right for me.

Silver light shot toward them and I saw Ariana leap into the air and call her angel wings in the very next second, soaring at them while her power swirled around each creature, trapping it.

I grimaced as they started screeching at a decibel level that would have the ears of non-supernatural beings bleeding, their brains turning to mush.

I heard Nyx groan, it impacting him more than me, and he lost his footing on one of the platforms and tumbled down, headed for a set of jagged black rocks below.

I swept down on my magical red path and snagged him by his elbow, using my dragon strength to haul him several feet up to the raised platform where the pedestal was.

He used the momentum and that sexy agility of his to somersault in the air and land in a primed crouch just a foot in front of it.

He slapped his hand down for stability that he normally wouldn’t have needed, and I saw his hands shaking, because of the pain and damage that the screeching was causing him.

I went to spin toward Kai and Ariana but needn’t have worried—just as I did, the screeching stopped.

And there Kai was, levitating in the air a few feet from Ariana, his palms glowing with magic as he uttered an incantation fiercely—clearly a spell that had silenced the Threniths.

I made it onto the platform with Nyx.

“Damn,” he breathed, rising to his feet. “That was a real bitch.”

“Are you all right?” I asked, rapidly looking him over for any visible sign of damage, while I also tuned into his pulse. It was rapid, but calming by the moment now that he wasn’t in immediate pain.

“I am now. I’ll be fine,” he assured me. “Gotta focus on figuring out this magical puzzle,” he said, moving closer to the pedestal, failing to hide how shaky he still was.

I grasped his shoulder, both as comfort and physical support.

He smiled out at me, grateful.

And then he reached out to the glowing containment field trapping the medallion within. Floating runes circled its perimeter—interlocked spirals, one gold, one blue-black.

He called his vibrant-blue magic and swept it over the expanse of it, a few inches from actually touching it.

“It’s not ancient,” I spoke, not feeling anything of the sort as I scented it and breathed the magic in.

“No. It’s not. Hold on… there’s something…”

A thunderous pop sounded and I jerked my head around to see that Kai and Ariana had disintegrated their opponents.

“I can’t… this requires equilibrium, but I can’t determine the parameters.” His gaze flicked to mine. “If they’re not precise and we don’t balance it correctly, the whole thing will implode.”

“Like a magical bomb?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He turned toward the sky and called out, “Kai! Need your expertise!”

As Kai swung his head toward him, two more Threniths blasted into the Rifted Cradle.

“Go!” Ariana told him, her voice carrying across the sky. “We can’t complete the mission without you over there!”

Kai gave her a chin lift, then levitated over—his rose-gold magic flaming from each palm, pointed down toward the ground hundreds of feet below, carrying him with floating grace.

I was about to move to go to Ariana, to essentially switch places with him, when the ground shook beneath our feet, a deep rumbling and cracking following in seconds.

“Holy… damn,” Nyx uttered, as we saw the ground split open, then three beings clawing their way out and up toward us.

Hulking masses of stone and metal, their heads featureless, torsos wide, and their fists crackling with kinetic energy.

Kai touched down right beside me, then immediately focused on the containment field.

His magic sizzled, concentrating at his fingertips as he swept his hand across the pedestal, carving out a large rectangular panel. Once complete, he pulled it free, revealing a glowing reservoir of magical liquid within.

“ That’s what we need to balance.”

“The parameters we’re working with… wow,” Nyx uttered.

“If we try to extract the medallion without perfect balance being struck according to this level, it will disintegrate, then the magic will erupt all fucking over us.”

“So we use the Twin Spiral? Like what we created in Professor Caelum’s class?”

“Yes,” Kai confirmed. “It needs synced opposing magic: elemental and arcane—one amplifying, one destabilizing.”

Nyx shifted his weight. “All right, let’s do it.”

A quake shook the stone beneath our feet and I spun just as one of the stone beings thrust their hand out, trying to grab at my leg to haul themselves onto the platform.

A blast of silver magic sent it reeling back and falling down onto the rocks below that it had emerged from.

I looked up at the sky. “Thank you, gorgeous!”

Ariana winked at me, then focused back on dealing with the Threniths.

I turned back to see that Kai and Nyx were already going for it, starting the balancing.