Tell him I’m taking one more loop and to stay where he is, I said.Please.
Raya left my mind and our connection ended. I hated it. When this was over, I had quite a few things I wanted to try with our bond. Experimenting with what we could feel in our minds was at the top of my list.
I felt her again before I heard her.“It worked,”she said breathlessly.“I did it.”
Grinning internally, I tried to allow her to feel my pride.Good girl.
She scoffed but this time, stayed.
I soared farther around the volcano to glimpse the Fae side I’d passed in my first loop. A screech escaped me as an immense fear rattled through my entire body. Along this side of the volcano, massive cages rattled, the sound echoing in a small trench. Inside, huge beasts thrashed back and forth.
Raya?I asked breathlessly in my mind.Can you see this?
“Fates, it’s the voidlings.”
Voidlings?
Tension radiated from her presence, even though it was only inside my mind.“Poisonous creatures contained to the void when the mist still existed. They’re deadly.”
I used my keen eyesight to observe as much as I could of the monsters. One opened its mouth, snapping at a guard standing feet away from its cage. My shudder ruffled the feathers on my wings as I stared in horror at its three rows of razor-sharp teeth and impossibly thick, snake-like tongue. The beast’s scaly exterior shifted from blue to black as they moved.
And they’re poisonous?I muttered in my mind.Just what we need.
“I’ll tell Cassandra immediately. We need to start working on an antidote if Thames has them for his army.”
Finishing my last loop around the perimeter, I dove toward the ground to join Jax and Lucien again. I was thankful for my hawk sight since it didn’t take long for me to spot them hiding beside some brush. Jax remained in his panther form until he spotted me.
By the time I landed a few feet away, he had shifted back into his Fae form. “Took you long enough,” he joked.
How was he ever left in charge of anything?
“Yeah, well, perks of a being able to fly, I can see everything. There are thousands of dark ones on the other side of the volcano." I let out a breath, putting my hands on my hips to stretch slightly. “Plus, something called voidlings? About thirty cages, filled with them.”
Jax’s face slackened and lost almost all of its color. “Voidlings? How do you know that?”
I tapped the side of my head. “Raya saw it and told me.”
“I knew hoping they’d simply disappeared with the void would be too good to be true,” Jax said, running a hand throughhis hair. “Of course they’re Thames’s pets now. Can’t just settle for thousands of dark ones, had to go and add the poisonous voidlings into the battle too.”
Lucien let out a growl, and our attention shifted to the pathway a few feet from us. Immediately, we dropped, crouching behind the thorny green bush. Two dark ones marched past, patrolling the area, and we waited for them to move away before we continued our conversation.
“We need to keep moving and get back. Any ideas on how to get inside?” I asked. “I’ve never even seen a volcano before, let alone tried to enter one.”
Jax shook off the concern about the beasts and cracked his knuckles, then indicated for me to follow. “Rumor has it there are several entry points built into the foundation of the outer walls. How or why, we were never told. Even as one of the elite, I was never privy to that information.” He pointed to the base of the volcano just a few hundred yards away. “Let’s try over there first.”
I surveyed our surroundings, ensuring all remained quiet, then gave him a nod. “Lead the way.”
Silently, we moved along the fractured ground, hiding behind sickly looking wind-sculpted white trees to avoid detection. As we got closer, the air thickened, the humidity rising. Sweat beaded on our brows, and my tunic stuck to my body.
“Is it always this hot?” I muttered, shaking my shirt, peeling it from my skin.
Jax shook his head. “I mean, it is a volcano, but no, it’s not normally like this.”
Lucien took a step as the ground cracked beneath his feet. With a small leap, he escaped a fissure appearing in the ground, revealing a fiery-looking substance.
Jax inhaled sharply. “That can’t be good. We need to move faster.”
I agreed, watching the ground at our feet as well as our surroundings now. Creeping a few more feet, Jax finally reached a small opening to the volcano. “We’re here.” Lucien shook his entire body, barbed tail knocking into the rocky mountainside, clearly relieved not to be lingering around the outskirts anymore.
