Page 59 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

Ariel appears then, flickering into view in the middle of a thick tangle of conifers, high on the little swell of hill that juts out beyond the wall.

He’s dressed differently today, or maybe it’s that I finally realize he’s been wearing different forms of combat attire this whole time.

Today he’s pulled it all together. Those combat pants and the typical black T-shirt, though this one looks like it’s made of a more technical fabric.

I can see every mouthwatering ridge on his abdomen.

He wears a harness like mine, with wicked-looking blades attached to it and shotguns at his back.

He looks around, his gaze cool and assessing as he takes in the scene, and I have no choice but to think about what twenty-five hundred years of fighting really is . It’s this. It’s him. He’s a weapon. From head to toe, one carved muscle to the next. Every inch of him is deadly.

I know that better than most.

I can’t let myself look at him beyond that initial first glance. I’m afraid that if I do, my own grandmother will see the longing on my face. And then, obviously, I will have to immediately die of embarrassment. Nobody wants that.

Gran moves forward to brace herself against the wall looking out over the lake. Augie and I stay back, watching—or in my case, not watching—as Ariel moves around in the gray morning, clearly performing tactical objectives he does not share with the group.

The cold gets to me and I shiver, then zip up my coat now that we’re out of the warm cab of Samuel’s truck. Augie’s gaze cuts to me and he lifts his chin. “Where’s that medallion?”

I stop mid-zip and feel around for it. “I think I took it off last time I showered. Must have left it on my bedside table.”

The truth is, I don’t remember the last time I had it on. Ariel’s apartment, maybe. But it burned. For some reason, I think of that weirdo Briar standing there in the kitchen, scowling at me with her hand in the same place mine is now.

“You should find it and wear it,” Augie tells me. “It’s supposed to deal with evil spirits and that kind of shit.”

“Again, I think maybe you should wear it, then.”

He looks at me for a moment, then over at Ariel, who is studying the lake down below us now as if he expects an eruption at any moment. “Because your evil spirits are hot?”

I do not deign to answer that.

Also, my brother is right. Ariel is hot.

And I was up for most of the night drowning in that kiss of his. Reliving it again and again and again, and imagining it going further. I’m glad that our twin bond doesn’t allow for actually reading minds.

There’s a sudden golden light, and when Ariel doesn’t react to it, I know it’s Savi’s dramatic appearance. Sure enough, she arrives in an all-white ensemble that makes her look like a dream, and she seems to float above the snow when she moves. Maybe she really is floating.

Soon after, two wolves I recognize, one of them enormous and the other much sleeker than either of the lieutenants, lope over to take their place beside us.

There’s that thunderclap and flash, and then we’re all together again.

Ariel comes down from the little rise he’s walked all over so he’s closer to the group. “It seems very on the nose, but I can’t help thinking that they call it Wizard Island for a reason.”

“I do like the symmetry,” Savi says. “It’s not hard to imagine that another sorcerer would as well.”

We all gaze out at the little island that sits there. So named, as far as I have ever been aware, because it actually looks like a wizard’s hat.

“I know we’re all here for a serious reason,” Samuel says, and he has a big, sappy kind of grin on his face as he walks toward the end of the wall, near where Ariel is standing beneath the last tree.

It makes me feel guilty for finding him so .

.. Well. For finding him less hot than I used to.

Less ... everything , and how is that fair?

I’m comparing him to an immortal Spartan vampire warrior.

Who could measure up? “But it’s only a serious reason that would get me to drive up this way, and probably, if I did it myself, I would’ve been eaten by goblins. Or whatever’s living in Union Creek.”

“You don’t want to know,” Ty assures him with an ominous-sounding laugh.

“Do they get to eat Beckie’s pie, though?” Augie asks me in an undertone.

“The first serious question of the day,” I reply in the same tone.

When Gran glares at the pair of us, I feel like we’re little kids again. Being chastised in a public place, like the grocery store or our biannual church appearance, and I find myself grinning too.

“I used to come up to Crater Lake all the time,” Samuel tells us, and he seems more relaxed than he has lately.

Maybe things are changing for the better after all.

Maybe today really will solve our problems. Maybe this lake really is magic.

“That’s one of the things I miss the most. It’s not safe to go hiking anymore.

It’s certainly not wise to leave the valley and come all the way up here.

No telling what lurks in the hills around a place as powerful as this. ”

“It’s beautiful here,” Savi murmurs, looking out over the water. The rim of the crater is impressive, with mountains all around and cliffs that drop steeply and insistently into that wild blue water. “But dangerous. In many ways.”

“I wish it was sunny,” Samuel says, then sighs happily.

He keeps his gaze out on the water, and we all watch as he goes over and climbs up the bank a little bit, on the small rise that turns into the steep walls of the caldera, and slides all the way down into that unreal blue.

He stops to stand beneath the trees like Ariel, still looking out across the crater.

I see the way Ariel looks at him, the way he would look at a pet that was acting out. Someone else’s pet, obviously. His are better behaved, and I flush when I think about how well behaved I’d like to be for him.

Beside me, Augie shifts. “I can’t remember the last time I was up here. It was definitely sunny, though.”

“It was after we graduated from high school,” I say, because I remember all too well. I remember the good things. I collect them. “Late that summer. It was hot until we hit the water.”

Savi smiles. “I’m not opposed to a little bit of light,” she says. “To remind us what we’re fighting for.”

She looks over at Ariel as she speaks, and I realize why when he nods. He’s the vampire. He’s the one who has to worry about sunlight—and when his eyes go a bit unfocused and he does something with his hand, I assume he’s warning all his minions to take cover.

Savi chants, then seems to paint in the air. For a moment I see symbols on the breeze that remind me of the ones on my cards, but they’re gone before I can tell if I know them.

Her chant gets louder, and the gloom falls away. The sun beams down from its spot in the sky across the lake, and everything is suddenly dazzling .

Perfect.

The blues are impossible. The greens are glorious. The snow glitters and gleams like crushed diamonds. I can feel all this light inside me, like it’s lifting me up and changing all my molecules as it goes. Like it’s infusing us all with joy, right here where we stand.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more than one god or goddess stuck down there beneath all that unearthly blue, because the other thing that’s unmistakable about this place is the power that seems to sing out of the rocks themselves.

McLoughlin was the same. Volcanoes make themselves known, that much is for sure.

The sun feels good on my face. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it for more than a few sunrise or sunset moments, and longer still since I’ve had the time or felt safe enough to feel it all over me. I let my eyes drift shut. I bask.

When I open my eyes, I see Samuel still standing at the top of that little rise.

He’s staring out at the sun with a smile on his face.

He stands a little ways above Ariel, who is not gazing hopelessly at the sun as a person who’s watched too many vampire shows might imagine, but is instead looking down at the water with a strange expression I can’t quite place.

All of this feels like grief and love, hope and despair.

All of it, from the sun on my face to the blue of the water so far below.

The exquisite price of living, and maybe it’s always been this way.

Maybe life has always been, like that song my mom used to play when I was little, so precious and so cruel.

Maybe monsters aren’t the only thing that’s been revealed in these last few years. Maybe the truth about the Reveal is that it’s a mirror, where we see who we really are.

I’m going to have to think about that, and now is not the time.

I wish that this moment of sunshine could last forever, but I can already sense the impatience coming in hot from Ty. And if there are spells to cast and goddesses to chain up tight, I’m for doing it quicker.

After all, I’m the one who had to talk to that bitch. I’d prefer to never do that again.

I turn to say something and see that Samuel is making his way down the hill. I think that it was sweet of him to suggest this and sweeter still of Savi to give the humans a moment. I decide to tell him so as he moves behind Ariel, who stands so still he might as well be one of the pines.

And then everything happens in slow motion. And almost cinematically.

Samuel lunges forward. Then Ariel is falling. Over the side of the cliff, out of the shadows and into the light.

The sunlight that immediately begins to burn him.

Everything in me screams no —

I hear the werewolves howl—

Samuel is hurtling down that hill toward us, so fast it’s hard to tell if he is falling or if he’s running—

Until he stops, sudden and hard. I stare without comprehension at the bloom of red on the front of his chest.

Then I look behind me and see the gun in my grandmother’s hand.

I hear Augie’s voice. I hear all kinds of noises, loud and probably terrifying, but Ariel is in the sunshine, completely exposed in midair, no shade, no help.

I swear I hear him begin to sizzle, and then he disappears.

Just like that, he’s gone.

He’s gone.

It is only then that everything seems to speed up again. Too fast. Too bright. Too loud. Savi shouts something into the air and everything is plunged into darkness, thunderclouds rolling in at high speed.

Everyone is lunging toward Samuel, but he is howling out in pain and rage. He’s also closer, and he throws himself toward Gran.

They both hit the ground, hard. Too hard.

For a long beat of my broken, disbelieving heart, neither one of them moves.

So I do instead.

I throw myself toward them—and the wall that’s the only thing keeping them from sliding off the cliff and down the slick sides of the crater to their deaths.