The old wolf’s lopsided smile turned sad. “My one regret. I never found the other half of my soul.” He lumbered forward and clapped a hand on Mathison’s shoulder. “Move heaven and earth if ye have to, lad, and know that ye’ve made me proud. I’ve seen what they’ve put ye through, but ye’ve never admitted defeat.”
Mathison’s heart swelled, and he wished he’d had the opportunity to know this man when he was alive. “Thank ye, Grandsire. I’ll not rest until she’s safe with me once more. She’s made me love her, and I never thought such a thing possible.”
His grandsire grinned. “Ye will find everything ye need in the cave. Hie yerself, now. Ye’re wasting time here in the Dreaming.”
Chapter
Fourteen
“Sorry.” Calia tried to move through the piles of bones surrounding the nearest pillar with as much respect as possible. “I promise when I get out of here, Mathison and I will lay everyone to rest properly.”
“Such a fine mistress our grand chieftain found,” whispered several of Legion’s voices, making the abyss hiss with their approval.
She still had a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that Legion was an endless number of councilors and advisors, and if you spoke to one, you spoke to them all, but she supposed that was just another of the Ninth Realm’s quirks.
As she started up the stone steps that spiraled around the pillar, she hugged the wall and forced herself not to look down. If Legion had started on top of the pair of pillars, maybe there was a doorway or hatch or something that she might spot once she reached the summit.
“This is not wise.” Intuition surprised her by actually flexing, or at least that’s what it felt like, until gooseflesh rippled across Calia’s skin. “Legion was more than likely spirited in here just as we were.”
“I can’t sit at the bottom of this hole and do nothing—and are you trying to shift?”
“I do not know how to shift,” Intuition admitted, sadness and shame filling her whisper. “I am trying anything at my disposal, but I fear it’s not enough. You must not fall. Please stop climbing these stairs. Something tells me it is just…wrong.”
“I don’t know how to shift either, so don’t feel bad, and as long as I’m careful, we won’t fall.” Calia hurt for her wolf’s frustration and embarrassment. Poor Intuition had never sounded so uncertain, and it was jarring. Her inner voice had always known everything—until they’d returned to the Ninth Realm, and then Intuition had become as real and insecure as Calia. “When we get out, Mathison and Dubh will teach us, but in the meantime, we have to do something to help ourselves.”
“Might I make a suggestion?” called out one of Legion’s deeper voices from floor level.
“Absolutely.” Calia leaned back against the wall and slid down until she sat on the steps.
“I believe ye would be better served if ye did what ye could to strengthen yer magic. Trust us, we have searched every means of escape possible over the past three hundred years and found nothing.”
“But you didn’t have my light to enable you to see.” She didn’t want to hear that escape was impossible—because it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. When the voice didn’t respond, she sensed it was because Legion didn’t wish to disappoint her with what she really didn’t want to admit to herself. If the advisors’ spirits could’ve found a way out, they wouldn’t still be in here talking to her.
“Ice storms rage at the summit of the pinnacles,” said a different Legion voice. “The higher ye rise, the more treacherous the steps with ice and snow. Please reconsider this course, mistress. The grand chieftain needs ye safe and whole when he arrives.”
But when would he arrive? Calia didn’t say that part out loud because she was afraid it would make her cry. She had to be brave. Self-sufficient. Above all, she had to stay busy until she and Mathison were reunited. And they would be reunited. They just had to be.
She dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes, willing herself to erect those old walls she’d always used when being the brave, unemotional FBI agent. “You’re sure Mathison and Dubh are safe?” she silently asked Intuition. If anything happened to him…she pulled in a ragged breath and held it, squeezing her eyes tightly shut against the sting of tears. “Intuition? Answer me…please? They’re all right. They’re safe. Right?”
“If death severed our bonds, we would know,” Intuition said. “I promise.” After a moment of silence, she continued, “They have to be all right because we love them and will not consider them gone from us forever, or at least, until the next life.”
And there it was. Calia hugged herself against the cold, against her fears, but most of all, she hugged herself to fight an overwhelming sense of regret. She should’ve told Mathison that she loved him. But no—she’d been too big a coward. “I do love him,” she said loud enough for it to echo across the void. “I was just too big a chicken to admit it.”
“A chicken?” one of Legion’s entities repeated. “Ye are nay a chicken, mistress. Ye are the finest lady we have ever met.”
She had to smile, even though it was a weak one that quivered at the corners. “It’s a figure of speech, Legion. Where I’m from, if you say you’re a chicken, it means you’re afraid of something.”
A boom as deafening as angry thunder shook the pillar. Rocks and debris rained all around.
“To the floor,” Intuition urged. “Slide down the steps on your arse. Do not stand.”
Not about to argue, Calia hurriedly thumped down the steps one by one, while covering her head and squinting at the filth flying all around her.
“Ye will never leave this place,” screeched a grating, high-pitched voice that sounded like every cartoon witchy hag character Calia had ever heard. “And ye dinna love him. Ye dinna believe in love any more than he does, remember?”
When she reached solid ground, Calia jumped to her feet and took a defensive stance, ready to do battle. She drew out her lethal hair combs and prepared to use them as weapons. “I don’t play mind games, and I also don’t owe you any explanations or clarifications. Especially not when you’re too cowardly to show yourself.”
The pit echoed with restless murmurings, but she couldn’t make out what Legion was saying. Intuition had gone uncharacteristically silent, but her restless spirit growled to be freed. Calia wished she knew how to unleash her wolf on this visitor of theirs. Maybe it was one of the witches. “So are you Bansys or Carman? I heard Bansys was too small time to pull off a stunt like this all by herself.”
