“We need to resuscitate her. The grimoire said this room is as close as we can come to Aitna’s heart. We’re going to draw power from the nine heirs and send it into Aitna. We’re going to shock her back to life.”
Tobias laughed. “Are you saying we’re going to defibrillate the goddess?”
“More or less,” Raven said.
The mountain rumbled again, and Sylas growled as chunks of stone bounced off the dome of Raven’s magic, which was protecting them all. “Quickly, or things are going to get a lot more complicated.”
Raven gave the dragon a sideways glance but ignored his comment. It was too much pressure. She couldn’t think about what came next after the spell. Would they be able to escape? She shook it off.
Colin said what she was thinking. “Shut the fuck up, brother. She’s doing her best.”
Still, all the dragons got into position, standing in the divot that signified their birth order. Raven took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.
“Clarissa, this is what you need to sing.” Raven copied the music from the grimoire—from her memory—into the dirt over the stone floor.
“Got it!” Clarissa positioned herself so she could see the music and studied the notes.
“Avery, I’m going to draw on your latent magic. Just hold our hands and don’t fight the spell.”
“Do nothing. My specialty.” Avery saluted.
“What about Charlie?” Leena asked.
Raven had been so wrapped up in all the details of the spell she’d forgotten about her daughter, asleep in Gabriel’s arms. She carefully pulled her out of her mate’s grip and handed her to Leena. “Please hold the baby.” She glanced at Marius’s heart, still smeared with Charlie’s blood. “We already have what we need from her.”
Leena gave Raven a reassuring nod and cuddled the child to her shoulder.
Raven shot one last look toward Gabriel and his siblings standing in a ring in front of the giant mural of the goddess and the altar where Raven had once sacrificed her most beloved possession at the time, her emerald wedding ring. It was still there, she noted, as were the stilettos Rowan had left behind.
She took her sisters’ hands. Immediately a charge rose in the room, crackling and snapping between them. She started muttering the incantation she’d read in the grimoire. Ancient Greek. The only reason she could read, understand, or pronounce it was her magic, this strange ability she had to absorb spells from the page and to understand magic immediately through touch. She repeated the words again and again. And then she nodded to Clarissa.
Her sister sang the notes drawn in the dirt. The music started off low, challenging her range, but then increased in pace and octave as it progressed.
“It’s working,” Leena said.
Raven hazarded a glance toward her mate and saw what Leena saw. The dragon siblings were glowing. Light shafted from floor to ceiling, illuminating the cavern like it was high noon in the desert. The pull of magic threatened to tear her in two. Her sisters must have felt it too, because Avery winced, and Clarissa took more frequent breaths as she continued her song.
They both squeezed her hands as another wave of magic blew out from them. Leena shielded Charlie’s eyes and turned her head away from the increasing glow. Raven tried to check on Gabriel, tried to make sure he was weathering the spell, but the light was too bright. She had to look away.
And then it all became too much. Avery squeezed her hand. “Raven, I can’t… I caaaan’t!”
A loud crack accompanied an explosive force that blew them apart. Avery’s and Clarissa’s fingers slipped from hers. Her back slammed into hard stone, knocking her breath from her lungs. Something inside her crunched, and a sharp pain cut through her torso.
The torches around the cavern extinguished.
For a moment, she lay absolutely still, afraid to move, afraid to make the pain worse. Then the familiar tingle of Gabriel’s tooth kicked in. Its healing properties branched within her, carving out a path in her veins, invigorating her.
She grunted as she pushed herself up to sitting and blinked her eyes open. The cave had gone dark and eerily quiet. She couldn’t see anything but the mural. Aitna’s image glowed red, the light the painting was putting off illuminating the altar in front of her. A crack now ran down the middle, the two halves of the stone fallen to each side.
And the mural was changing, the wall behind it falling away. No, Raven realized, the image was moving forward, becoming three-dimensional, smoothing. She muffled a curse as her hand rose to her lips. Aitna stood before her, dressed in liquid fire, her dark hair flowing in a wind that wasn’t there.
She looked straight at Raven with black, glittering eyes and said something in a language she didn’t understand. Raven shook her head.
There was a pause, and then the goddess said in perfect English, “Who is responsible?”
It was clear to Raven by her tone she meant responsible for her death, not her resurrection. Raven lifted one hand and pointed up what used to be the stairs. She answered with one word and one word only. “Eleanor.”
Aitna’s black eyes roved upward. She bent her knees and leaped straight into the rock. And then she was gone and so was the light.
