Seren jerks sharply, cocking her head as if to listen. Her breath hitches.
“What is it?” Therion says with lethal calm, though I can hear his concern.
“A spirit calls upon us,” she whispers. “We’re close.”
“Close to what, exactly?” Ronyn murmurs. “To our ultimate demise? Or to a lovely spirit who would like to help us?”
Through her small smile, Seren says, “I don’t know but… it knows I’m Veilborn, and it can feel Kael’s presence.”
It can feel my presence? What the fuck does that mean?
“How do you know?” Therion stops abruptly.
“It— It told me,” she says, and quickly begins moving again.
It told her?
We continue to search for the fissure, alert and sharp along the path through the mountain’s cleft.
“Well, it’ll feel me a lot more if we can just find this fucking fissure Rowan spoke of,” I say, trying to keep the impatience from my tone.
We take a few more paces, and Jax holds up her hand to stop the group.
“Do you feel that? That breeze?” She moves her hand through the air, feeling for something. “It’s a draft.”
The starless sky blankets us in a darkness that borders on pitch-black, the only light coming from a sliver of moon just visible above the mountain’s edge. I move toward her, straining my eyes to see if there’s anything visible.
Then, Ifeelit.
A gentle breath of wind blows like a steady stream of air through the pass. A draft. Coming from an opening.A fissure.
“Feel the walls,” I command, and the group spreads across the pass, seeking a break in the cliffs.
I run my hands across jagged rock, searching for concealed openings, perhaps a fissure that has shifted with time, maybe even caved in.
“Here!” Ronyn shouts. “It’s fucking tiny. We’ll all have to turn on our sides. Lucky I spent years starving or I wouldn’t be able to go on an adventure to the warrior spirits,” Ronyn quips, face full of cheek.
“I fuckin’ hate small spaces,” Merrik grumbles, turning on his side to go first. “I better not die in a godsforsaken tunnel, Kael Thorne or I’ll have your balls in the afterlife,” he threatens, but his fondness is evident. “Let me die on the battlefield with a blade in my hand, and nothing less. You hear me?” He points to the skies, threatening the Stars and the gods themselves.
“Get in the tunnel, old man,” Jax grouses, but I know she loves him. Merrik’s been like a father to her ever since Maldrak purged the castle—culled every loyalist, her parents among them. He’s been like a father to me, too. Where I go, he goes. My will is his will. My pain is his pain. My command is his to fulfill, even when he doesn’t agree.
“Get between me and Kael, Seren,” Therion orders protectively, and I don’t miss the way she stares up at him through a curtain of dark lashes.
With every affection I witness, the chasm in my heart widens.
I fucking miss Elyssara.
We need to move fast. I need her back with me, even if she won’t be able to look at me.
The group moves through the opening save for me and Ronyn.
“I’ve got your back, Kael,” Ronyn says stoically, all soldier, not a trace of mischief to be found. “You go.”
I nod tightly, and turn on my side. With my armor in place, I have to breathe in to get my chest and shoulders through. The jagged fissures catch on my leather, dragging across it like a final warning that we shouldn’t be here. I push through, edging myself along the narrow stretch before the tunnel opens into a wider path I can actually walk through.Barely, though.
The gravitas of this sacred burial ground hits me in the chest. This place is one of legends. One of kings, warriors and gods, and it calls to my Zerynthian blood like a beacon.
“The tunnels split off. A few are caved in,” Therion says, and I hear Merrik curse the gods.
