Page 54

Finding The Light

We climb the rest of the way down the shaft without incident. I drop down from the hole onto a heap of bloodred rocks and white ice against one wall that piles up to where we’re emerging from what I can see now should be the ceiling of another massive cavern, even bigger than the one we slept in last night.

Carefully we clamber down that, with a few wobbles as debris shifts under our weight. Six sets of hands illuminate what we can of the space, which isn’t much. Bene flies past and is quickly swallowed in the darkness. Past the rockslide, we hit level ground leading to a massive subterranean lake that stretches well beyond what our lights can reach.

A frozen lake.

A sheet of ice coats the top, although it’s hard to tell how thick it is based on the black water underneath.

“So where’s the heart?” Pella approaches the water and leans over. “It should be here somewhere, shouldn’t it?”

We each turn in a circle, looking around the crimson cavern and inky darkness. Allusian’s heart should glow with a sort of blue fire. I’ve seen it. Reven used the blue stones—jedite, we thought—to reset and gather his energy in the Shadowood. Trying to contain the Shadows while protecting the sanctuary he created would completely drain his energy. Finding me, having to fight the Shadows even harder, had only made it worse.

It makes so much sense now that we know that it was Allusian’s heart. What else could feed the son of Tyndra’s power like that? I can still picture him, sitting on a throne of shadow, the radiant stones all around him, that same blue fire in his eyes. That glow would be obvious in this kind of darkness, an unmistakable beacon.

Which must mean it’s either still buried or not here at all.

Think, Meren.

“I could try to make a portal to Allusian and see if she feels it?” I offer.

“No sand,” Reven points out.

“I can call it down here, though getting the majority that Bene left at our campground inside the first large cavern will take some time.” It’s taken us hours to get where we are. I pull off my other glove, my sunny yellow pushing back more of the darkness closest to me.

Reven takes my hand, his skin starkly cold against mine and yet still warming me. “Wait. Save your energy until we’re sure that’s the only option.”

I pause, letting my light fade a bit. “There’s also the bit at the top of the shaft,” I say. “Definitely enough to make a flower portal.”

He shakes his head.

“Can you think of any other—”

Bene soars back into our circle of light from over the lake and lands on my shoulder. I blink at the Devourer…who is the way he is because he ate Allusian’s heart. He might as well have plucked at the missing amulet around my neck, it’s suddenly so obvious.

Reven’s jedite.

He kept some of the smaller stones in his pocket of shadows. Are they still there?

“Reven…” He found his pocket of shadows when he retrieved the amulets for Tabra. “Did you see the stones in your hiding place?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “I can get them.”

“Stones?” Pella asks.

“He has small chunks of jedite,” I tell them. “Or chunks of Allusian’s heart, I guess.”

“Wait. You still have those?” Vos’s sudden exclamation has the rest of us swinging to face him.

“You knew about them?” Reven asks with a quick frown.

Does he give himself a headache with how often he frowns over things he should know but can’t remember?

“Know about them?” Vos crosses his arms, despite how thick his cold-weather coat is, and tips a chin at Reven. “I gave them to you the day you rescued me and Tziah.” He pauses, and I can practically see a bubble of words forming over Vos’s head before he shifts his gaze to me. “How did you know?”

Reven also looks at me in mild curiosity, clearly not remembering.

I glance between the two men. More secrets to reveal, I guess. One of these days we’ve got to run out, right? “I stumbled across Reven using them.”

A few times, actually.

Vos’s expression hardens and shifts back to Reven. “Using them how, exactly?”

Reven also crosses his arms, irritation rippling across his features and in his voice when he says, “How the fuck should I know?”

I jump in to head off the brewing squabble. “He didn’t eat it if that’s what you’re thinking. He’d place them around himself in a circle while he was…absorbing darkness.”

That sounds worse when I say it out loud. But it was what it was.

“I never asked exactly how it worked,” I add.

After a second, Reven gives a nod. Since I’m closest, I might be the only one who sees how jerky the motion is. He hates that he can’t remember the things he’s done. I know he does.

I would, too, but even more when it’s this important.

Hakan is the one to bring us back to the real point. “So what were you thinking?”

I share a glance with Reven.

“If the pieces of jedite I have are actually chips of the goddess’s heart, maybe they can find the rest,” he says.

Exactly.

Not waiting for anyone to agree, Reven draws that line of smoky shadow before him and, reaching inside, he pulls out a handful of blue stones, each coin-sized rock sparkling at us in the dim glows of our hands.

Bene flaps backward, snapping his raven beak. He doesn’t stop until he gets to Hakan, who is farthest away, and lands on his shoulder. Immediately a tiny zap of lightning travels up and over the bird with an odd high-pitched buzzing noise, sending all the grains that make up his body sparkling before fading away, leaving a burnt scent behind. That doesn’t seem to faze Bene. He’s still too focused on the jedite maybe.

Allusian’s heart.

It made him a monster.

If I’d been ripped from my lover’s side after messing around with that stuff, I’d be wary, too.

“Hey,” Pella says to Tziah. “You okay?”

She’s staring at the rocks like they’re cobras raised up with their hoods wide, ready to strike.

Oh hells. I’d been too focused on Bene to think of how this would affect her. “Tzi?”

She blinks, then signs that she’s okay.

I glance at the jedite in Reven’s hand and frown. “When I’ve seen them, they were glowing,” I tell Reven. “Maybe if you separate them?”

He does and nothing happens.

“Use your powers for more than just light?” I suggest next.

The darkness swirls around us, eddying and spinning, and suddenly the jedite stones unexpectedly ignite with green-blue fire from within, shining brighter and brighter with each passing second.

Hakan puts out a hand to Pella, though he doesn’t touch her. “Everyone else, douse your powers.”

Immediately, all our glows go out, leaving only the stones’ radiant light. Still, the shards of heart continue to brighten with each passing second, their glow illuminating the sharp angles of Reven’s face before expanding outward, crawling across the spaces between us.

Which is when a new glow appears—larger, and dim, but the same color.

Except not in the cavern.

It’s under the ice-covered lake.

“Holy shit,” Reven mutters. “That worked.”

Honestly, I was silently betting on this idea leading to nowhere at all, yet another dead end. But I was wrong. Allusian’s heart recognizes other pieces of itself.