The help I needed was right there, but another question formed on my lips. “Is this what Hildur uses you for?”
“Is that really what you care to hear? I am not amenable; it’s best to be forthright.”
It was a valid reminder—as human as his tone sounded, I wasn’t dealing with a person. I wasn’t even dealing with a ghost. I was dealing with the closest thing to the devil.
In the silence, he grew impatient. “Shall I help you decide?”
A breath of a shadow swirled up from the holes drilled into the metal plate. Billowing into color, into movement, into a vision that I recognized immediately—the one from the Pearl of Truth.
“Stop that!” I shouted as the scene enveloped me, bursting into color and reality.
Surrounded by scorched hillsides and battered elves led astray by an evil with claws and fangs, I batted fruitlessly at the smoky vision, which would not dissipate.
“You know I have the gift of Sight, but did you know I’m also a Projector? It was always part of what I did. Perhaps that makes me less of a monster? Yes… I played their favorite memories while I made mine. That’s got to mean something, right?”
The vision changed into the halls of this prison, to a screaming dark-haired guy behind bars. Golden-green irises rimmed the black depths of his eyes. Ryder, on his knees. Pleading. Craving. Heat burned through me, but it wasn’t him. It wasn’t real.
“I said STOP IT!” Dozens of hairline cracks shot across the brilliant sheets of turquoise ice above me.
“Careful,” he tutted, and the drawl of it threw me off guard. It was him but it was Ryder, rasping behind his iron bars. “This glacier is melting fast enough as it is.”
Swatting at the air, I felt myself tip.
The ground rushed up to meet me, and my hip slammed into the metal, the sharp edge of the oubliette slicing my thigh. Red blossomed like a rose through the fabric.
A moan crept up the shaft, one of disgusting, aching want. “It’s not as sweet. Not the fruity notes of elven blood,” Kistuleitarinn purred, “but delicious in its own way. You taste… like power.”
Grimacing, I pushed myself up. Searing pain slit my skin.
“How?” I asked, ignoring his sickening comment. “How is it that an ancient glacier is all of a sudden melting at a rate that magic can’t stop it?”
“Is that your final question?”
No, but I wanted it to be, if only so I could leave and get as far away as possible from this godforsaken place.
Curling my fingers, I gritted my teeth. “I need to know about Jarðarbæli. Hildur is taking me tomorrow—er, today.”
“Is she?” That tone made my insides twitch with unease.
“Um, yeah.” I gulped. “Anyways, apparently you’re the only one who’s been and lived to tell the tale.”
“Not the only.” The shadows swirled in his pit. “But as of your generation, yes.”
“Why is everyone so scared of it?” Water dripped off the ice, plinking onto the sleeve of my jacket. My angel senses homed in on every drop, almost tearing me from the conversation.
“You can guess why.”
“Because it’s spelled to keep them out? Because there’s an abominable snowman stalking the fjords? Because Gaia threw some caution tape up?” I crossed my arms, bearing my weight on the hip without the gash in it. “Look demon, if I knew, I wouldn’t be down here.”
He chuckled, and I felt the ground rumble beneath my feet. “There’s a monster in that lair most simply cannot face.”
“Which is?” I tapped my foot, the stale water seeping into my shoes.
“Themselves.”
“Themselves?” I repeated, scrunching my nose.
“The parts of you that you bury deep down and keep hidden are the biggest threat of all.” Kistuleitarinn’s gravelly voice was like an icy chill down my spine. “But it secretly calls to you. All of you.”
