Page 33 of Fated In Forever
“Brendan needs my blood for this to work,” I reminded my mate, even though my stomach was heavy, like a stone sinking to the bottom of a deep lake. Maybe all that clotted cream wasn’t agreeing with me. “I have to go,” I repeated. “I have to make sure this works.”
I had to fix what happened to Malachi, and by extension, what happened to me.
Because those black veins pulsed and I felt every throb like a phantom heartbeat. They were reacting to this place, to the magic here, like they were urging me below.
A few broken columns still stood, their details blackened and chipped; one half-frozen Revenant corpse sprawled beside them. Beneath our feet, something rumbled, like the snores of an enormous dragon.
“The stairwell was right here,” Riordan muttered,swiping away snow-covered debris with his foot. “Stone steps, dropping right into the undercroft.”
“If the main passage is blocked, we’ll have to find another way down,” Finn said, but I could hear the doubt in his voice as he swung his gaze over the destruction. “Are you sure the entrance was here?”
“I’m sure,” Rohr gathered a ball of fire at his fingers, casting the orb down into the hole. I was too far away to see anything but broken rock and dust. “The stepshaveto be here. Looks like we’ll be moving some stone.”
“Let me go help Rohr out before him and Finn get into it,” Blake squeezed my arm and headed to join them, then the four males were crouched around the pile of rock, hands waving, fingers pointing.
I wrapped my arms around me, trying to stay warm.
These ruins breathed with memory—echoes of cruelty, marked by sooty black marks of cast magic. My boots crunched over broken stone, a sliver of brightly colored stained-glass glittering like a jewel in the snow, the silence thick enough to choke on.
One more step and I stopped cold.
Malachi stared out from the edge of the ruin, where the mountain dropped away into a shrouded valley. His monstrous form could have been sculpted from the stone itself—dark, jagged, permanent. Steam curled from his hunched shoulders, his head hanging, hands limp at his sides.
Haunted. Hopeless. Beautiful.
Malachi?Once again, nothing.
I know you can hear me. Just talk to me. I can’t stand this not speaking to each other. Just tell me what is wrong. We’ll figure this out, I promise.
A flicker inside my ribcage, like a thread, tugging.Almost like the mating bond, but…deeper. A pulse of awareness, someone peering into my darkest depths. And then?—
No.
The word cut like a blade. Not angry. Not cruel.
Just final.
The connection closed, like a slap in the face and I gasped like I’d been shoved underwater.Oh no, you don’t get to tell me no. You don’t get to shut me out, like I don’t have a stake in this, just as much as you…
“Found it.” Riordan’s voice rang over the stone.
I turned to see him, Blake and Nash dragging aside a half-collapsed archway—well, using their magic to drag the stone away—revealing a spiral of steps disappearing into darkness. The air that rushed up from that black hole reeked of rot and old magic, like the mountain was exhaling.
Finn lit a torch, the flame flickering violently in the breeze. “We go down in a tight group. Quiet and fast. Me, Nash, Blake—we’ll take the front. Riordan, you and Evangeline in the center, Brendan and Nikolai in back with Malachi. Evangeline?—”
“I know, I know,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “I’ll stick close to Riordan. If anything happens, he’ll get me out.”
I didn’t look back at Malachi. If he was going to shut me out, then fine.
I couldn’t wait to get down to that pool and complete this ritual, and put Ravok’s bullshit curse behind us. I couldn’t wait for him to be back in his mortal form. At least then, I knew I could kick his ass.
The monster, I wasn’t so sure about.
And as we descended into the belly of the broken castle, the shadows welcomed us like an old friend.
15
MALACHI
