Page 20 of Shrine of Fire

It had all turned out for the best.

But, still, I often wondered what would have happened if I’d swept Nova up into my arms when I first wanted to, instead of playing the long game. Had I chosen wrong? Had I allowed distance to come between us by not giving her all of myself when it was first hers to have?

I didn’t know. Each morning that I woke up with her in my arms, I asked myself the same questions. If I hadn’t held back, would we be bonded now? Or would I have lost her for good?

I liked gambling. I loved the thrill of win-or-lose stakes, of betting my cunning and wits against high odds. The win wasn’t as sweet if it didn’t come with almost certain failure.

But this was the biggest gamble of my life, and I wasn’t sure if the odds would turn in my favor, or if I would lose it all.

“For those of us who didn’t go to elite training school,” I said, “What in the seven seas are you talking about?”

Valens sighed heavily. “The spirit is Hella Mora. Mother of Woe. She was said to guard the Waters of Life and Death but left her post when her children died.”

“She traveled freely between the spirit and the mortal realms,” Kivai added. He was corporeal now, since Zara pulled his form into the mortal realm from the spirit world.

“She became too powerful, feeding on the grief of all beings. She tried to control the worlds, and so spirits and mortals joined together tried to find a way to stop her.” His hands were covered in flour as he folded dough over itself. “This was ancient legend even in my time.”

Which was almost a thousand years ago, before the Shrines went up. Kivai and some of the other shaman had built the Shrines to protect the mortal realm from being washed away with an influx of spirit magic. It had resulted in him between trapped as a spirit for a long time before Zara freed him. With the power of love.

“It ended badly.” The phoenix said, waking up. He started to pull himself in a sitting position.

Nova moved to help him, adjusting the bandages. I handed her a glass of water for him. My beautiful omega didn’t know it, but she watched the phoenix like she watched Stefan. Like a child with their nose pressed against the window of a candy store, allowed to look but not touch.

I would have to work harder to show her it was okay to want other men, even though her first pack had passed on. I’d never known them, but if Nova had loved them enough to bond them, they wouldn’t have wanted her suffering and alone.

Kivai washed his hands off and then moved to stand behind Zara, resting his hand on her shoulder. “What methods did you use against her?”

The spirit let out a pained breath. He was beautiful, almost unreal. His hair was red, orange, yellow, stripes of color, long enough to hit his waist, and the color moved even when he did not, as though it was a living flame. His eyes were the same swirl of color, and his skin looked like liquid gold.

I would definitely not refuse Nova if she wanted to see what bedding a spirit was like. Especially with my own grief pressed so close to me. Being around Hella Mora had raised the agony of losing my family all over again, the loss as fresh as it was the night I came home to find my parents and sister had died in a house fire.

“Many.” He looked around the room, at the group of people before him, as well as the walls and sparse decoration. “None of them worked. In the end we had to lock her away, in hopes we would have more time to find a way to diminish her power.”

The room fell silent at that.

“The shaman of old struggled with the imbalance between mortal and spirit realms. They created the Shrines.” Zara gestured around us. “We’re in the Shrine of Everlasting Fire. They tried to control the wild fluxes of spirit magic between both realms, but instead it stopped the flow completely. We’re trying to fix that.”

There was a last note of desperation in Zara’s voice, and Kivai patted her shoulder.

“One step at a time,” Rayth said, bumping her other shoulder. All of her men grinned. “We’ve only just started.”

I almost envied them their easy love. They’d had their own trials and I knew that overcoming the obstacles in your path only sweetened the victory, but part of me wanted to skip to the end, where Zara and I were bonded.

“Do you need anything?” Nova hovered to the side. Even from here, the heat radiating off the phoenix was like standing near a small sun. “Some food?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Nova backed away. I wished he’d said yes, asking for a blanket or something, so that she would have felt she was able to provide for him.

“The blocking of spirit magic must have ensured she stayed locked away,” the spirit said. “I have to finish what we started then.”

“You have help,” Kivai said, and gestured around the room. “It’s been about a week since we stopped the Faceless One from bringing all the Shrines down.”

The phoenix wrinkled his face. “That is a scheming spirit if there ever was one.”

“He took advantage of an omega,” Kivai said, moving to the storeroom, then returning with fruit and cheese on a plate. “Yvenna was struggling with spirit magic, and he offered to help her, but he bound her instead.”

What a mess the spirits had made of the last few millennia. I was happy to sail the seas and make a living from trading. All of this was above my skills, but it didn’t matter, I was involved because my friends were caught up in it.

---