Flames explode around the figure, scorching, deadly, and the bladeshatters.
Shards of gold—real shards!—blast upward, flying from the page, shooting toward my arms and chest.
I don’t have time to scream before glinting fragments strike my unprotected face.
Chapter Fifty-One
Maxim
Leaping onto my serpent’s back, I reach for the tips of his horns, ready for his quick, slithering dart forward before he launches himself into the air.
The magic within his body ripples through his scales as we soar upward, where I can see far into the distance.
All the endless sand dunes.
Endless, blistering heat snatches the breath from my chest.
But then, in the far distance…
My forehead puckers and I lean slightly forward, peering into the horizon at an object that glints and twists and shoots?—
Right at me!
Before I can react, a force knocks into me, ramming me off my serpent’s back and into the air, snatching at me, and then?—
My surroundings vanish.
I’m crouched on a wooden floor, looking up. Everything in the background is hazy and blurred, but the Oracle stands clearly in my vision, silver armor hugging her curves from her neck to her feet, where she’s wearing silver boots. Strands ofmetal are threaded through her hair, lighting up her dark tresses, making them gleam.
My heart thumps in my chest as she leans slightly over a book resting on top of a glass cabinet located mere inches to my right, its transparent shelves housing numerous books.
I’m kneeling directly to her right, practically at her feet.
Once more, an amber thread extends from my heart to hers, this time already taut in the space between us.
Golden light glows above the book’s open pages while the Oracle’s voice washes over me, serene, as she appears to read from the page she’s looking at, “What was done must be undone… Unmade as it was made…”
Despite how calm she appears, my instincts roar at me because heat rushes from the book, the crackle of flames meets my ears, and a scream builds in my ears, as if the air is compressing and the world is about to shatter.
I don’t know what danger is coming for her, but I know I need to get her away from that fucking book.
As my muscles bunch and I prepare to leap up at her, I register her final words, cut short. “To break the curse, break the?—”
With a terrified gasp, she launches herself backward, her hand leaving the page, her cheeks suddenly deathly pale, fear radiating from every tense angle of her body.
I’m already launching myself into the space she created between her and the cabinet.
In that moment, I catch sight of two things.
The first, the open pages on the table to my right. Flames explode from them, a fiery heat, and worse, shards of golden metal shoot toward her, their edges sharp enough that I’m not certain the Oracle’s silver armor will protect her. Not when magic streams from the page, exploding around her, threatening to rip at her body.
The second thing, that she isn’t alone. Antony stands only two paces to her left, but he hasn’t reacted to the threat, or even to my presence, although the full body armor covering his body makes it difficult to tell for sure.
It takes merely a heartbeat for me to throw myself into the space between the Oracle and the jagged shards striking at her.
I still don’t know how I’m seeing her, and I’m certain she can’t see me, just like she couldn’t the first time I somehow connected with her across locations, but I’m a hairsbreadth from colliding with her, and my only concern is ensuring that my body becomes a shield for her.
She is my hope.
