Chapter 29

29

W e woke with the sunrise.

I dragged myself out of bed and hissed when my feet touched down on the cold floor.

Maybe it was my imagination but the room felt icy and the lure of falling back under the covers and snuggling in Mike’s arms was almost too much to ignore.

He cracked an eye open, sucking in a breath before glancing between me and the empty space beside him.

The moment etched itself in my mind. The Crown Prince of Faerie with his hair mussed, his eyes narrowed with sleep, and his expression peaceful.

Naked, too.

My mouth automatically went dry.

“Come back,” he croaked.

“I can’t. We have to get going.” And I probably had an earful to look forward to for not going back to my room.

Although if Laina had spent the night with Livvy then both of them knew exactly what Mike and I had done.

It almost didn’t bear thinking about. Embarrassment warmed me from the inside out.

“You’re beautiful.”

I caught Mike’s whispered compliment and allowed myself a secret smile as I hunted for my clothes.

Within an hour, we were back on the road and continuing our journey to the Abyss.

This time, however, I felt lighter than I had the previous day. With everything going on, I hadn't realized how much tension I carried when it came to me and Mike and our unresolved bullshit. I’d always told myself there would be a time and a place to make peace down the line, whether it meant we’d be together or not.

We’d needed last night.

The moment hadn’t been planned, but it was ours.

I forced myself to focus on the journey ahead rather than last night. Otherwise I’d walk with a blush that let everyone know exactly what I'd been doing. As it was, I managed to escape any kind of maternal talk from Livvy.

We were all still too stressed to talk much.

Onyx led the way unerringly forward.

I hadn’t expected to feel so awkward around him, but he’d glared when we saw each other that morning. Glared and drawn in a deep breath before his cheeks colored. He knew exactly what I’d done. Could no doubt smell Mike and me on each other’s skin. Imprinted.

The bite on the back of my neck still throbbed from the claiming.

I refused to let the moment be ruined. Onyx and I weren’t romantic with each other. Even though there had been times where I almost thought?—

Where we almost could have?—

I shook my head to clear it and offered Onyx a hard smile, urging him not to discuss it. Not to say a word or press the issue.

He’d eventually relented but I struggled with the guilt for the first few hours of our trek. Why should I feel guilty ? Onyx and I never gave in to the small stirrings of attraction. There was no understanding between us. Friends. A cherished friend.

To his credit, no one stopped to question him on how he seemed to know exactly where to go without the use of a map or compass. The land around us changed and the tension mounted, but otherwise we were content to walk. To be silent.

To worry over whatever fresh hell waited for us.

Slowly, the guilt took a back seat to the worry, one I knew we shared between us.

Even Bronwen, who looked like she had a million questions for me about last night, zipped her lips shut. Although it wasn’t as if she and I had ever talked about boys before. There were too many other things, life and death matters, to talk about. Not sex.

I swallowed over a tired giggle then glanced around to make sure no one heard me.

Livvy straightened like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket but said nothing.

By the end of the day and after a handful of stops to rest, Onyx halted and lifted his arm to point to something on the horizon. “There it is,” he called out.

Bronwen squinted. “There what is?”

Noren growled and the hair on the back of his neck lifted.

“You don’t see it?” Onyx asked, awed.

The ruins appeared out of the corner of my eye at first, like a half captured flash of something you weren’t really sure was there or not. Real or not. The longer I focused on them, the more the strange rock formation swam into view and solidified.

After a few minutes I was able to look directly at them.

The ravaged temple was not some majestic site perched on the side of a mountain. The ruins rose out of the ground in the middle of nowhere, halfway between a clearing in the forest and the farmland visible beyond. Faerie seemed made up of more ancient forests than anything else. And what had the temple been before falling to time?

The stones wavered, one moment as solid as the ground and the next as nebulous as smoke.

A tingle of awareness tugged at me and the sensation grew into a tremor of fear. This place wasn’t supposed to exist. And we were definitely not supposed to be here.

If Onyx hadn’t pointed out the ruins, I would have dismissed the temple as a trick of the light and nothing else.

“I wouldn't have been able to find this on my own,” Mike commented. “This is both fantastic and horrible at the same time.”

“Agreed,” Livvy muttered.

“You’re not meant to find it,” Laina asserted. She focused on the ruins without blinking an eye and her face was a mask.

Mike’s voice remained firm but the tension was evident. “At least we weren’t followed.”

Foreboding settled over me and my own hair lifted in a cool breeze despite the heat of the day and the sunlight dappled through the limbs overhead.

“How did you know how to get here?” I asked Onyx. “It’s not like you had a roadmap.”

“When a person is banished to the Abyss,” he explained slowly, “they come back— if they come back—with a kind of connection that never goes away. The Abyss changes you. On a molecular level.”

He stared unblinking at the ruins, his face curiously blank.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” I murmured.

“Good. You’re not supposed to like the sound of it.” Onyx continued to stare unblinking at the ruins. “The Abyss is a special place. It’s not meant to be left behind. It’s meant to be traveled, survived. Carried with you if you’re lucky enough to find a way out like I was. Not all of the banished escape.”

I wanted to know more. Before I had a chance to open my mouth, Onyx strode toward the ruins faster than he’d moved since our escape from the castle. His burst of energy surprised me and I found myself hustling forward to try and keep pace with him.

Livvy remained a step behind, quiet when I expected her to start back with the we need to hurry stuff.

Noren gave a single whine of protest before he followed me, sticking close to my heels.

The ruins were messing with my brain.

They didn’t grow in stature the closer we got. Rather it was like one of those funhouse mirrors or long hallways in a dream where you got closer with every step and yet you never quite made it to your destination.

I gnashed on my cheek, biting down and using the little bit of pain like a tether to the real world. Because this wasn’t real.

At once, the ground beneath my Converses changed from soft moss and pine needles to stone. The transition rocked me and I stopped dead, my arms windmilling to keep my balance when the forest disappeared and the temple stood in front of us.

One moment not there, then boom. We were on the doorstep.

“What the hell?”

My voice, rather than echoing out into the forest, landed flat and I realized then that there were no animal sounds here. The birdsong had died somewhere along the way. A pall fell over the land and deadened it to any ambient noise.

Onyx pressed a finger to his lips, his eyes wide and desperate. “You have to watch out. Things aren’t what they seem here. Don’t speak too loudly and don’t yell. You’ll draw out unwanted visitors. Follow my lead.”

He tilted sickeningly to the side but caught himself before he lost his balance.

At least I wasn’t the only one having trouble finding their center. Bronwen had her head bent between her knees and Laina boasted a distinctly greenish cast to her cheeks. Her hands shifted to her shoulders as though she resisted the urge to draw her whips.

I stumbled and my skin scraped the lichen-covered stone. I expected warmth but found nothing. The stones were icy to the touch despite the sunlight.

“Unwanted visitors?” My voice still sounded too loud and it rippled back to me like disturbed water.

My gut churned and I pressed my hands to it.

“Where do we go from here, Onyx?” Laina finally asked.

“We go inside,” Onyx said matter-of-factly.

Livvy slid her hands into the pockets of her pants and stared at the entrance. To my right, a gap in the stone provided a way inside the ruins. A kind of strange Stonehenge, although the rocks barely fit together and yet somehow it was impossible to see between them.

Onyx was right. This was a bad place.

My stomach shifted and gurgled and I pressed my hands tighter to my abdomen. My insides roiled hard enough for me to feel it.

“We should have made weapons before we got here,” Mike said.

Onyx sniffed and said, “Weapons aren't going to do much. The creatures we’ll see inside are different.”

“They can’t be cut and bleed like anything else?”

Mike was desperate for an answer but the way Onyx’s lips thinned into a harsh line, we all knew what the answer would be.

“No sense wasting time worrying about beasts.” Livvy strode forward. “The sooner we get in, the sooner we’ll be able to get out.”

Maybe she didn’t see it but I did—the similarities between us were right out there in the open. We were the same kind of person, only this time I wasn’t the one barreling ahead with full steam despite not knowing the situation.

It was Livvy.

She jumped first and asked questions later—if later ever came for us.

My teeth chattered together as I followed her, the others behind me. The shadows quickened around us, swirling masses caught only in glimpses out of the corners of my eyes. Until they weren’t.

Suddenly the shadows separated from the darkness and formed incorporeal but very human shapes.

“Watch out!”

Bronwen yelled the warning before one of the shadows moved in a flash to her side, striking the stone beneath her feet. Sparks flew where it touched and a deep crevice formed, the edges smoldering.

She fell, cracking her hip against the stone.

“Guardians of the Abyss!” Onyx explained.

I caught another flash of movement, this time headed toward him, and moved as quickly as my senses allowed. I hurled myself between Onyx and the shadow guardian, throwing up my arms in an X in front of us. A blast of magic rippled out to shield us against the hit.

“What are these things made of?” I yelled.

“Nothing good.”

That came from Laina.

A green glow emanated off of her and spread out toward Mike, their magic the same color. A halo of forest-green witch and fae magic spread past them and dissolved the edges of the shadows where they met.

She hadn’t drawn her weapons, so she must have somehow known what Onyx meant about the guardians.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the shadows were not deterred.

If anything, the witch magic made them angrier.

Could a shadow be angry?

These guys were. Their limbs became weaponized extensions of their bodies, swords of glittering night.

I used myself as a shield for Onyx. I wasn’t the best at forming weapons out of nothing. That wasn’t my forte, not in the least. I’d had a terrible time of doing the barest minimum required to get through the Faerie Trials.

Maybe the shadow guardians read my mind.

They came at me with weapons raised and their swords sliced through the air in a unified wave. They were everywhere and nowhere at once, just like the temple ruins.

Livvy cupped her palms in front of her face and blew out a breath. Her air magic became a ball of pure light. The closest guardians moved away from her, hovering at the edge of her light.

Bronwen’s yelp came a second later. One of the guardians had maneuvered behind her, slicing its sword across her ankles, just as she made it to her feet. She went down with another cry of pain and the surprise of the attack had Livvy turning and Noren bounding toward my friend.

The guardians knocked the ball of light out of Livvy’s hands and the moment it left her physical touch, it guttered and died.

The words were at the tip of my tongue and ready to fall. I blasted them with everything I had. Power rose from the pit in my gut and the moment I let it loose, I went lightheaded and dizzy. My knees were like jelly.

Onyx grabbed me by the back of the shirt to keep me upright but we weren’t fighting with our full power. Not even half . We were exhausted and pushed as far as we could go.

The noise volume inside of the temple went to blasting loud, the dull roar of an invisible wind making rational thought impossible.

“Do you know of a way to make it past them?” I asked, screaming to be overheard.

The terrible howling sound ratcheted higher into a keening wail like a banshee cry. It took everything in me to maintain the shield rather than covering my ears with my hands, the sound spiked into my eardrums and through them to my entire body. I felt it in my toes.

Onyx’s eyes rounded, filled with pain. On the other side of the temple were Livvy and Bronwen, their backs pressed together as the two of them supported each other. Blood seeped from the wounds in Bronwen’s heels but she gritted her teeth and kept going.

The shadows split apart from each other to surround us. Noren nipped at them and they divided, circling him, striking him hard enough to send tufts of fur flying everywhere. He was movement incarnate and yet he wasn’t fast enough to outrun them.

“I have no idea!” Onyx yelled back. “Things are different exiting the Abyss than they are trying to enter it.”

His father had sent him in. Onyx hadn’t gone inside on his own.

My eyes burned with the effort to maintain the shield and I doubled down as the edges constricted and sputtered. Growing smaller and allowing a tiny crack to form around us.

The nearest guardian moved immediately.

It swung its blade through the crack and I wasn’t fast enough to avoid the hit. The tip of the blade slid into my skin, splitting it along my calf. Agonizing pain spread from the area and my shield sputtered again before it died.

At once, a calming green glow surrounded us. There was Mike, his arms outstretched and every ounce of his magic poured into us. Into me.

Our eyes met, his narrowed and stubborn and so damn appealing.

It shouldn't be up to him to protect me.

I should be able to handle this myself. Frustration burned my throat.

But he wasn’t helpless. Laina was there, spreading her own power over him while cutting down the guardians around her. When one fell, two formed from the pieces. The shadows were relentless.

Their weapons clashed against our shields and only Livvy had the knowledge to form a weapon of light. Laina knew what to do, of course, but with her attention fractured between us, there was no way for her?—

The queen fell.

In slow motion, the queen dropped to the ground with the pommel of a shadow sword stuck in her shoulder and piercing out the other side, sent through the single chink in her shield.