Page 58

Bring Me Her Heart

Deciding what to address first is like having ropes tied around my wrists and ankles and horses dragging me in four different directions.

Tabra. My injured friends. The heart. Bene. Horus. What I did.

I feel the pull of them all, and it’s going to tear me limb from limb.

I press my hand to my recreated portal and bring up the Oaesys temple. “Vos needs help now.” So do the others, but he’s the most critical.

I pretend not to notice the glances my friends slide my way even as they move to do what I said. With Horus’s help, Pella carries Tziah through the portal while Reven shadows first Vos and then Hakan to the other side. He straightens, looking at me through the magical gateway.

I know he’s going to hate what I’m about to do next, especially because of the promise I made, but not only do we not have time to wait, I don’t know if we can trust Allusian. The goddess is not written into our histories, maybe for a reason. The risk I’m taking I’d rather take alone and not from the palace where she could wreak havoc.

I’m sorry, Reven.

“Stay here while I get Vos to a healer,” he says.

I shake my head. “Get them looked after. Find Tabra and protect her. I’ll take care of Allusian and meet you in the palace.”

Reven’s face falls.

“Wait!” Horus calls out. “I’ll go with her.”

Reven’s scowl is immediate. “No way—”

“Stay and help them,” I order Horus. “Don’t let anyone else see you, though. Then wait for me to return and we’ll…talk.”

He only hesitates a moment, then nods.

Reven is staring at me now, and I rush to cut off his objections. “Please. I can’t be everywhere and too many things need—”

Reven steps closer as he pulls the jedite from his pocket, then reaches through the portal to place them in my hand, curling my fingers around them. “I’ll handle this end.”

Then he steps back.

I stare at him. If I had more time, I’d ask him why. After what I just did, the way he looked at me, why is he trusting me now?

“Go,” he says.

In that moment, I realize something.

He and I are like scales that must balance. If one of us is giving into the darkness, the other must become light. Before, I was his light.

Now he is mine.

Maybe all bonded pairs are this way. I don’t know, but I’m going to trust in it. Trust him to balance me out. So much of what he did before when he carried the Shadows takes on a different feel from this angle. Before, when I was the light, I would have done anything, sacrificed anything, to keep him from going so far over that edge that he’d never come back.

That’s what he’s doing for me.

“Take these.” I set the amulets on the floor on his side, then stand.

As I pull my hand away from the glass, a boom rocks the very foundations of the palace, and the last thing I see is Horus and Reven whipping around before the portal turns solid.

Eidolon.

It has to be. He must be attacking.

“Why don’t you give in now?” one of the Shadows offers. “He got enough of us back to give him a hundred years more. And he’s stronger than you are. All of you.”

I have to fight the urge to go right back to where I left the others and help them. Squeezing my eyes shut, I take precious minutes to cage those dickheads all over again, the way Scoria taught me. I don’t want the Shadows seeing what I do next.

Hells, Eidolon already has some that might have witnessed things.

Once my head is finally blessedly quiet, I open my eyes again.

Think, Meren.

Do I go to the goddess? Or back to my friends? I’m torn so hard that physical pain claws through me.

I let loose with a string of creative curse words. I hate abandoning them in the middle of an attack, but the goddess can help my sister and my friends more than I can right now. Besides, after the last encounter with Eidolon, I’d be more danger than help anyway.

I look at the jedite in my hand and the heart on the ground, then back at the portal. “Please don’t be a bitch and kill me,” I mutter to myself.

Then I stuff the jedite in a pocket and reopen the portal to Allusian’s dominion, a world so completely opposite of this one—warm, and lush, and green—that it almost doesn’t look real in here. Like I’m staring at a picture. This part must be the heavens.

In the distance, I see some kind of winged creature lift off from the ground. It takes me a solid several blinks before I’m sure what I’m staring at is real. Dragons have been extinct for ages. My only experience with one was standing inside a petrified skull that was part of the underside of Wildernyss.

A far-off trumpet sounds and the dragon in the distance turns to fly toward me. It grows larger and larger. The creature is a deep purplish black, like a bruise several days old. Closer still and I can make out details, like the way the sun shines through the thinner membranes of its wings, turning parts of them to lavender, and the ridged layers of its hide. Not exactly scales—it’s too rough for that—but at the same time similarly layered, more like a stone-tiled roof the way they do in Mariana.

Wind batters at me through the portal, stirred up by the dragon’s wings as it lands a short distance away. Allusian climbs carefully down, looking even more frail than last time. The dragon doesn’t leave as she makes her way toward me. Instead, it folds its wings in closer and stares directly at me with lavender-hued eyes that remind me of Vos’s.

I should be terrified, but self-preservation abandons me in the face of sheer power and awe.

The goddess smiles. “Reirran, who is the last of her kind until her final clutch of eggs deigns to hatch, understands all creatures very well, but she only speaks with me.”

And can roast me with a snort on the goddess’s command or if the dragon is just feeling moody. The unspoken implication hangs in the air. The goddess clearly has trust issues.

Then again…so do I.

“I need your help. Now.” And I step aside. “Eidolon is attacking.”

Allusian’s gaze moves past me to the blue stone laying on the ground behind me and her hand comes up over where her heart will be returned, trembling slightly. “You found it,” she whispers.

“I need your promise that once you have this back, you will help me and my sister.” Please let her be true.

Irritation ripples across Allusian’s features. “You dare—”

I cut her off with an impatient sweep of my hand. “We’ve already established that I dare. Every story about dealing with goddesses tells me I shouldn’t trust you. You might be the kindest and most reasonable of the seven, but I have no proof, no reason to believe that. I don’t know you. The only thing I know for certain is the destruction your sisters have wrought across Nova.”

That, and the way Aryd would help me from within her glass cage. I do know that much.

Allusian considers me. I stare unblinkingly back. Reven would kill me for this if he was here, but I’m done playing games. If she smites me, then someone else can deal with this.

“Very well,” she says. “I can’t deny you are wise to ask this of me.” She pauses, eyes clear and guileless. “I promise that with the return of my heart and my full powers, I will tell you and your sister how to release the goddesses from their prisons, protect you from their wrath, and ensure they restore Nova to its original state.”

“And heal my friends.” Myself, too. My side is aching like a son of a bitch, and breathing doesn’t feel great.

She pauses, then shakes her head. “That is not one of my abilities.”

Damn.

She clasps her hands before her, waiting for my decision, though I get the impression that she already expects that I’ll give her the heart.

Pursing my lips, I pull Reven’s jedite stones from my pocket. “I believe these are also yours.”

The goddess’s gaze snaps between the rocks and the heart, and I can feel the power of her anger. The dragon huffs and shifts on its feet.

“How did you come by them?”

We don’t have time. Maybe I should shove them at her and get a head start?

“I need to know,” she says.

I tell her a shortened version of the story. When I’m done, she raises her eyebrows.

Then Allusian nods. “I thank you for returning these and for the information.”

For the third time she holds her hand out, and with a curl of a single finger beckons her heart to her. I’ve been so focused on just getting the thing, I don’t think I took any time to consider how this might work.

Definitely not what happens.

The large rock—much larger than her rib cage—floats across the space between portals and settles at her feet. The smaller pieces in my hand do the same, binding to the heart with little clicks that sound like striking two pieces of flint.

Bending down, Allusian places her palms flat against the blue stone.

Instantly, it ignites in fire. Not glowing like it was before—no, this fire is on the outside, a silent, blue-green conflagration that’s eerie as hells.

But then the flames start to climb up Allusian’s arms. The goddess closes her eyes, pain rippling across her features, but she doesn’t let go. Not even as the fire licks higher and higher, spreading over her until it consumes her entire body.

Then she starts to burn.

Not the way things naturally burn. There is no smell, no screams of pain, no horrible sight of blistering flesh even. Instead, her form, clothes and all, slowly turns to ash, starting with where the flames originally touched her hands, traveling up her body until she becomes a charred, gray statue, her features and the details of her clothes etched clearly in the soot.

When the last part of her flesh has been consumed, the heart itself, still aflame but unaffected, changes, though from the inside out, its turquoise light dimming with each passing flicker of flame until ash appears on the outside, creeping down the sides until it, too, is destroyed.

The dragon watches all of this in silence.

A sharp breeze whips through the air, disintegrating Allusian’s form into indistinct piles dotted with a few glowing embers still cooling in the air. The breeze shifts, then, and lifts the ashes into a swirling dance. When it calms, a single heaping pile is all that remains.

My mouth drops open. I look from the pile to the dragon and back.

Is she…dead?

Son of a demon! She told me she’d help me. She can’t do that if—

What’s left of Allusian ignites in yet another fire, purple-black flames the color of the dragon this time. In the blaze, a woman’s form appears, crouched with her head down and unclothed. As the fires die, the goddess arises, naked and gloriously perfect—the hollows of her cheeks rounded, the bruises under her eyes gone, her skin glowing with health, a picture of vigor and youth and a beauty so profound, she’s almost difficult to look at.

Allusian takes the breath of a life renewed, and the dragon’s wings flare out as if it is celebrating with her. Then the goddess smiles and, with a snap of her fingers, is once again clothed in garments that remind me of none of the dominions and all of them at the same time. A simple gown of iridescent white that shimmers with hints of all colors hugs the voluptuous curves of her body to her hips, where a deep purple sash gathers the material to one side before flowing freely to ground where it trails at her feet. A cloak that’s part of the gown flares up behind her, appearing like dragon wings before settling around her. Her hair is piled high and intertwined with purple flowers. And everything about her glows.

When she opens her eyes, they are filled with purple flames that spark for a few seconds before that fire, too, is consumed inside her, and the color returns to a deep blue that reminds me of the Lazuli Desert that Horus is from.

“Please.” I’m vibrating with the need to rush back to Oaesys, practically dancing on my toes. “We have to go.”

Her gaze snaps to me, and a pulse of power leaves her body and travels between the portals to rake through me, not with the violence of Hakan’s lightning, but the way my hairs stand on end and every part of my skin buzzes is still damned uncomfortable.

Allusian turns to the dragon, the two sharing a long look before the goddess turns and steps through the portal into the cavern where I stand, not even remotely affected by the freezing temperature in here.

She looks around us. “Where are these Devourers you spoke of?”

I blink. What does that have to do with helping Tabra right now? But I point at the shadow-sealed lake. “There.”

She looks, no doubt seeing through my shadows, to the water underneath, frowning slightly. “They are there no longer.” The goddess glances at me, then, and seems to finally catch my urgency. “We must return you to your palace immediately.”

Allusian takes my arm, and with a snap of her fingers, we disappear.