She had the sunburst and the bloodstone, and between the two, she was going to take all the power for herself. She wanted to be the next Nexus. The next goddess of all.
Len grabbed at me, and I could have sworn that Shadow let out a raging bellow from somewhere in the depths. It was so nice to hear that sound. “What do you know?” Len demanded, uncaring that his friend was going to beat his ass for throwing me around like this.
“Ixana has your stone,” I confirmed, hurrying to explain what I’d learned from Dannie about Shadow and me, and the ice queen herself.
“Ixana had this entire elaborate illusion set up to trick Shadow and… well, me. Once she felt us return to her realm, she knew she could use our power to fulfill the goal she’d been working toward for thousands of years. Destroy the Nexus and become the only true power here.”
“That’s why the land is so drained,” Angel said, her voice shaking. “She’s been gathering as much power, sacrificing as many as she can, all on this quest.”
Len lifted his hands then, his eyes closed as he called power to his being, and my mouth went dry at the wash of energy that felt as ancient as the worlds themselves. A high-pitched, ringing sound started low before picking up intensity.
A beat later, the stone came into view. It was suspended over the lava pit, above the sacrifice pool, and it was the most brilliant gem I’d ever seen. About the size of two fists, the bright yellow orb twinkled and spun, visible energy trailing up to it from the sacrifice pool.
Len took a step forward, his arm shaking as he lifted it, twirling his hand like he was feeling for an energy in the air. “She’s been hiding it; the stone’s natural energy has been meshing to the mists so no one could tell it was here.” He sucked in a deep breath. “It’s so powerful. Enough power to destroy this world… even create new worlds. The mists are the power of creation, and this stone is now that as well.”
I placed my hand on his arm, both of us needing the fortification. “This is why you never found any information,” I breathed. “This world was blocked from the Library of Knowledge, making the realm the perfect place to contain it in secret.”
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed. “But it was stolen by fae. By a family friend who tricked us all into thinking they were on our side.”
“Ixana,” I growled, “is the queen of deception. Of illusion. And she alone has controlled the spell on the door that kept the realm barred from the other worlds.”
There was a decent chance, that even Kristoff was part of her elaborate scheme to get us exactly where she needed us, to ensure all of this would happen. He was probably dead, despite what the others had seen.
“Why didn’t she just collect all the creatures herself?” I wondered out loud. “She obviously had the time and power to get it done.”
Angel’s wings shot out behind her as her face darkened into furious lines. “She was trying to, but even with her considerable power, there was one part always off limits to her. The land and creatures near the Nexus.”
And I’d come along and just handed them all to her on a silver platter.
Flames of my fury licked around me, and it took concerted effort not to rage and kill everything in this room. That would be a little counterproductive to what I wanted to achieve here today.
“How do we stop her?” Reece bit out, his hands clenched at his sides. He was watching for Shadow, that much was clear as he scanned that unbroken lavafall through which the beast and the bitch had disappeared.
At this point, I was done waiting. Shadow hadn’t been destroyed by the fire, so I had a shot. A shot was enough today.
48
Ididn’t ask permission because I knew they’d stop me, especially Angel. None of them had been born of the mists like me, so there was no way they could cross the threshold. I had to do this alone, without my mist, because down here, Midnight was the enemy.
Sidling away from the group, I found they were thankfully occupied with the intensely bright sunburst stone, trying to calculate if touching it would kill them all.
Calling my flames, I felt the singing in my blood as more heat filled the air. My wolf leant me her strength as well as I literally stepped through a barrier of boiling lava. It burned at first, and I screamed at the unexpected jolt of agonizing pain. In the same instant, my flames surged to the surface, cutting that pain off so I could finish crossing unscathed.
My flames counteracted the burn of this lava. Protecting me. Healing the few burns I had received.
On the other side, my creatures howled and brayed at me, the noise near deafening. Angel and the guys were calling to me as well, and while I couldn’t hear them through the lava barrier, I recognized their body language, and could lip read well enough to know they were not happy about my rash decision to go lava diving.
Eh, we could deal with that later.
Drawing on my bond to the creatures, I filtered through their energies, my heart hurting at how scared they were. These were intelligent, feeling beings, and they had been standing in line waiting to be slaughtered. Even worse, watching as their brethren were killed in front of them.
Death was not good enough for Ixana. She needed to suffer for an eternity.
Ten fucking eternities.
I was surprised to find a lot of the creatures here weren’t bonded to me, so as Angel had surmised, Ixana had been gathering them on her own as well. The ones she could get to anyway.
Before I could figure out how to bond the rest to me, I was jolted by another creature death, and since Ixana was still occupied with Shadow, I had no idea how the creatures were still dying.
