19. Sun

Chapter 19

Sun

“ I t is time to wake up.”

Hadi’s voice infiltrated my fitful sleep. Oddly, it didn’t set me on edge anymore. It was too familiar. Too close. Perhaps that was the tether at work. I knew he was no danger to me for now. In fact, I was starting to feel that he wasn’t much different than the others. We had all taken time to warm up to each other, after all. And if the way he had been watching me last night was anything to go by… I was even starting to get used to the pincers…

Or perhaps it was because I could see through his ornery mask to the spoiled person beneath. In a way, he reminded me of a child who had never been disciplined. For some reason, that opinion of him made him seem less dangerous.

“The sun has risen, and our time is running out,” he went on when none of us moved. “We must go now, or this entire quest was pointless.”

Finally, I opened my eyes a crack.

It still looked dark to me, but I was sandwiched between Kiar and Clem and Bracken had us all wrapped up in his wings to keep the cold out of our little cocoon.

It was like a little shelter, almost as cozy as a tent–more so, if I was being honest, because Kiar felt so protective against my back and Clem was so soft against my chest, and they both fit me so perfectly.

“We can rest a little longer if that is what you want,” Clem whispered sleepily against my neck.

Kiar made a soft, affirmative noise and I had the impression that the suggestion was more for their own benefits.

Sighing, I stroked Clem’s pale hair and gently kissed the top of his head.

He made a happy sound, snuggling closer, and I didn’t even have it in me to berate myself. I should because truly, I was getting too close to them. I was already far more attached than should have been possible, but it was what it was.

I would deal with any regret or wrong feelings when the tether was broken. For now, we carried forward.

I poked Bracken’s wing, and he lifted it at once, allowing in a gust of cold air so that he could look at us. It was slightly lighter than I’d realized. The sun was indeed about to break the horizon.

Kiar and Clem both groaned.

“Time to get up?” Bracken asked.

I nodded.

“Yes. Alhadya is correct. We need to go now. There is no time to waste.”

Bracken pulled his wings all the way back and I sat up, shivering.

Alhadya was sitting above us, almost as though he was keeping watch while we slept. Perhaps he had been.

He was crouched as small as he could get though, and for the first time I wondered if the chill bothered him.

The mountain was unforgiving. It was cold, jagged and steep with nowhere to offer shelter as the winds grew stronger. It had snowed at some point and the fluffy powder was nearly unbearable on my feet which had nothing but thin, worn sandals to offer protection.

Standing, I tried to stretch my worn, stiff muscles. I knew that today’s climb would be no different than the last day’s had been, except, perhaps to grow even more difficult.

It was a wonder that anyone had ever spoken to the goddess before and now I understood why the stories of the meetings with her were so rare. It was no easy feat to climb to the top of her mountain to her temple. And I had four monsters to help me.

“Is everyone ready?” I asked. “There is a shortcut we shall take, so we can beat the blood moon. This chain will lead us straight to her temple.”

They each nodded in turn.

Clem was already hugging himself for warmth but his sullen gaze on me and the way he inched a little bit closer told me that at any moment he would try to start warming me with his magic again, whether I wanted him to or not.

“We have one day left,” I reminded them.

“Then we’ll have to climb all the way back down,” Clem pouted.

I frowned.

“We will deal with that when it comes...” I glanced at Bracken, already not looking forward to the prospect of one more day of this.

He seemed to catch my thoughts because he spread his wings behind him.

“I will fly you and Clem to the bottom of the mountain when we are done,” he promised. “At least if we are spotted in the air by enemy nocs, we will have plenty of time to shake them. We can hide in the woods below where we will not be found.”

I swallowed and shook my head.

“We will deal with that when the time comes,” I repeated.

I forced my head to remain down and to avoid looking at Alhadya, or the other two.

Bracken was clearly forgetting the most important part. When we descended this mountain, we would not be doing it together. We would no longer be bound or dependent on one another. For all I knew, he would leave all of us here, or maybe even help Alhadya push me from the steepest slope.

I swallowed and for some reason reached for him.

Bracken did not notice anything, simply taking my hand to help me onto a ledge as we began our climb.

We continued like that for some time, using each other, helping each other climb higher and higher until the path leveled out some.

The temperature was rapidly dropping, but I knew the rope had to be close. Brave souls had created a metal chain linking the middle of the mountain to the peak. That tether, that rope, had been climbed by thousands of pilgrims before I was born.

And, despite Tsuki falling from her goddess standing, the chain should still be there. It was made of the hardest metal humans could forge, strong enough to survive the elements and the test of time.

So, I was caught off guard when we rounded a bend, only to find heaps of metal and rope torn to shreds and scattered on the slope.

”Hah!” I sucked in a breath, throat burning from the cold as Alhayda landed beside me suddenly.

He reached down and grabbed a link of the chain that used to ascend to the heavens.

“I suppose this is the chain you mentioned we would use?”

It didn’t appear to me that the chain broke from natural causes. Even buried in the snow, the metal still shined like new, and the rope bisecting it was frayed but not unraveling. The pathway had surely been destroyed on purpose.

But by who?

I had no time to investigate. Time was of the essence, and we had wasted enough of it coming here.

“I thought I knew a shortcut. I thought wrong,” I told Hadi curtly.

“What do we do now?” Kiar asked, frowning at Clem who shook violently, even under Bracken’s wing. Kiar rubbed his cheek, and I cocked my head to the side, wondering if he knew how sweetly he now treated Clem.

“We climb. The hard way. Before the sun sets.”

For some hours, none of us spoke. The silence didn’t bother me. I needed all of my attention on each step forward.

The mountain grew even more treacherous. The sleek areas of exposed rock became more slippery, eventually turning to ice.

It stung my hands when I had to hold onto it in places to climb up higher.

“Let me carry you,” Bracken said, when I slipped for the third time.

I was shaking so hard that it was almost ridiculous to argue, but I had to, especially once I saw the pallor of Clem’s skin.

“Hold him,” I ordered. “Keep him warm.”

Clem glowered, presumably because I was making him accept care when I would not allow him to care for me the same way.

“We all need our energy,” I said as Bracken lifted him to hold against his chest.

“I can hold you,” Kiar suggested, but I shook my head.

“Not for long. It will tire you out.”

I felt for Kiar. Most of his body was directly against the icy ground and powdery snow. At least only my feet and hands had to come into contact with the painful cold.

Bracken seemed to be having the easiest time. Even carrying Clem did not slow him down.

Every time the terrain became too difficult, he jumped and used his wings to propel him to the next point of solid ground.

“I will find the safest path,” Kiar told me, and for a while, he moved ahead of me, testing the mountainside for the most secure spots for me to step and climb.

It worked for the most part, until it didn’t. I supposed that a long snake body had little in common with human feet and when I took a step, going in the direction that Kiar had found, the earth suddenly crumbled without warning.

I slipped as what had been a sheet of ice disguised as solid rock fell from under me.

I tried to catch myself, but there was nothing solid to stop me as I went over the edge of the mountain. One second, I was standing and the next, I was falling. A gasp barely left my mouth before my fall was just as suddenly halted.

For a moment, I hung in mid-air, shocked. Then I realized that something had caught me around the ribs, and I looked up in wonder to find Alhadya clutching a line of his web above me. He had caught me.

Gritting his teeth, he hoisted me up, then again until I could nearly reach the ledge I had fallen from. I attempted to crawl up on my own, but his four hands caught me and pulled me up with ease.

He set me on my feet but didn’t release me.

Instead, he held me by the arms, looking frustrated.

“Thank you,” I said and whatever other words had been on the tip of his tongue vanished as I met his gaze.

For a moment he looked flabbergasted, then he straightened to his full height, towering over me to give me a disdainful glare.

“I did not do it for you,” he said firmly. “After all this, I would rather survive, that is all.”

I raised a brow, a bit confused because he seemed to be lying. I had gotten the impression he was occasionally frustrated by our group’s love making, but even then, I wasn’t convinced he would want to join. It had crossed my mind a few times that all of us on the tether were desperate to be physically together as well, but if Alhadya felt the same way, he had kept it to himself.

And he certainly did not like me as a person... so if not because he wanted to save himself, what other reason was there for him to save me?

Grumbling, he bent down and began grabbing at me again, suddenly pulling me toward him.

Confused, I looked back at the others who were all watching the scene curiously as Alhadya suddenly pulled me atop him, forcing me onto his back.

My jaw dropped as I was forced to ride him the way I used to ride my dearly departed horse.

When I looked at the rest of the group, they all had matching expressions of shock. Suffice it to say, I doubted that their former king had ever allowed himself to be ridden like a steed.

“What is happening?” I asked slowly.

“You cannot climb the rest of the way,” he grumbled. “It is too steep. We need to get to the temple by nightfall.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder, giving me a heated glare that in this position I could not take seriously at all.

“Hold on tight,” he ordered.

The moment my arms went around his waist, two of his hands gripped them, holding them in place so that I would not slip and forcing me to press tightly to his broad back.

His bare skin was cool to the touch, but as he began to walk, our bodies heated each other and for the first time since this morning, my shivers were subdued, and the cold became more bearable.

The others didn’t say a word, but when we passed Bracken and Clem, I could see the small, pleased smile on Clem’s face.

I wanted to tell him to cut it out. This meant nothing.

Still, it was hard to imagine Alhadya–or Hadi, as the others would call him–trying to kill me in a few hours’ time. His body felt so warm and welcoming.

I shut my eyes, accepting the respite, my cheek pressed to his shoulder, lulled by the sway of his walk.

This doesn’t mean anything , I told myself. None of this did. We all had a common problem, and we were working on it together. That was all.

My eyes drifted open just in time to see Kiar hug himself against a gust of wind. Bracken lifted his wing to shield himself and Clem.

Soon, I would not care if they were cold, or hurt, or alive or dead.

Why did that thought make me feel so sick?