She bites back a startled shout as she flinches, a small scorpion emerging from one of the crevices and skittering onto her hand. There’s a blue shine to its black body, fading into gold at its claws and the end of its tail. Cambria completely stills, not wanting to make it strike out in fear. Her jaw clenches as she wrestles with the instinct to shake it off and run screaming, taking shallow breaths through her nose.
I tighten my grip enough to hold on with one hand, slowly reaching over. Swallowing, I strike, gripping just beneath the stinger on its tail and lifting it up before it snaps at her. Two options, and I don’t like either, but I settle for the smarter one.
Tilting my head to the side and shutting my eyes, I bring it far too close to my ear for comfort and Azazel lurches forward, devouring it. The warm, fluffy body on my shoulder changes to skittering feet that makes a shudder of disgust snake down my spine.
I could have thrown it as far away from us as possible, but with as little food as can be found out here, we need to capitalize on whatever we can. We might not be able to eat it, but the changelings don’t care. And as much as we have their temporary allegiance now, as proven by how we found them, starvation could have them turning on us, any former loyalties aside. Hunger drives people to do desperate things.
“You okay?”
She nods rapidly, quickly scaling the cliff. We take a break on the next ledge, and I have to force myself not to swipe a hand over my shoulder to brush Azazel off as he moves, all of my nerve endings screaming and crawling. Trying not to hurt his feelings, I hold out my palm for him to crawl onto and gently set him on the ground, wiping my palms on my pants and joining the others, keeping my eyes out for anything else to feed him as soon as possible.
“I’ve been thinking,” Lucien restarts now that things have settled down. He steals Cambria’s hand to kiss the back, casually attempting to check for injury, but being incredibly transparent. “Cambria mentioned before that she’s instinctively drawn to the rings. Maybe it isn’t becausefaeare naturally drawn to them; just her, because of the connection to the way the changelings manipulate the energy of Faerie.”
“Makes sense,” she agrees, leaning against him and resting before we have to tackle the next section.
We’re nearly to the top, and it should be smoother sailing then, hopefully, so long as we don’t run into anything else. This high up, we’d have to pray for death if we fell, because none of us would want the hell of trying to heal from that sort of damage.
“So you want to find another ring?”
He nods. “We’re far enough from Elorie’s domain that the risk of using one will be greatly diminished. We might want to wait until we have more distance between us before attempting it, but worth considering.”
Atlas bites the inside of his cheek, glancing at his feet before sighing. “But won’t that just take us home? None of us have seen the prison, so it was a long shot plan in the first place, even if I had managed to pull it off.”
“Hey, at least you can make one,” Cambria points out in an attempt to make him feel better. “You took my magic and did something with it that even I can’t.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure if you put more effort into your attempts that you could. It’s just harder to piss you off than anyone, you optimist. We absorbedyourmagic. So even if it morphed a bit because Luce came in and diluted the magical gene pool, it’s not like any of us are chucking fireballs or commanding the oceans. It’s like musical chairs; juggernaut-changeling edition.”
She runs a hand through her hair and closes her eyes, using Lucien as a wall to lean against. Just that small bit of defeat, that’s all she lets shine through, and then it’s gone, stuffed into a box to be used as a stepstool to bring her to new heights. She climbs on her pile of repressed problems as easily as she scales the wasteland’s mountains, standing on top of the fragile foundation to look down on a brutal world of deception.
“But if we use a ring that we know won’t suck the life out of us, we can try again and again.”
Lucien points to me, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “Exactly. We were hinging our plan on one of the two of you being able to manipulate it like Dorian did that first day we found Cambria, since...”
Atlas finishes his train of thought, but doesn’t look as upset about it as he’s been. Honestly, after days of channeling both his and Lucien’s anger to practice creating rings, I think he’s worked most of his frustrations out about the predicament. “Since the two of you are fae and bound by the need to visualize a place, whereas the two of us have less limitations.”
Lucien presses his lips into a thin line, but nods, worried about getting into it again. Atlas simply claps his hands together sharply before bending over to offer a palm for Azazel to climb up on. “We didn’t consider these guys though. They know what the prison looks like. If we can get them all thinking about it the same time that we’re all trying to, we have a better chance at pulling this off.”
I lick my dry lips, nervous. “How do you plan on pulling that off?”
Reluctantly, we all head towards the rock wall and start the last leg of the journey, Azazel riding on Atlas’ shoulder this time and the other changelings nowhere to be seen. He hoists himself up and I memorize the path he takes, starting in after him. Cambria follows behind me while Luce gives us all a head start before starting in.
“Subliminal messaging,” he retorts and I wish I could flip him off.
“Seriously.”
He takes in my harsh tone and knocks it off. “They love Cambria, but they also recognize her as part of the line that acted as their jailors. I’m sure we can come up with something to trigger those memories.”
“Too risky,” Cambria dismisses before I can voice my numerous objections. “We piss them off, there’s nothing to stop them from eating us. Right now we’re safe because they like us for whatever stupid reason. Honestly, we offer very little in this relationship. We destroy that, it won’t matter if we make it to the prison. They’ll kill us the second our feet touch ground.” Atlas sighs, like he knew it was a dumb plan before he ever brought it up.
“It doesn’t hurt to explore our options,” Lucien placates, trying to keep the peace with as strained as things have been where Atlas has been concerned lately. “Even if we don’t go that route, it’s good to bounce ideas around and see if it sparks anything else.”
We finish the rest of our ascent in silence, focusing on not dying now instead of worrying about not dying later. When I pull myself over the ledge to the top, I roll onto my back, arms trembling and gasping for air. My ribs crash into Atlas’ feet and I hurry to scoot out of the way so that there’s room for the others, even as my muscles scream in protest.
“The hell, Atlas?”
But he doesn’t speak, and my rapidly beating heart plummets to the pit of my stomach in preparation, trying to find what’s captured his attention with a sense of dread. A stone’s throw away, Raziel and Loki’s forms morph as the energy they ingested is siphoned from their bodies, leaving something out of my nightmares in their wake.
Their bodies appear as little more than black smoke at first, twisting and writhing at the edges as they try to hold onto some semblance of a solid form, only to find it impossible. The light flashes off of their eyes, the only way to see them in the seemingly endless oblivion. I joked about them being black holes, but right now? If I tried to grab one, I have no doubt I’d be wiped from existence.
