Page 127 of Crown of Chaos

I slammed my blade toward the creature pulling me up. A glimpse of bright hair and a humanoid form caught my focus, but I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what horror shit show it was from. I shot up, gasping and sucking in air before diving back down again, searching for Esme. I found her floating at the bottom, unmoving.

It took an effort to grab Esme’s unconscious body and force her up with me through the murky depth, all the while watching for more of those creatures. Once I broke the surface, I gasped for air greedily as I held Esme with one arm and treaded water with the other. From the shore, an angry woman glared at us as she held her side. My jaw dropped back into the pool of water as I took in her long, intricate tail from where she sat on the edge of the shore.

She reached forward with clawed-tipped fingers, grabbing Esme to pull her onto the edge of the land she sat upon. Once she’d dropped her, Esme began coughing up copious amounts of fluids. The mermaid grabbed my arm, pulling me up beside her.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, taking in her soft, jade-colored hair and startling crystalline-blue eyes.

“You stabbed me, bitch,” she snapped.

“I thought you were with that monster that was trying to eat me,” I explained aloofly. Her gaze wandered over my face before settling on my wet, silver hair that hung limply against my face.

“You’re pretty, but I prefer my meals to have more meat on them.” She snorted, turning to peer at Esme, who was glowering up at the waterfall we’d gone over.

Colorful birds swooped through the spray, catching fish in the air that were unlucky enough to be shot over the falls.

Around us, blue and green lights blazed from the high cliffs that surrounded a sweeping valley of vibrant emerald-green fields that spread out as far as I could see. Small, glowing bubbles seemed to light a pathway to where the high cliffs opened and parted as if there was something vast beyond them. Quartz crystals that stood as high as trees cast rainbow-colored prisms across the landscape. Pushing up from the ground, I stared over the beauty of it without words to describe it fully.

In the middle of the meadow there was a giant tree with what looked like lightning bugs swarming around it invitingly.

“I wouldn’t remain out here once the sun sets over the mountains,” the mermaid informed, diving back into the water before she popped her head back out, glaring at us. “And stay out of my water. Next time you won’t escape it.”

Esme coughed, pushing to her feet. “She was pleasant,” she offered before coughing a few more times. “Why do you think she is afraid of being out at night?”

No sooner had Esme said it than the sun slowly vanished and an eerie scream ripped through the land. I spun toward the cliff the water had forced us over, staring at the slithering creatures that howled and snarled as they surveyed us from above.

“What the hell are those things?” I asked as they pawed the water with lethal-looking claws.

They looked like a mix between shadowy creatures of doom and large cats with really terrifying needle-like fangs. One jumped into the air, but the light from the setting sun caught it, and it burst into flames before it hit the water, splashing and making a god-awful sound that threatened to make my ears bleed.

“That’s our cue to fucking run.”

“Agreed!”

We both rose and hauled ass without looking back. The world around us hummed, as if it were excited that we were being hunted. The air was cooling, and the last rays of sunlight were disappearing, ushering in the night.

This place was a death trap, and we didn’t have magic to combat the creatures. It was bullshit, straight up, because no way I was letting a single one of those monsters close enough for me to stab it. Did I really need to figure out who my father was or what I was this badly? No, but were we stuck in the trial from hell with things trying to murder us, anyway? Yes.

Chapter Sixty

The grass we moved throughwas relentlessly trying to wrap around our ankles. Every few steps, I had to reach down and swat at it to make it release me. The tree we were aiming for seemed to get farther away no matter how far we ran trying to escape the shadowy creatures tracking us.

We’d moved through the shallow water, hoping to prevent them from following our scents, but they were persistent. I continued trying to rouse Ember, but she was silent within me. It was like the land had nullified my magic and my beast. Esme had confirmed that she couldn’t cast, and her beast was dead silent within her as well.

Pausing for a moment, I gazed around the large meadow. “I think we’re going in circles.”

“How? We’re literally walking in a straight line.” Esme groaned. “We’re not walking in circles. The land ismovingin a circle.”

Scratching my head, I frowned at where the side of the mountain opened into a valley. It shifted, and I snorted at the absurdity of it before starting toward it again. Esme grabbed my hand, pulling me to a stop.

“We cannot reach it because we’re not meant to reach it,” she informed, pointing toward a bridge. “That is where we should be heading.”

I muttered beneath my breath and followed behind her while swatting the grass, which probably wasn’t grass at all, away from my face. A rumbling noise had me turning to gaze at the tree once more. I gasped, finding it directly beside us. Since Esme was still leading me by my arm when I froze, she was yanked backward and ended up slamming into me, making us both stumble.

“What the hell—” Her eyes went wide when she finally saw what had stolen my attention.

They weren’t bugs floating around the tree as I’d assumed. They were some kind of lights floating in small, round bubbles. I poked one, and then cried out as it scalded my fingertip. My knee-jerk reaction was to soothe the burn by popping my finger into my mouth, but Esme slapped my hand away and shook her head gently.

“It is acid, Aria. It protects the tree from creatures foraging it or using it to build with,” she chuckled, watching the confusion spreading over my face. “Some things, the land protects, and others, it allows to be used. Like the Beltane Circle. You killed Bel, and the land allowed it because he will be reborn so that he can return next summer. If you’d tried to take him out of the circle, you and everyone inside the circle would have died.”

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