THE NEXT DAYthe tension strung between Draven and I grows more palpable by the minute. We portal to the zenith site in silence. The others, his friends, guards, and an elven envoy, make small talk around us. I can’t bring myself to say anything. I wouldn’t even know where to start. There’s still too much roiling inside me to sort through.
The zenith is located in a strange box canyon, which rises at least a hundred feet on either side of us in shades of gray, veins of white and cinnamon etched onto either wall. Draven’s clearly displeased about the elves escorting us, though at least they brought a pack of horses for us to ride.
“Why are Mom and Dad fighting?” Malik whispers to Fable, as Draven silently helps me up onto an all-black steed, his body pressed behind mine. We sit molded together, but we may as well be miles apart.
He looks as if he didn’t sleep, eyes red, dark circles spread beneath them, and his mind remains closed, an impenetrablesteel fortress. His friends look equally disheveled but keep checking us, their exhaustion as evident as their worried curiosity.
I hope the zenith’s not far. I’m ready to go home.
I find myself revisiting that word, that momentary slip that seemed to speak the truth.
Westfall hasn’t been a home for years, but my enemy’s land is somehow mine. I want to be at our Hearth. Curl intoourbed. The thought softens the storm in me.
I still want this. Him.
“Your Highness, it’s just up ahead. I must warn you though, this is a dangerous area, and the toxic drake killed many of our soldiers before we felled it.” The elven leader, Älvor, looks back at us over his shoulder, his hair a long sweep of platinum gold.
“But youdidin fact kill the drake, right?” Malik asks, his voice pitched a bit high.
“Of course,” Älvor says. “It was quite the battle, I’m told. Still, it left toxic pools behind. Not to mention this place is home to many malevolent creatures. Nixies, trolls, draugrs, and vampyrs. Frigga spiders are known to take over abandoned drake caves, and are larger than your wyverns, so we should move with caution.”
I shudder, gagging at the thought of monstrously sized spiders, and have only the barest idea of what the other horrors are that he mentioned. We dismount from our horses as the space grows tighter, moving the rest of the way by foot.
“When exactly did you find this drake’s hoard?” I ask Älvor.
Draven perks a bit at my line of questioning, and I notice the elf’s eyes skirt away.
“Shortly before sending word to His Majesty, King Silas, of course.”
Fable rolls her eyes at my side, looking under her nails. “What a load of shit.” She mutters to me, “They probably knew about this vein of zenith for a long time and are just using the supposed dangers to bargain. I bet there’s more in the countryside they haven’t revealed, just you wait.”
Draven tsks at her.
I raise a brow and whisper, “You think she’s wrong?”
“I think she’s loud.” He slows his pace slightly, letting the elves get a bit farther ahead. He addresses our group, “I want you to be ready for anything. I have a bad feeling about all this.”
I glance at the expansive rock walls towering alongside us, stretching hundreds of feet high, winding as if a river had once eroded it before drying up and whittling away to sand. A flash of blue light sparks in a little opening in the rock at my side.
I stop, looking again. And I swear whatever it waspulls back, disappearing into the crooked opening. When I bend to look inside, there’s nothing there.
“What is it?” Malik asks me, the only one to notice I stopped. He’s more on edge than the others. I shake my head.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something.”
“What did it look like?” His tone isn’t mocking, only curious, worried.
“Like a blue flame? I barely saw it.” I shrug my shoulders.
“Draven, your girlfriend is scaring Malik,” Fable tattles, though she throws me a teasing glance.
I grin, rolling my eyes, but Draven merely grimaces.
“The zenith den is this way,” Älvor tells us, rounding a bend ahead, and we follow.
The canyon narrows before opening into a wide space, where glimpses of crystal glint in the light. But a chasm yawns between us and the other side, with only slender fingertips ofstone pillars rising from the vast expanse below like life-or-death stepping stones.
Älvor gestures forward, the rest of the elves standing at either side. “This scattered path is why it went undiscovered for so long. One of our explorers spotted the zenith and decided to chance it. It’s the only way in.”
