Reminding me of Orlaith.
“Geil de ne veshta, nav Ashta! Hath te nei—”
Anver wraps his big hands around her shoulders, stilling her steady bounce. “Use the common tongue, Ailith. Remember your lessons.”
With the most dramatic sigh I’ve ever seen, she screws up her face, as though thinking hard. “Favor, please.” She taps her lips, gaze rolling toward the sky, back again. “Gift … for Ashta?”
I can’t help but smile.
Anver laughs low before cupping his hands together. “Close enough,” he says, crisp light shafting between the gaps in his fingers—a gift born straight from the bowl that did not pass down the generations, making Anver the last with the ability to solidify his light. A few moments later, he lifts his hand, revealing a dainty bloom of luminescent crystal.
‘Treasure!’Zykanth trills as the little girl claps and bounces, squealing with delight.‘Treasure, treasure, treasure!’
“Thanking you favor.” She dips her head, takes the bloom, then dashes toward a path between the spires, cloak fluttering in her wake.
“I better follow,” Anver grinds out, pushing to a stand, casting me in his broad shadow. “Make sure she doesn’t fall down the hole.”
‘I like holes. Holes hide sparkly things.’
“Where’s she going?” I ask over the inner ruckus of Zykanth’s ramblings.
There’s a beat of silence, and a reverence ignites Anver’s eyes. “Thewell.”
Zykanth almost cracks free of his cage as his excitement bubbles over, and scales erupt across my chest, making me itch.‘Go. Move little legs. Follow little shiny one and big shiny one. Get pretty treasure for little savage one.’
Vicious watches me stand and pocket the apple, and a warmth swells inside me beneath her curious gaze. I follow Anver along the lofty path sandwiched between sheer crystal blocks, slowing when it chops into a staircase that tunnels down. Light filters through the crystal, casting prisms of color across our skin as we edge into the bowels of the island.
The air is crisp and fresh, but hauntingly still, making me cautious of every shallow breath, lest I stir something I shouldn’t.
The stairwell opens into a small cave, its walls and ceiling adorned with clusters of long, blunt crystals. Ailith stills a few steps from a jagged split in the ground, lowers onto her belly, and wiggles toward the sharp edge, dangling her arm over the side, holding the rose aloft.
She drops it.
Hearing a distant plop, Zykanth surges against my ribs, trying to propel me over the edge.
‘Move, little man. Get beneath big ribs. Zykanth get treasure for soft little mate.’
‘You won’t fit, you silly sea snake!’ I growl internally, scratching at the scales erupting across my cheek as I creep forward.
“Why drop it down there?” I rasp, my voice echoing back at me.
Anver smiles.
“It’s a gift,” he rumbles, and I cast my gaze into the chasm bathed in a mottling of light filtering from above.
Something glimmers below, making my pulse race, igniting Zykanth into a boiling swirl.
‘Treasure,’ he bleats.‘Dive, little man!’
I wrestle him down and lock him away, but still my heart powers along at a ferocious pace …
It’s atrove.
Ireach my arms above my head, my stretching groan morphing into a hissing wince as a blaze of pain shoots through the side of my neck.
My eyes pop open, my vision a haze of gold and blue, hands padding at a bandage wrapped around my throat like a noose.
I sit up, heaving air, certain I’m starved of it.
