Page 48 of The Horde King of Shadow

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 hersy’asha, and I inhaled a sharp breath, hearing her beautiful songas the humming grew louder and louder, ripples coming from the center of the lake, as if…as if something wasrising.

“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,hungryfor it. “And from his tears grew trees.Thalaratrees, 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’ssy’ashaonly 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.

Chapter 18

SARKIN

Deep down below the lake lay Lishara’s temple. The stairs led to a small chamber, circular in size.

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