A LIFE FOR A LIFE
1
NEPHELE
Mount Ulra
The Grove of the Gods
The grove is wailing.
Mournful cries drift through the scorched remains of the cemetery, anguished howls baying from deep within the earth. Beneath my feet, the charred ground is covered with snow, a result of Neri’s magick suffocating the fires the same way he did in Aki-Ra Quarter. Above, the ancient, heavy boughs are no more. Now there’s nothing but a dense, gray cloud blotting out the night sky.
The only light is from Alexus’s starlights. They illuminate the wood so we can see, our little clan desperately searching for my sister as ash falls heavy as Neri’s snow.
Shivering against the cold air, I move adjacent to Alexus as he calls Raina’s name. His deep voice has gone so rough and ragged that it’s almost unrecognizable amid the lament of the grieving grove. He coughs from the effort, the lingering smoke almost too much for any of us to endure.
Save for Neri. Unaffected by our surroundings, the white wolf stalks close behind, returned to his corporeal form. He hasn’t let me out of his sight, but my king follows too, freed from his chains by the wolf himself.
“I’ve been over this grove thrice,” Neri says to Alexus. An irritated edge roughens his smooth, accented voice. “She isn’t here.”
Earlier, he looked Alexus in the eyes and said, “It isn’t what you want to hear, Un Drallag, but your woman either died in her own fire, left this wood using her abyss, or she’s in Quezira with the prince and Thamaos.”
Surprisingly, his words had not been laced with bitterness, not meant to cut or wound. They sounded sincere, spoken to prevent us from doing what we’re doing now: wandering through the gods’ blistered graves, grief threatening, hoping against all hope to see my sister’s lovely face around the next bend. We all felt the ripple of strange power during the fire. A breath-stealing forcewhooshedthrough the grove like a mighty storm, but almost as soon as we felt it, it was gone.
A pang punches my chest as more tears flood my stinging eyes. Vision blurry, my foot catches on a root, and I stumble on my still-aching ankle.
Neri is at my side in an instant. He folds one massive claw-tipped hand around my bare arm, the other around my waist, keeping me from falling. “Careful, now.”
I steady myself against his muscled chest. The smooth skin and human features of his brawny torso are a strange juxtaposition to his animalistic lower half, covered in sleek, white fur.
Regardless of his chimera form, the contact sends a flood of heat pouring into me as his strong fingers brush back and forth over the goosebumps covering my arm. It’s his power. A gift of warmth, momentarily easing my chills.
“Better?” He stares down at me with that honey gaze, and I can’t help but notice how, even in the gloom, his skin shimmers like snow under moonlight.
“I’m fine. I think Raina’s healing was just too brief to fully mend the bone.”
He frowns. “I should carry you, then.”
“Try it,” I warn, pure venom coating my voice, and a small laugh falls from the wolf’s lips.
He skims a glance over me. At first, it’s as though he means to take inventory, so I tuck my injured foot beneath the hem of my dress. One glimpse of my swollen ankle, the skin reddened from a mixture of cold and inflammation, and I can envision him sweeping me off my feet whether I like it or not.
His attention drifts from my soot-stained wine-colored dress, the one I chose for the wedding at Fia Drumera’s court before everything went wrong to the remnant of his heart hanging around my neck, then to my teary eyes. His gaze softens, but it’s still too penetrating. Too knowing. And Colden’s night-dark stare, spearing me from a short distance, is too aware. Too watchful.
Questions are brewing, and I don’t want to answer any of them.
I shake free of the wolf’s heated grip and take a single step away. On a deep breath, I press one hand to my aching heart while the other keeps me upright against a blackened tree. “Raina wouldn’t have left us.”
I say those words because I believe them. They’re the only truth getting me through any of this.
As the crying wood’s song abates, Colden starts toward me. He strips off his silver velvet dinner jacket to reveal a tailored pewter tunic marked with streaks from cinders. His pale skin is pearly gray with ash, his usually silky blond locks twisted into heathered tangles. The way he moves is almost as predatory as Neri, but he’s far less like a beast and more like a skilled soldier hurrying to protect a man down. Colden is also tall, but he must lift his chin and blink away ash and snowflakes to look Neri in the eyes. He glowers at the northern god—the maker of his curse—baring his teeth before placing his fine dinner jacket around my shoulders and cradling my face as gently as fragile glass in his hands.
Colden kisses my forehead and wipes my tears with his thumbs. “We will find her. I swear it, love. We will find her.”
Neri’s lip curls back, exposing an elongated fang, and a deep, contained growl rumbles inside him. He postures for a moment, but reluctantly turns and moves on those long and muscled hind legs toward the charred remains of a giant tree, frost falling off him like mist.
His hands clench into fists, a spoiled god seething because he can’t have what he thinks he wants. If he were wise, he would understand that I am no trophy. I am no prize.
