Page 22 of Stealing the Star Stone

Then darkness engulfed him, swallowing his scream as he plummeted—wind whipping his hair back.

Vines grabbed at him, wrapping around his arms with slime coating and stinging his skin.

One sank its teeth into him. He cried out.

In the meager light, all he caught was white suckers like an octopus.

Around each one were tiny fangs, drawing blood.

In disbelief, he stared at it. When his thoughts slammed into his head, he began to struggle, making the pain worse.

“Quit wriggling,” Nova yelled.

He froze at hearing her voice. Despite the warmth of relief, he twisted to find her on an illuminated shore, a rifle on her shoulder. “Don’t! You’ll kill me.”

She fired, hitting the rock beside his face and showering him with shards.

“Nova,” he hollered.

“You’re distracting me,” he thought he heard her say. She aimed again, striking the nearest vine. It squealed—the sound piercing.

And he was falling, his scream lodging in his throat.

He hit the soft soil and crumpled.

“I think Orien found us,” he managed, digging a foot out of the mud.

“Pirates, sure.”

He met and held her gaze, her face painted blue-white from what looked like fairy lights climbing up spiraling stalactites. A little to the right and he would’ve skewered himself.

“Nova, honey, something exploded, and the other shuttle was like Viator IV .” Circular bite marks littered his arm, and a tingling sensation burned his fingertips. Not good signs.

She blinked at him. “Shit. I didn’t expect him this soon.”

“Yeah, so not only does this thing have us on a time limit, we now have Orien closing in without a way to get off this moon.” He swept his gaze across a burgundy-colored lake, its orange waves lapping at the shore. “Pretty.”

“Not how we planned it, but we found the cave.”

“How’s this inaccessible?” he asked again.

“The carnivorous vines, maybe? We’ve got to find a way out of here. If this is part of the cave system we targeted, we might not be in the right section.”

“I’d say it was.” He tapped her shoulder and gestured to behind her. Across a rock wall were familiar carved letters. “Can we decipher that?”

Dread settled over him. He stilled. That made no sense… It felt like it was coming from Nova. He shook his head. This experience from the stone shattering to reaching this point had been traumatic, possibly messing with his mind.

“Give me the bag.”

She hesitated but did so. “This was too easy.”

He hummed in agreement while he dug for the brown-leather notebook that held the alphabet.

“We don’t have time for this, not when Orien’s men could—”

“We need a direction to go. If there’s a slim chance it’s telling us to head left, we have to unravel this.” He handed her the book while he readied the pen to paper. “Come on, let’s start.”

He wrote down each letter as she translated it, his ears primed for any danger. Fragments were easy to make out, but the message was long. His hand had cramped by the time they reach the final symbol.

“What you seek is not here. Look to each other for the source,” he read off.

“That’s no fucking help.” She huffed. “I should’ve expected that from an alien moon with body-swapping geology.”

“It’s a riddle, right?”

“The first part isn’t. It’s pretty clear.” She rested her hands on her hips. “And the rest is some mumbo-jumbo any idiot could make up.”

“If we set aside the frustration, what could it mean?”

She glared at him. “I’d rather we hadn’t found this silly message and figured out where to go on our own.”

He hid a smile. ‘Look to each other for the source’ might mean choose a direction. She was right. It was nonsense. He folded the paper in half and shoved it into his pocket. “Okay, where to?”

She studied the message. “Left.”

He pinched his lips to swallow a chuckle. “Guessing’s not helpful either.”

She pointed at the symbols. “The ‘h’ has an arrow in it. Maybe it’s a design feature, the author being exuberant. Then why does the ‘o’ and ‘n’ have the same squiggle?”

He laughed. “Left it is.” Scooping up the bag, he tossed the leather-bound book in and set off along the shore. The lights dwindled when the sand narrowed until they came to a point where only water awaited them. “Maybe they meant right?”

“Give me the torch.”

He dug in the bag and took out the lantern-shaped torch. “It’s probably not charged.”

She grimaced, smacked it a few times, then handed it back.

“We could use my ass…”

She smirked. “I doubt the tattoo’s bright enough.” She spun on a heel and stomped back, marching past the message. The shore curved around a pillar of rock.

“Wait,” he whispered, pointing at a standalone symbol. “Isn’t that an arrow?” He ran his fingers over the ‘o.’

She whooped. “Yes, we’ve got this.”

A garbled scream snapped his gaze up. The bottom half of a man hit the ground, blood and innards spilling across the sand. Riddling parts of him were hundreds of bite marks—similar to those along Eli’s arm. Many vines must’ve latched onto this man and torn him in half.

Her eyes were wide when she said, “We better hurry.”

Panic gripped him, and he froze. Again, not his emotion, but something external lashed at him.

“Nova, breathe.” He cupped her shoulders and forced her to inhale and exhale, trying to test if that unknown anxiety would subside.

When it faded, he bit his tongue. Now wasn’t the time to tell her he was sensing impossible things.

No way could he share her emotions. It would be all kinds of stupid to even consider that possible.

She pulled away. “Okay, I’m good.” She hurried along the shore, dodging incoming waves that thankfully washed away their passing.

“It could be me,” he said, “but doesn’t the moon affect water like this? I mean, why would it have waves?”

She stumbled to a stop. “The other side didn’t have any.” She swept a gaze at the disturbed lake. “Maybe we should run?”

“Hell yeah.”

She exploded into a sprint, the butt of the rifle slapping her on the ass. “Up ahead is a sliver of darkness. It could be a doorway.”

“It could be a pit,” he called.

“No choice,” she said, stopping in front of the carved archway. “Now that’s interesting. Look at the symbols.”

“He who passes through will die?” he offered.

She snorted. “More like, ‘Only the worthy may enter.’”

He winked. “Well, you’re worthy in my book.”

She met his gaze, her breathing slowing, and yet a staccato heartbeat reached his ears. Without breaking eye contact, he pressed two fingers to his wrist, measuring his pulse. It didn’t align to the thundering in his…mind…

“Come,” she said and slipped into the shadows.

He hesitated. It had looked like black quicksilver, engulfing her in an instant.

“Thorne?”

He followed, allowing the icy liquid to coat his skin as he stepped through it.

Red-tinted sunlight streamed through a crevice in the cavern’s ceiling. A jungle had grown at the base—tall trees, vines, with birds circling the oasis. At its center was a gigantic flower, long petals dipping to the floor. From up high, a waterfall cascaded into nowhere.

“So pretty,” she rasped but when she faced him, she paled. “Thorne, the archway’s…gone.” She darted around him to slap solid stone.

He gaped. “We’re trapped.”