Chapter 24

Seated against a crystal boulder, I dangle my hand in the blood-red stream that cuts through the grassy plateau in gurgling twists and turns. Around me, iridescent spires reach for pink, wispy clouds, their tips bearing little windows large enough to poke a head out.

Just.

Some spill tumbling vines with purple blooms tipped toward beams of morning light shafting between the gaps.

It’s a sight to behold—otherworldly—but Lychnis has never felt … normal.

It’s believed the Goddess of Light couldn’t stand to watch the decimation of her beautiful creations. That she tore from the sky on a crescent moon and fell like stardust, swallowed by the sea. That the ocean birthed her in the form of this island; the geyser her blood, forever flowing.

All I know is that it didn’t always exist. That the ocean hailed us—a call to arms that whispered through the waves.

‘Get apple! Get apple!’

‘I don’t want a fucking apple,’ I growl at Zykanth, scouring the tree his attention is narrowed on—ten times larger than it was last time I saw it.

Many moons ago.

Its branches bow under the weight of plump, green fruit being gathered and placed in baskets by a pair of Aeshlians shrouded in brown cloaks.

The woman tucks a drape of hair behind her thorny ear, her attention coming to rest on me.

I quickly look away.

Seeing them the other day rocked me to the core. I’d stumbled back to our nest in disbelief, suddenly exhausted, certain I was going to wake and realize it was all a dream. That I wouldn’t be forced to look into the eyes of the ones I’d failed and pretend that nothing happened.

So I did just that—for days.

Avoided.

This morning, Vicious took me by the hand and dragged me out the door, leading me down the too-familiar path to the oasis—extorting her unique power over my impulses. Perhaps knowing I’d fucking follow her anywhere.

‘Get apple!’

Clearing my throat, I stuff a loose shard of crystal in the pocket of my holey shorts that Vicious pulled from her ramshackle pile. ‘There. Treasure in my pocket. Now shut up about the apples,’ I grind out, gaze drifting to Vicious.

‘Precious little savage one. Mine.’

She’s cross-legged in a patch of tilled soil, dressed in her too-big shirt, her slender, sun-kissed legs covered in dirt. Her hair is a shock of white scribble, eyes like the burning horizon.

My insides ignite.

‘Yes.’ I swallow thickly. ‘Yours …’

Two children totter about, cast beneath her watchful eye. The smallest plays in the dirt, lustrous curls bouncing about her heart-shaped face while she piles soil into heaps she pats into different shapes. The other can’t be older than six, her hair longer, one side woven into braids adorned with crystal beads. She rips vegetables from the soil, inspecting each with a serious look as she dusts them off, piling them in a basket she could curl up inside.

She offers a carrot to Vicious, who frowns for a long moment before taking it.

Biting it.

Her face screws up, and she spits orange chunks into the soil, then wipes her tongue with the sleeve of her shirt to the bursting tune of the child’s laughter.

The faintest smile tilts my lips, disappearing when I feel the woman Aeshlian watching me again, filling my chest with a tidal wave of guilt.

Does she recognize me?

Hold me accountable?

I wouldn’t blame her if she did. If she shoved me against a spire and swore in my face, tears streaking down her cheeks.

This oasis … It used to be home for scores of Aeshlians going about their daily tasks: hacking tools from chunks of crystal, tending crops, preparing vegetables to be baked in ovens dug into the soil. Children frolicking in the stream, picking wildflowers in the sun. Happy and carefree.

A pure existence now tainted.

A slashing memory strikes—of petrified screams bouncing between the spires. Of the sea air soured with the potent tang of blood that splashed the soil near the base of that supersized apple tree. A tree that appears to have gobbled up the offer like it was freely given, expanding from the unnatural punch of light it took from the Aeshlian blood.

My chin falls to my chest.

‘Get the apple!’

I groan.

Sensing movement to my left, my heart lurches, eyes widening when Anver sits beside me—arms draped across his bent knees, hands clasped together. A fur pelt accentuates his broad shoulders, his hair shorn on both sides, framing thorned ears, the rest twisted in a rope of beaded braids that fall down his spine.

He turns his head, exposing a scar slashed through his brow and eye that wasn’t there last time I saw him, his strong jawline and chiseled cheekbones softened by the fine elegance of his ethereal breed. “It’s been a long time, old friend.”

His gruff voice rolls like barreling waves thumping against my chest.

“I … thought they got you all.”

I swear the light in his eyes dims, and he cuts a look at the children as a heaviness settles between us. “Almost.” He clears his throat. “Some of us survived in the island’s deep hollows, hidden behind one of my shields. We only came out once we were emaciated from hunger, and by then the island was abandoned.”

Failure claws up my ribs and sits upon my shoulders like some flesh-eating beast.

There were years of peace before the island was discovered by outsiders, by which time our guards had dropped. Many bruák came all at once, flying across the ocean on vessels with iron spears bolted to their decks. With empty hulls ready to pack full with warm bodies.

Blasts of power ripped the air and scorched the sea, and we couldn’t stop them all.

The ocean ran sparkly and red as the sound of death filled the air, accentuated by agonized screams as babes were torn from mothers’ breasts.

Our treasure was taken.

The sky shook, and darkness stretched above. The sea rippled, then went deathly still, becoming a ravenous, meat-eating trap for those of us who survived. Our penance, perhaps. One many of us swam into the jaws of.

Plagued by unimaginable guilt, some originals braved the mainland to hunt for our treasured friends, then failed to bring forth their tails when they came back to the ocean—having spent too long on legs. Some cast the search too wide and ended up in the wrong ocean at the wrong time, struck by the bolt of power summoned from the sky that brought an end to most of the Unseelie.

But the Aeshlians …

First, they were feasted on, then hunted to the brink of extinction right beneath our noses.

“We failed you,” I choke out, dropping my stare to the grass.

“No, you didn’t.”

I look sidelong at Anver, frowning.

“We may be immortal, but it is as unnatural to be without an end as it is to be without a shadow. Even Gods and Goddesses chose to rip from their oblivion because they know the truth.”

“Which is?”

He drops his voice to a low murmur. “Without an end, loss stacks upon your chest like stones. The loss of your home, your loved ones, your mind. I have watched both the making and breaking of my kind, and through it all, I have come to realize that mortality is a gift. Those with endless life end up destroying themselves,” he says, face etched with sorrow. “Or others.”

His words gore at my chest while he evokes a false smile and looks forward again, welcoming the man and woman carrying the basket of apples toward us. I clear my throat as both Aeshlians dip their heads, the female extending an apple in my direction.

My eyes widen.

A gift.

Zykanth erupts into a giddy swirl as shock electrifies me from within, and I reach out to accept it. “Thank you …”

She bobs her head, offering me a shy smile before drifting off with the male. They ease beneath string laden with fish flesh drying in the sun, disappearing through an entryway in one of the crystal spires.

I look at the apple, conscious of its weight; of the bright, healthy tone of its lime-green skin. I can almost taste its sharp sweetness, the underside of my tongue tingling in anticipation of the crisp meal I can’t bring myself to sink my teeth into.

To enjoy.

Not after seeing all the blood that spilled across that soil.

With thoughts swimming much faster than the sickening churn of my guts, I look down a path. The swiftest route to the ocean from here.

“You have claimed her?” Anver grunts out, the question striking me unawares.

My attention drifts to my bite mark on Vicious’s nape, half concealed by a gush of wild hair as she digs small holes with her bare hands, making way for the pouch of seeds the eldest child is dispersing throughout the patch.

‘Back off, little sparkly legs. My savage little chosen mate.’

A rumbling sound boils in the back of my throat. “I am hers, and she is mine.”

“Then why the bleak eyes?”

I sigh, running both hands through my hair, fisting the strands. “Because I know of another Aeshlian,” I admit, voice low, afraid the wind will carry my words somewhere dangerous. “A female.”

He loosens a breath, and I feel his gaze bore into the side of my face. “She evaded the huntings?”

A chill nuzzles between my ribs, burrowing deep, and I catch his bulging stare. Take in his whitewash complexion.

“She spent most of her adolescence on the coast of Ocruth. She’s since traveled south aboard the ship that shot my drake.”

Zykanth flinches, coiling into a knot, and I give him a tender stroke.

“Bahari …”

I nod, and a grim mask of foreboding settles upon Anver’s face.

“Her true self is hidden by a force not of this world, but I’ve seen too much not to worry.” To picture her being strung from a tree. Hacked to pieces.

Burned at the stake.

I clear my throat and avert my stare, shivering.

“My drake is healed now. At some stage, perhaps soon, I may have to risk the waters. I can’t take Vicious with me. If the beast that guards these islands were to hurt her …” I shake my head, teeth gritted as Zykanth unravels, thrashing against my ribs, again, and again, and again.

Can’t risk it.

Won’t.

“May I ask … how long has she been here?”

I notice Anver watching me closely, the faintest line drawn between his brows. “A while,” he finally says, as though picking the words with caution. “She came to us savage. Didn’t seem to understand right from wrong, or how to communicate. She was just—”

“Vicious,” I finish, and he nods, turning his gaze on the vegetable patch.

“Ailith and Siah are the first young born on this island since The Great Hunt, and your Vicious has grown a special bond with them. But it’s taken years of gentle coaxing and cautious gifts to pull her this far into our fold.”

Years …

The word plops into my guts like a rock, confirming my suspicions.

Years … without her tail.

Meaning my beautiful, wild Vicious has a tombstone in her chest in place of the churning, beating life force I couldn’t imagine living without.

Inside me, Zykanth releases a deep lament that rattles my bones and the strings of my heart, and I try to swallow the ball of emotion rising up my throat.

“Perhaps losing her drake hit so hard she let go of her humanity …”

Silence stretches for so long it becomes uncomfortable, and I catch Anver’s gaze. He’s watching me with precision, something roiling behind his crystalline eyes.

He lifts a brow. “You have been ashore too long, old friend.”

The words are heavy, like he’s passing me something sacred.

“What—”

A blur of motion has my attention snapping to the youngest child bounding toward us—giggle chiming, smile beaming, curls bouncing.

“Geil de neh veshta, nav Ashta!” she gushes, clapping her dirty hands, smelling like damp soil and flowers.

Reminding me of Orlaith.

“Geil de ne veshta, nav Ashta! Hath te nei—”

Anver wraps his big hands around her shoulders, stilling her steady bounce. “Use the common tongue, Ailith. Remember your lessons.”

With the most dramatic sigh I’ve ever seen, she screws up her face, as though thinking hard. “Favor, please.” She taps her lips, gaze rolling toward the sky, back again. “Gift … for Ashta?”

I can’t help but smile.

Anver laughs low before cupping his hands together. “Close enough,” he says, crisp light shafting between the gaps in his fingers—a gift born straight from the bowl that did not pass down the generations, making Anver the last with the ability to solidify his light. A few moments later, he lifts his hand, revealing a dainty bloom of luminescent crystal.

‘Treasure!’ Zykanth trills as the little girl claps and bounces, squealing with delight. ‘Treasure, treasure, treasure!’

“Thanking you favor.” She dips her head, takes the bloom, then dashes toward a path between the spires, cloak fluttering in her wake.

“I better follow,” Anver grinds out, pushing to a stand, casting me in his broad shadow. “Make sure she doesn’t fall down the hole.”

‘I like holes. Holes hide sparkly things.’

“Where’s she going?” I ask over the inner ruckus of Zykanth’s ramblings.

There’s a beat of silence, and a reverence ignites Anver’s eyes. “The well.”

Zykanth almost cracks free of his cage as his excitement bubbles over, and scales erupt across my chest, making me itch. ‘Go. Move little legs. Follow little shiny one and big shiny one. Get pretty treasure for little savage one.’

Vicious watches me stand and pocket the apple, and a warmth swells inside me beneath her curious gaze. I follow Anver along the lofty path sandwiched between sheer crystal blocks, slowing when it chops into a staircase that tunnels down. Light filters through the crystal, casting prisms of color across our skin as we edge into the bowels of the island.

The air is crisp and fresh, but hauntingly still, making me cautious of every shallow breath, lest I stir something I shouldn’t.

The stairwell opens into a small cave, its walls and ceiling adorned with clusters of long, blunt crystals. Ailith stills a few steps from a jagged split in the ground, lowers onto her belly, and wiggles toward the sharp edge, dangling her arm over the side, holding the rose aloft.

She drops it.

Hearing a distant plop, Zykanth surges against my ribs, trying to propel me over the edge.

‘Move, little man. Get beneath big ribs. Zykanth get treasure for soft little mate.’

‘You won’t fit, you silly sea snake!’ I growl internally, scratching at the scales erupting across my cheek as I creep forward.

“Why drop it down there?” I rasp, my voice echoing back at me.

Anver smiles.

“It’s a gift,” he rumbles, and I cast my gaze into the chasm bathed in a mottling of light filtering from above.

Something glimmers below, making my pulse race, igniting Zykanth into a boiling swirl.

‘Treasure,’ he bleats. ‘Dive, little man!’

I wrestle him down and lock him away, but still my heart powers along at a ferocious pace …

It’s a trove.