Page 46 of The Crown of Nyx

I bowed my head. I could pull a few strings if that meant protecting Ivy. I might not have been able to accept the bond between us, but I could ensure there was a way to find her—to save her if anything happened.

Ravenna clapped her hands together, eyes darting to the space next to me. “Ah, finally.”

I frowned and followed her line of sight. The shadows in the corner of the room twisted, thickening until everything in its vicinity darkened to nothing. I took a step back from it, hand straying to my hip where my weapon should have been.

But the damned demons had stripped me of my gun, of my knives and dagger. I was empty handed, left only with my magic—which was still stifled by whatever those chains had done to me.

Something large and tall stepped out from the darkness; horns twisted from the male’s temples, through thick black hair, and he wore a tailored suit. Tattoos peaked out from beneath his clothing, and his eyes found mine—red like the embers of a fire.

I might not have recognised him, but I knew who I was staring out.

The Elysian King.

“What an interesting surprise,” he said, voice dark.

Yeah, without Ivy, we were fucked.

20

Ivy

My lungs didn’t burn from the exertion like I thought they would.

Being pushed to the back of my own consciousness gave me time to think about where I—we?—were going. Focusing on the physical became easier. The cold rock beneath my paws that seemed unending. The weak whispers of a breeze as we ran through the barren landscape, seeing nothing for miles other than rock and ocean.

Just…rock and ocean.

If it weren’t for the fact that I felt the bonds clearly in my chest, I would think I was utterly alone. I knew my mates were somewhere near, maybe not close, but they were okay.

But even after hours of running, theywere still asleep.

Which meant wherever they were, they were being held captive.

The wolf slowed, and we came to a small stream cutting through the chilled lava. My beast sniffed it and reared back. The salty brine of the ocean still wafted over us, telling me we hadn’t made it as far from the ocean as I’d hoped, and the little stream was a branch of it.

My wolf huffed and lowered herself onto her belly, resting her head on her front paws. Internally, I screamed for her to get up. To keep moving. But as much as I tried, I realised just how exhausted my poor beast was. I wasn’t the only one desperate to find them. She had a particular connection to Elias’s wolf, and she so desperately wanted to be reunited with him.

Frustration built within me as I looked through her eyes at the landscape. It was a muddy picture of everything I’d already seen from my own eyes. Endless sky and nothing else. The ocean at our backs, and barren terrain ahead. When I’d first thought about hell, I’d thought about a place like this. A place lacking hope or life. But meeting creatures from here, learning more about the Underworld and demons, I realised I was wrong.

But maybe I hadn’t been. Because this sure as hell felt like a hopeless wasteland.

Maybe we’d gone in the wrong direction. Should I have walked the other way around the volcano? Would that have changed anything?

Goddess above, what had I done?

My wolf whimpered, closing her eyes, forcing me to stop taking in the world around us. Somehow, though, being trapped in my own mind was worse.

What if my mates had put blocks on the bonds to keep me from realising anything was wrong? For the first time since I’d given into the wolf, I decided to prod thebonds. I first went to Rowan’s golden-yellow thread, which looked almost the same as it had the day we completed the bond. I touched it carefully, reaching for some kind of impression of what he was doing—even thinking—but nothing came back.

It should have scared me, but it wasn’t the same dark nothing when Dante blocked our bonds. I still had no idea how he’d done that, and neither had the others.

But that wasn’t the case here, at least, not with Rowan. The more I tested, the clearer it became that he was sleeping. There was a hazy, almost filmy barrier between us. It reminded me of a gauzy sheet, and when I pressed against it, the film moved with me. But it gave me some hint of what was happening in his mind.

A small part of me didn’t like the idea of prying, but the larger, more concerned part pushed through the discomfort and into the dream.

For a moment,I saw nothing but darkness. Then, I heard soft laughter. My stomach knotted as I pushed my way through the darkness towards the sound.

The scene came fractured at first; Rowan on a bed, lying on his side. There was clearly a body beside him, and based on the movements, I was pretty sure it was me, but the film over the moment stopped me from being sure. Rowan spoke, voice low, moving to almost hover over me, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. Only the soft murmur of his voice came from his end.

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