Chapter 17

KLARA

Zaridan landed at the edge of a wide, glimmering lake in a hilly valley. Overhead, I heard Elthika. Wild Elthika, I realized, my heart giving an excited but alarmed jolt. When I looked up, I saw an entire horde of them flying overhead, passing us as they flew west.

“Where are they going?” I asked Sarkin, still in his arms as he guided us down Zaridan’s wing. I craned my head past him, if only to watch them a little while longer. They were beautiful. Beautiful and awe inspiring in their power.

“There’s some nesting grounds toward the western coast,” he told me. The ringing in my ears from the wind was slowly dissipating. That had been a pleasant ride, if only because there had been very little pain. And with Sarkin holding me, I’d felt surprisingly safe. I’d enjoyed it. I wondered if, with time, I would come to enjoy riding an Elthika.

I just had to get over this pesky rider burn first.

And the teeth-gritting ache and soreness in every muscle of my body. No wonder Sarkin and the rest of the riders were so well built . Riding an Elthika was deceptively difficult and required a level of physical strength and endurance that I wasn’t certain I’d ever be able to possess.

“Where are we?”

“The temple of Lishara,” he told me.

I frowned, looking around with curiosity and confusion. “I don’t see a temple.”

He set me down into the spongy, bright teal grass. It was long, brushing up toward my calves, and feathery light as it swayed in a gentle breeze. The lake was sparkling in the lowering sun. It hadn’t been a long journey, but it hadn’t been short either. I had no idea where we were. How far away we were from the horde, but I knew that my stomach was rumbling with hunger. It warred with my nerves, however, and eventually my nerves won out, quieting it.

I noticed that Zaridan was oddly still, though her ears were twitching. A dragon appeared overhead, a familiar one, and it circled until it landed behind us. Feranos, Sarkin’s commander, dismounted, nodding at us both as he approached.

Sarkin went to Zaridan, murmuring words I couldn’t understand in Karag, but then I watched as the Elthika stalked to the lake line, stepping within.

“Come,” Sarkin told me. The hairs at the nape of my neck rose, my flesh tingling. There was something here. I could sense it. It felt like…Bekkar and Arik’s sword. Deep below the palace in Dothik. That quiet humming of power and magic.

He led me to the edge of the lake before pulling me into the water until it lapped at my ankles.

“A mate bond’s blood,” Sarkin said softly, “with the blessing of their Elthika. That is what opens the temple. That is why you cannot see it. Yet.”

My brow furrowed when he pulled one of his daggers, my heart giving a mighty thump at the sight of it. Yet I watched as Sarkin cut his palm, black blood welling up. His hand dropped, and I watched the blood drip into the lake, blooming like an ink splatter on parchment over the still surface.

He went to Zaridan.

“What are you doing?” I breathed, watching him use his dagger to slide underneath one of her scales, one on her chest. Zaridan blew a sharp huff but otherwise didn’t move as Sarkin plucked out the scale, nearly as wide as his palm. Onyx black and thick.

“Elthikan magic was once the most powerful thing in existence,” Sarkin told me, holding the scale up to me. I saw a small drip of shimmering silver blood coating the edge. Elthika blood.

He tapped the scale, and the drop fell into the lake.

The blood seemed to create a larger ripple than was possible for something so light. There was a sensation of electricity in the air, as if a storm was coming. I could smell it. It felt like a humming, the land coming alive.

Like…heartstones.

Feranos’s Elthika stomped his forelimbs, his tail swinging, and yet his rider didn’t move. He watched us from his spot on shore, a decent enough distance away that I wondered if he could even hear us.

“Once, there was plenty of it,” Sarkin continued, approaching me. “It bled from everything in this land. You could smell it in the breeze, feel it pulse in the earth. But our ancestors—and their Elthika—became greedy. They used it to create technology beyond what we thought was possible, advancing our nation forward at lightning speed, using it to protect our borders and crush any enemies that thought to take it from us. They consumed too much without replenishing, and so that power slowly died.”

“The heartstones,” I realized. Behind him, Zaridan began her sy’asha , and I inhaled a sharp breath, hearing her beautiful song as the humming grew louder and louder, ripples coming from the center of the lake, as if…as if something was rising .

“The way the story is told, it’s said that the first Elthika, Mokag, cried tears of loneliness, wishing for a mate and a companion to share his long life with,” Sarkin told me. I met his eyes, drawn by the tale, hungry for it. “And from his tears grew trees. Thalara trees, laden with powerful heartstones at their roots. With the magic of those heartstones, Lishara came to be. The first female Elthika, Mokag’s mate.”

Understanding went through me.

“And this is her temple,” I said softly.

“Where she died,” Sarkin corrected me, his eyes briefly leaving my own to look out over the lake. “Where they died together. The temple was built much later, with the same technology that nearly wiped out our heartstones, but…you can still feel the Elthikan magic here. Only here, in a sacred place, on sacred ground, does it still thrive. You’ll see why.”

My heart was throbbing in my chest, beating itself against bone, but I wasn’t afraid.

He held out his hand, and I remember what he’d said. A mate bond’s blood . I gave him my palm, and he made the cut quick and clean with a slide of his dagger. My red blood spread into the veins of my palm, and I leaned down, pressing my hand into the lake, watching the blood drift around it like a red fog.

I huffed out a breath at the sight, a connection of a distant memory…and then rose.

The lake began to tremble at our feet.

“Sarkin,” I said, alarm going through me, stepping toward him. Zaridan’s sy’asha only grew louder and louder. The stomps of Feranos’s Elthika made a steady beat, like drums. Like music.

Something dark was rising out of the water, sending larger waves our way. The bottom hem of my dress was soaked. Soon, the lake lapped at my mid-calf.

With parted lips, I watched a stone structure rise from the lake. A single doorway.

An entrance, I thought. Thunderous booms echoed across the water, rippling out around the valley, hitting the tall mountains to the east and ricocheting it back. The sound of rushing water came next, sliding off the stone but also tumbling into the black mouth of the arched entrance, the inside pitch black, leading down into a hidden tunnel below the surface of the lake.

Carvings were etched into the stone. Of two Elthika—Mokag and Lishara, I knew.

Then it went quiet.

Sarkin’s warm hand went to the small of my back, and he walked me toward the entrance through the lake. The water never deepened, and I realized that there was a road, a pathway beneath our feet that led us straight to it.

I marveled that if we had flown by this lake, it would have looked like any of the others I’d seen. There was nothing from above that had marked it as otherworldly, and yet…

This had been created with the technology that Sarkin had spoken of? Or was this magic, in its simplest and purest of forms?

Perhaps they are one and the same, I thought.

Sarkin stepped through the mouth of the doorway first. I looked over my shoulder, at Zaridan, who was regarding us from the shores of the lake, a scale missing, revealing dark gray, unprotected flesh underneath. Her sacrifice. Feranos was walking toward us, intent to follow us into the temple.

“Klara,” Sarkin called. When I turned, I saw there were stairs and he was already halfway down them. “Come.”

I took a deep breath, then followed.