Page 75 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

Marcus’s car puttered up the narrow road, climbing higher and higher up the mountain that hid Morgana. I was practically vibrating with nervous energy, and it was starting to rub off on Gabriel. He took my hand in his, squeezing it tightly before raising it to his lips to brush a kiss against my knuckles.

“We can pull this off, right?” I asked.

Gabriel sent a pulse of comfort and warmth through our bond, although he couldn’t hide his own nervousness. “We’re facing her together. I like those odds.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m scared, too, but there’s nobody I’d rather have by my side.”

That coaxed a smile out of me. “I love you.” I wouldn’t let myself think that I might not get a chance to say those words to him again.

“I love you, too,” he replied. “More than words can say.”

The trees lining the road gave way to tiny, scrubby things, all twisted up by the wind. The closer we got, the slower we moved. The area was layered with wards and alarm spells, so we kept having to pull the car to a stop to pick them apart. Eventually, the road became an even narrower dirt path, and we had to proceed on foot.

From below, it had looked like the mountain was flat at the top, as if someone had sliced off the peak. From here, though, we could see what it actually was. The mountain was a dormant volcano, and we were just below its lip. The center of the mountain’s peak dipped down into a basin, maybe half a mile across. We made sure to stay hidden just below the lip of the caldera, peeking up just enough so we could see what we were getting ourselves into.

A maze of hexagonal basalt columns rose up from the ground of that dip, creating a self-contained alien landscape. Pools of jarringly bright turquoise water wafted with steam. Gabriel and I exchanged a nervous look. The whole place hummed with so much magic that, even from this distance, it was a physical force that tingled unpleasantly over my skin.

“She put an impressive number of spells on this place,” Marcus said, chewing at the inside of his cheek. “And with those columns, we’ll have practically no visibility.”

“So, we’re going in blind,” Theo grumbled. “Wonderful.”

“I hate to leave you all, but I think this is my stop,” Xarek said with a cheerfulness that could only be fake. The rest of us were dressed for a fight, and he looked comically out of place in his jeans and flannel. He hadn’t bothered with armor—it would be as useful to his dragon form as pants to a mermaid. He rolled his shoulders and popped his neck, then shook out his arms. “I’ll see you all on the other side.”

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Marcus asked, trying and failing to make it sound like a jokingly stern command. Worry laced his every word.

“Careful as I can be,” Xarek promised. He touched a hand to his own chest, and Marcus smiled.

Gabriel wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side. We were all thinking the same things: Am I about to lose someone I love? Are we going to be able to walk away from this? My eyes stung, and Gabriel’s looked suspiciously wet. I pressed myself closer against him.

When I turned my attention back to Marcus and Xander, they were kissing, and I glanced away, both to give them some privacy, and because seeing Marcus engaging in such an intimate moment felt like seeing a teacher at the grocery store for the first time. Isabella was doing the same thing. I had to break the heavy tension in the air not just for them, but for all of us. We needed something to think about besides the possibility of catastrophic loss.

So, when I met Isabella’s eyes, I mouthed, “Ooh, Marcus has a boyfriend” with as much silly, juvenile energy as I could.

She snorted and cracked a smile, and Gabriel chuckled.

“Fly safe,” Damien told Xarek, clapping him on the back. “And don’t be a hero, all right? There are people waiting for you to come home.”

Xarek pulled him into a quick, firm hug—one which Damien was completely unprepared for. Then he walked to the edge of the peak overlooking a particularly steep slope of the mountain and stepped off. For a gut-lurching moment there was nothing. Then that reverse thunderclap, the sound of tearing silk, and the dragon rose up, his massive wings beating against the wind that buffeted the peak of the volcano.

Xarek wheeled through the air above the hollow of the mountain top, blotting out the sun. With a swoop to the other side of the ridge, he tore through what must have been a half dozen alarm spells, and below us, people started shouting. Doors that had been camouflaged between the gray stone columns swung open, and people of all shapes and species ran out, armed and ready to defend.

Xarek roared gleefully and swooped down lower, taunting Morgana’s people as they started to swarm out of crevices in the rock.

The huge copper dragon took a massive inhale, scaled chest swelling. There was a chemical scent, then a clicking sound, and Xarek let out a blue-white gout of flame. The bellowed orders turned to screams as people caught fire. The rock columns provided too much cover for the blast to hit many people, but I counted seven engulfed in flame before I stopped trying to keep track. With another roar, Xarek wheeled through the air and set off down the mountain in the opposite direction of us.

Behind me, I heard Marcus let out a long breath. When I’d first started training to use my magic, he’d taught me to do that to refocus myself. Now, I could hear how shaky he sounded.

The people below ran after Xarek, scrambling up over the side of the caldera. A few stayed behind, scanning the area for anything suspicious, but after a few moments, quiet fell back over the network of paths between the stone columns.

Suddenly, every alarm spell started going off at once, and the shouting began again. Even more guards swarmed out, and this time, they all clambered up the side of the caldera, skidding away down the slopes to investigate the source of the disruption. They looked harried, and it was clear they’d had the order to go check shouted at them. Marcus smiled happily.

“That would be the fae,” he said cheerfully. “I thought they might want to help if I framed it as them causing chaos. As it turns out, I was entirely correct.”

“How many did you get to help you?” I asked. It hadn’t even occurred to me to call on the fae. They were too fickle, too proud—the exact opposite of team players.

“Oh, all the powerful ones in Eldoria,” Marcus said smugly. “It was simply a matter of suggesting that, well, this other fae had already agreed to help, and they would probably be so much more effective, so really, you shouldn’t trouble yourself… They were all champing at the bit to prove they could do the most damage after that.”

I could just picture it, fae tearing up the wards with glee and flinging soldiers down the mountainside.

“Nice work,” I told him admiringly, and he flourished a joking bow.

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