Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

VERENA

T he guard didn't speak except to give brief, clipped directions as we crossed Hell, the journey cut in half by virtue of the hellstallion I liberated from a farm on the outskirts of Iarlon. The good news—we reached the portal to Earth in three hours. The bad news—I'd spent the entire journey with my back plastered to Walden's front, his disapproval like a palpable third person riding with us. Also, my ass hurt after hours of riding.

My nerves were in ruins. Part of me thought we'd get to the Capitol and find corpses scattered over the lawn, my whole family slaughtered. The closer we got, the stiffer I sat, my entire body clenched with dread.

"There," Walden said, the first word he'd spoken in an hour. "You can see it in the distance."

I swallowed the acid taste of fear and looked beyond the purple mountains that sprawled around us, my breath hitching when I spotted the slight bluish glimmer. We were almost there, almost to the battle where Haley and the guys were risking their lives to kill a tyrant and make the world a better place to live.

"That's strange," Walden murmured, stiffening behind me, his knuckles whitening on the reins he held on to either side of my body. "The portals aren't usually blue."

The truth hit me like a bullet and a sharp breath caught the back of my throat. "That's not the portal. Fuck, it's the ghosts."

"The ghosts were contained," Walden disagreed with an air of unshakable confidence I was about to shake the shit out of.

"I'm telling you." I twisted to glare at him. "That's not the portal, it's a horde of ghosts. We need to find another way around."

"This is the fastest—"

"A group of ghosts almost killed me once already and I'm not going back for a second round. Find another way." My voice was ice-cold steel. Shame I couldn't say the same about my nerves; I wanted to tuck my tail and run back to the palace.

For Haley, Wynvail, Emlyn, Kai, Harvey, and Wane, I reminded myself. For my family of loyal, murderous weirdos.

I kept having to remind myself the lifetime I lived with them was fake, that Cronus created it to trick us, but every last minute of it had been real to me. They were my family, and I loved them.

I swallowed back my dread but couldn't quite forget how it felt to be touched by the burning ice of a ghost's hand.

"Fine," Walden allowed after a fraught minute. Probably because he realised the portal looked fishy too; I knew it wasn't because he trusted my word. "We'll go through the mountain pass just ahead."

"Thank you," I forced through gritted teeth.

"Just avoiding another stab wound," he muttered.

I hadn't let go of my knife, though his blood had begun to dry on the blade. I filled my lungs with air when the horse veered into the narrow mountain pass, rock rising above us on both sides. Tension wound tighter with every step the horse—let's call him Dave—made into the rocky pass, the mountains seeming to press tighter, closer around us.

The stone was going to topple. It was going to crush us, press all the breath from my lungs until I gasped and fought for tiny scraps of air. Exactly like it did in my trial.

Walden adjusted his grip on the reins, knuckles brushing the outside of my leg in an innocent touch, and the touch was such a shock that I ripped myself out of the memories.

"Claustrophobic?"

"That's none of your fucking business," I snapped, hauling myself out of memories of Cronus's rumbling laughter, his taunts that I was weak and no wonder my biological parents hadn't kept me. No wonder none of my foster families wanted me.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Do you want a matching hole in your other leg?" I demanded, clenching my fingers around the knife.

"I'd rather avoid it."

God, he was dull. The least he could have done was say something snarky and funny to distract me from my fear of enclosed spaces. If Kai was here, he'd have had a sarcastic remark lined up.

Don't cry. Don't fucking cry.

I didn't even know if he was alive, if any of them were. Hastily, I flicked a tear off my cheek and dared Walden to say something.

I jumped when Dave the horse reared back suddenly, a shrieking whinny making my heart skip. It echoed off the sharp rock all around us, sending a chill down my arms. "What the fuck?"

"Ghosts. You were right," Walden said with a graveness that freaked me out.

Now I was looking for it, I couldn't miss the silver-blue glow splashed like paint along the mountains. Getting bigger. Getting closer with every second Dave refused to move.

"They'll drain us dry," I said, weaker than I'd like. "We need to—"

"Turn back?" Walden finished. "There's a slight issue with that."

I twisted around, craning my neck, and cold doused me like they were already touching me when I saw three ghosts behind us. Penning us into the mountain pass.

"I don't suppose you have experience fighting spirits?" I asked, fighting a tremble from my hands.

"None."

"Some fucking use you are," I snapped, stashing my knife and dragging my satchel onto my lap. I dug into every pocket and hidden nook, like I'd have any clue what any of the objects were. There was a fucking wine glass in here—what was I supposed to do with that?

Well, only one way to find out.

I swung my leg over Dave's back—not fucking easily, I tell you—and slid down his powerful body, impressed with myself when I landed on two feet instead of ass-first.

"Get back up here!" Walden ordered with more animation than I'd heard in his voice. "You—I don't even know your name."

"Poor Walden," I cooed, using my sarcasm like armour. I closed my hand around something that felt grenade-ish and ripped it free of the bag, hurling it at the three spirits—all old, moulding women with frazzled hair and eerie smiles. Sisters, maybe. "A fucking salt grinder, Wynvail?" I snarled, as if he could hear me.

The glass grinder hit the ground at the spirits feet and did not explode. Bummer. I was already digging through the bag for something else, so I missed the first few puffs of purple smoke that billowed from it, only noticing when a plume erupted big enough to swallow the ghosts.

Hope filled my chest for a second. It died when the ghosts floated through the smoke, unaffected. Great. I was going to be murdered by the ghosts of three little old ladies.

I faked a gasp and pointed. "Look, an antiques store!"

They didn't turn. Worth a shot. What else did old ladies like?

"Oh my god! Have you seen that new bingo hall? It's right over there. There's a potluck!"

They didn't deviate from their unsettling glide towards me, Walden, and Dave. And I was out of ideas.

"Move," Walden ordered with so much authority that I actually moved, flattening my back to the rock and breathing fast as adrenaline dumped into my system.

A chunk of lilac rock ripped itself off the top of the mountain and plummeted in an arc that made me catch my breath. I felt very young, and more than a little helpless, watching Walden rip the mountain apart. A chill went down my spine when he drove the DIY boulder into the ground mere feet in front of the three ghostly women. The ground rocked with the impact. I couldn't do anything like that. I barely knew the basics even after years of training with Harvey in the fake timeline.

I glanced at my hands, thinking of the way magic had overflowed them in Cronus's prison, thinking of the man who sensed my magic and answered its call. Apollo. The jerk that was my father. I didn't want to think about that, about how I'd inherited his magic. The sunlight that warmed my insides was because of him.

I jerked my head up when a tanned hand grabbed my arm, narrowing a glare on Walden as he dragged me back to the horse. Dave looked to be mid-panic-attack which was very relatable, throwing his dark head back and forth.

"Get on," Walden ordered, somehow even surlier than he'd been earlier, a deep furrow cutting his brow.

"What did you do?" I asked, craning my neck to see the mini-landslide he'd caused.

"Not enough to stop them, only slow them down."

When I hesitated too long, he grabbed my waist and lifted me onto Dave's back, seizing the reins and swinging himself up behind me.

"Tell me you have an amazing plan for getting through the next lot of spirits," I breathed.

"We're going to ride through them," Walden replied grimly, "and keep riding until we reach the portal."

I whipped my head around to stare at his Henry Cavillish face. "Are you out of your goddamn mind?"

His expression was set with determination, his eyes flinty. God, he was serious.

"If this gets me killed, I'm coming back to haunt your ass so hard," I hissed and whipped back to face forward as he kicked his heels into Dave's side and the hellstallion shot forward with a scream of complaint.

"I know," I said, patting the horse's neck. "I think he's insane too."

Strangely, Dave stopped screaming, panting instead as he raced through the narrow mountain pass.

"You're good with animals," Walden said. "You might have mentioned that earlier."

My scowl deepened. I wasn't magically good with them like he insinuated; animals just liked me. Where pets of my foster families hissed or snarled at other new kids, they were timid and friendly with me.

"This isn't going to work!" I cried as we veered around a bend in the pass, and the source of the silver-blue glow came into sight—not just three spirits. Twenty of them, thirty even. "They'll kill us."

"You threatened me and brought us here," Walden replied evenly. "This is the consequence of your actions."

I winced, feeling a twinge of regret. But it was his decision to ride straight into the horde of ghosts. If he got himself—and me—killed, that wasn't my fault.

I dove a shaky hand into my bag, closed my fingers around a blocky metal shape, and drew out a music box. It was inlaid with enamel in the shape of a rose, which just made me miss Haley and Kai and all the others more. Pretty, but I didn't care what it looked like; I drew my arm back and threw the box at the ghosts, shielding my eyes when it exploded with phosphorous turquoise light.

"What was that?" Walden demanded, his voice a booming noise in my ears as light erupted, travelling over me like cold water and silk.

"Not a clue," I answered, squinting through the light and flinching back when a spectral hand reached through it. "Shit!" I hissed when the handsy ghost reached through my knee and into Dave's neck. Cold burned the places the ghost touched.

"Faster!" Walden urged Dave, like he spoke any language other than horse. "Tell the horse to go faster!"

How was that going to make any difference? I flinched away from another grasping spirit, this time on my left, and bent close to Dave's back, whispering, "You have to run faster. Please."

I caught my breath when Dave soared beneath us, flying into the bright light and the horde of ghosts like he was made of the wind itself. I pushed down the unease that swelled in my chest. Did I have some kind of magic, to talk to animals and have them understand?

"Good!" Walden shouted. "Keep going!"

A sword sliced the air in the corner of my eye, like the guard thought a sword would do any good against spirits. Guess we were both stupid because I reached into my bag and grasped the wine glass, hurling it in front of us as Dave sprinted. The glass shattered against the side of the mountain to our left, and I yelled in surprise when the rock crumpled , melting to a frothy substance like the wine glass was acid. Walden didn't ask what the hell I was doing this time, and I didn't volunteer any answers.

The passage twisted ahead in an abrupt turn. I sank my fingers into Dave's mane, holding on for dear life as he took the turn at extreme speed. Spectral hands grabbed for us as we fled, brushing my calves, my boots, my arms, so cold they were like ice. I shuddered, pressing myself closer to Dave's back, and in the next moment I was flying, the horse's scream filled the air, and Walden was yelling in surprise.

I hit the ground hard on my hip, a bark of pain ripped from me. I was so dazed that I lay there for long moments, my head spinning. What happened…?

"Get up!" Walden urged tightly, fabric scuffing the ground as he knelt beside me, reaching for my shoulder. "Come on, kid, get up."

"Don't call me kid," I snapped, unable to hide a flinch when I thought about Emlyn. Was he dead? Had Cronus killed him? Or was that empty, haunting look in his eyes again, because Cronus had murdered his mate?

I shoved off the hard ground, shaky and so cold that I shook, my breath pluming in the air because—because we were surrounded by ghosts. Walden's broad hand grasped my arm and hauled me, dazed, through the press of reaching, hungry ghosts. They wanted our life, our warmth, wanted every bit of energy and magic in our bodies, as if it might animate them in death. It wouldn't. Dead was dead.

"This way," Walden urged. "What else do you have in that bag of yours?"

"I don't know," I admitted, my voice slow, dragging. My shoe hit a rock and I stumbled but the palace guard kept me upright. "You could leave me to die, you know. No one would even know."

"I'm not leaving you to die," he replied angrily. I realised his sword was in his hand when he swung it in front of us, cutting through the astral bodies and scattering them into mist that quickly reformed into bodies.

"I threatened you into coming here. Fuck knows why you'd help me now."

"I'm not leaving a kid alone in a mob of ghosts," he replied firmly. "That's not the kind of person I am."

No wonder he didn't have a sense of humour; he had a firm moral compass. He probably saw right and wrong in black and white, and that mentality tended to repel humour like oil and water.

Instead of replying—I had no idea what to say—I dug through my bag again, gritting my teeth against the icy hands trailing over my shoulders, my back, and plunging into my chest. A sharp breath whistled through my teeth when a shard of ice grazed my heart, but I grabbed a massive, ornate key from the bag.

"Stay back!" Walden barked at a spirit edging closer.

When the ghost laughed in a way none of the others had, low and foreboding, I froze. Chills of a different kind swept through me, and I backed up until my side pressed to Walden's. I didn't know this guard, but anything and anyone was better than the psychopath staring at me with a twisted little smile on his silvery, transparent face.

"Hello, again," the ghost purred at me.

Walden startled at the voice, the speech. Most ghosts didn't have the power to speak. He snapped a look down at me, and I swallowed.

"You know this ghost?"

I shook my head. "He attacked us before. He's a creep."

The creep smiled wider, taking a floating step that raised every hair on my body. The key felt heavier in my grasp, like even being this close to the spirit was draining me.

The disgusting bastard licked his ghostly lips as he leered at me, and a disconcerting rumble came from Walden's chest.

"I see," he said tightly, angling himself in front of me.

I glanced quickly at the key, making sure I wasn't about to drop it, and inhaled sharply when I saw it wasn't metal at all. It was pure black, not shadow or night, more like the absence of light, like a black hole. A cornea of white light throbbed and flickered around it. What the hell had Wynvail given me?

It became rapidly heavy in my hand, a force dragging my hand down. I gritted my teeth and fought it as the psycho ghost floated closer, eyes glittering behind his glasses. The key pulled and pulled, as heavy as an anchor. I swore colourfully when I was dragged to my knees on the cold ground, the key taking over, driving itself into the stone below me and—

"Holy shit," I breathed, shivering excitement in my veins despite how scared I was of the spirits. There was a keyhole in the ground that hadn't been there before, and the key fitted itself to it perfectly.

"Walden, grab Dave."

"Dave?"

"The horse!"

A force had hold of me; my wrist turned the key in the lock against my will, like the key had possessed me.

"Get ready," I warned, the heaviness extending to my arms, my chest. My other hand moved without my permission, gripping the edge of a trapdoor that hadn't been there a second ago. Butterflies rioted in my stomach. My breath caught.

"Walden," I warned. "You better be ready."

"I'm a little busy," he bit out.

I threw a panicked glance over my shoulder and jolted at the sight of the psycho ghost's hands around Walden's solid neck, strangling the life out of him. Anger struck a match against my magic, and sunlight pooled in my palm, spilling around the key onto the ground.

Kill the spirit, kill the spirit , I chanted in my head, picturing my magic the way Harvey had taught me, sinking deep into the pool of it and not shying from it like I had in the beginning. The magic belonged to me, not the other way around. I pictured a cresting wave made of rich, buttery sunlight, and surprise tugged my mouth into a smile when it formed in front of me, not as big as I imagined but tall enough to swallow the ghost.

"Do you really think—" the spirit began, laughing.

I dropped the wave into him and hoped he choked on it, hoped he fucking drowned for the way he looked at me, for the way I could still feel his stare as a physical touch, burning my body.

Walden jumped back and whistled; Dave thundered towards us with a high, panicked cry.

Heaviness pulled on my arm until it felt dead, numb. The trapdoor screeched as I pulled it open, whatever magic the key contained throbbing with more power, more urgency.

"Get in!" I yelled at Walden, eyeing Dave. He wasn't going to fit. "You're gonna have to run, buddy. Sorry but we can't take you with us. I'll make an opening for you, and you run as fast as you can, okay?"

I must have been imagining the hellstallion's nod. There was no way he understood and replied. Right?

"I'm not getting in there and leaving you behind," Walden said with a new rasp of anger in his voice.

I flung my hand up again, letting sunlight drip onto the ground, and pictured a huge channel of sunlight forming, just wide enough for a horse to pass through but powerful enough to shove the spirits against the walls of the mountains.

"Shit," Walden swore softly when golden sunlight filled the passage. "Who are you?"

"Verena," I replied, turning away from the bright glow of my magic and grabbing the guard's arm with my free hand. "Get in. Now!"

He didn't question me this time, which was very strange behaviour. Who followed a girl they didn't know into a trapdoor that opened in the base of a mountain?

Blackness beckoned beyond the hole in the ground, throbbing with a corona of white light just like the key. I pushed Walden into the void, my heart hammering as he fell with a shout of surprise, and then I jumped in after him.

Take me to my family, I pleaded, gripping the key so hard it bit into my palm and drew blood. Take me to my family.

Blackness tore past us, flickering at the edges like it burned with white fire. Endless. Heavy and scalding, like the air from a coal fire. I had the sense that Walden was ahead of me, tumbling through the darkness, but if he screamed, I never heard the sound. I didn't hear my own cries either—until the blackness spat us out onto a whirling land of greyness and acrid rotting stink.

I landed on my back with a grunt, all the air knocked out of me, and heard Walden hit the grass with a harsh breath, too. I didn't stay down this time. I dragged myself to my knees even though my head spun and trained my blurry vision on the field all around us, noise meeting my ears in a sudden rush—shouts of pain, roars of beasts, and somewhere too close for comfort Cronus was laughing.

I stumbled to my feet, ignoring the way I wavered as I reached into my bag, the key falling from my fingers as I searched for something else. But all I had left was the key.

No—that wasn't quite true. My pocket bulged, the sphere straining the limits of the fabric. I didn't know what it did, didn't know what it can create a separate world that stands apart from every other realm in the universe meant, but my eyes finally focused and I saw Cronus looming above the field in his horrific nightmare form—and Haley flapping her wings frantically as a blue net trapped her in place.

Blue like the magic that had ringed her ankle like a fucked up anklet, that had trapped us in a false life and broke my family's hearts. Broke mine. I'd had a little sister. Kaida. Tiny and winged and squish-faced, so damn cute. But she was never real. All of it was a cruel fucking lie. And now Cronus had used that same magic to trap Haley.

"Like fuck," I growled under my breath, the ground steadier under me, rage dripping like sunlight from my palms.

I didn't think. Haley was trapped and easy prey for Cronus. Again. I ripped the sphere from my pocket, my magic dripping into the channels carved all over it, lighting up elaborate symbols until the whole thing glowed. I'd never completed the circuit before; when I lit it up the first time, I only filled the markings halfway with sunlight, but now I pushed it full of magic until the sphere vibrated and shone in my hands.

"What are you doing?" Walden demanded, grabbing my arm.

"Saving my family," I replied, holding the sphere in both hands, magic pouring from me, my heart racing.

I didn't know how to unlock the magic inside it, how to make a pocket world. But what the fuck am I doing was practically our family motto—Haley never had a clue what she was doing, and neither did the guys. So I sank my fingers into indentations in the sphere and pressed hard, twisting when that didn't work, prising with my fingernails when that failed.

Come on, come on…

A little shiver went down my spine when all eight of my fingers found soft dips in the sphere, my thumbs fitting to swirls carved in the metal like they'd always been meant to be there. My heart thundered. When I put pressure on the swirls, this time the sphere clicked.

I'd watched adventure films; it was natural to twist the sphere and pull it open, two sides splitting enough for an inch of the insides to show. It wasn't sun-yellow that spilled from the sphere but gleaming emerald green.

"This better fucking work," I warned Wynvail, glaring across the field as if he could see me, wherever he was. If he was even still alive.

I sucked in a breath and threw it at Cronus with all my strength.