Page 88 of The Crown of Nyx

My eyes closed, and in the darkness of my mind, I saw it. The land of my magic.

The Old World.

36

Ivy

The salty smell of the ocean filled my lungs as the shadows retreated. I kept my eyes closed, tipping my face towards the sky. The rain stopped, and in its place, a cool breeze chilled my damp skin.

My feet sunk into the earth, but I felt no panic as the substance crunched beneath my boots. No. It wasn’t earth. It wassand.

I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs with air that didn’t quite feel like normal air. Not like the Underworld, where the sweet odour of death clung to each breath. Not Avalon, where the air was touched by modern scents. Not like the world I once called home, where each breath was heavy, changed by humanity.

No, each breath I took brought me back to something old and powerful within me. My magic rose sharply, purring with a joy I’d never felt before.

It recognised the smell of this ocean. The feel of this sand.

It knew this world intimately.

It washome.

Tears formed in the corners of my eyes as they opened to take in the world. My throat tightened with emotion influenced by my magic, which burned across my skin. I glance down at the hand not holding Damon’s, at the light dancing between my fingertips. At the violet shapes appearing across my flesh in response to our location.

“Welcome home, my Queen,” the demon said, his voice soft with awe. “Welcome to the Old World.”

The dark sandedbeach we’d landed on felt familiar in a way I knew couldn’t be nostalgia from my own memories. I’d never seen black and silver sand that reflected the night sky. Maybe in photos of Iceland, once, but certainly not this beach itself.

We were surrounded by tall, dark cliffs, the tops of which were blanketed in a thick, grey fog. I wasn’t sure how high it was, but I couldn’t see anything beyond endless grey. The ocean was much the same; dark blue surrounded by more fog. The natural enchantments to keep anyone from entering the unstable land.

I hadn’t gotten to attend aHistory of the Old Worldclass while at Oberon. What little I knew came from my lessons with Greer, and she hadn’t really gotten to the parts about the Queen who had been forced to move the hundreds of thousands of creatures from here to the new land of Avalon. Or the downfall that had caused it all.

Dread and devastation burned through me as I took everything in. There were skeletal remains of ships barely hidden by the calm water; decks became clear when the waves receded, with old, rotting masts claimed by the waves peeking through the surface.

Fifteen hundred years, and it looked like the war that destroyed the world had happened only a hundred years ago.

“How do we get from here,” –Adrian pointed up to the cliffs with narrowed eyes— “to up there?”

Damon pushed off a rock, which he’d been resting on since the last shadow jump. We’d gathered near the wall of the cliff, far enough from the rising ocean to stay safe should the tide change, but also gave us a vantage point of the surrounding water in case Dante and his army appeared.

We had no idea where he planned on entering the Old World. He could have a dozen ships in with him, all imbued with shards of my magic to help them breach the barrier. We didn’t know how much he’d taken during the academy attack, and weren’t certain of how he could use it with an army.

“We may have to climb,” the demon king said, which had my heart dropping into my stomach, “but I think the shadows will grant me some grace and take us topside. Unless your winged mate wants to go up first.”

I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms tightly over my chest. “We arenotsplitting up, Damon. Ever. Not while we’re here.”

The demon king raised a brow. “Oh, wife, I thought you didn’t like me that way.”

I grimaced in his general direction before glancing at the others. “We should make a plan as to where we go next.”

“Do you feel anything now that you’re here?” Elias asked, brows furrowed. “Any kind of hint from the Goddess where you need to look?”

Despite the constant feeling of familiarity, I hadn’t. We’d been here an hour, and my magic hadn’t given me anything.

“This is the beach where it all happened,” Damon said, and I turned to him with a sharp look, which he raised a brow at. “What?”

“Where what happened, demon?” Maeve asked.

A smirk curled his lips, and he pointed into the distance, where the fog was so thick we couldn’t see the horizon. “Out there, the rift between worlds was born. An amalgamation of all the magic Nyx poured into creating this land. It was unstable, dangerous. A nuclear bomb waiting to go off.” He walked towards the water, but stopped halfway to turn back to us. “This is where Nyx dragged our first Queen, Pandora, to take her rightful place as the first Daughter of Nyx. Gave her the power to stabilise the realm’s magic. And eventually, this is the place where Pandora went to blow up.”

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