Page 116 of A Dance With Fire
It was the same pressure that enveloped her when she passed through Uric’s portal. An invisible force that threatened to smother with varying degrees of temperature. Unlike Uric’s portal, though, ithurtto go through this.
Iron was embedded into the ground, and though they couldn’t see it, they could feel it, just like they could feel it in the air. As if it were somehow permeated into the wind, into the portal.
Shula gasped for breath as she crossed the invisible barrier and nearly tumbled to a fall on the other side. She righted herself and looked to the other side.
To Tir na Faie.
She never imagined she’d see the Feylands in her lifetime. Not as they once had been, and certainly not like this, either.
It was dead land where no trees or plants grew, though whatever plant life there had been just… decayed. Even after years, the trees hadn’t crumbled. They’d just seemed to have lost the will to live, leaving dried, black husks in their place.
Shula could feel death around her, almost as sharp and as strong as the iron. She dreamt of the beauty of the Feylands before. The dead earth before her just made her want to weep.
“The iron is stifling,” Clay complained, rubbing his palm over his chest. “I didn’t expect it to be so strong.”
“We need to hurry.” Valerio began walking. “The faster we find The Seer, the faster we can get out of here. Eyes alert. We don’t know if humans prowl these lands.”
Shula unsheathed her dagger and held it close. More out of comfort for her rolling emotions—mainly, the sadness—rather than fear. Holding the knife controlled the storm.
“Do you feel it too, little Fire Dancer?” Julius came up beside her while Clay took the other side.
She gripped the knife tighter. “Yes.”
“Curious, isn’t it?” Clay added. “You melted iron bars, yet it can still effect you.”
“The Elementals are not bound by the same rules as the rest of us,” Valerio said from his place at the front. “They pay no price for their magic, are directly bound to Mana, and as we’ve discovered, can melt iron. It should not be possible, yet Mana works in mysterious ways. Do not question it in the land where Mana was born.”
It felt like a bad omen to talk about, Shula had to admit. She didn’t know why though. It was the ominous energy of the place. Not just the iron, but the memories of the near eradication of the Fae, of the wars, everything bad that ever happened seemed tied here. Like the land remembered, absorbed that negativity and slowly died from it.
She felt as stifled as the rest of them. They’d walked for days, rested, ate, and she hadn’t felt a fraction of what she felt here. Her feet started to hurt, her chest started to heave as if she’d run for days instead of walking for hours.
“The Seer is rumored to be in The Iron Mountains,” Valerio said. He came to a stop, and Shula soon saw why.
The earth they walked on crested and split into a mountain pass. The rocky ridges towered on both sides so high that it cast nothing but shadows through the middle. For a moment, it all looked like an endless tunnel with no exit.
The Iron Mountains were spread all the way down for miles to the Jade Court. It would be a treacherous trek; at least, that’s what Valerio had said before they’d stepped over the Ley Line. From the entrance, Shula could see how it would be true. The ground rose and fell unevenly, and the shadows of the dangerous trench wouldn’t help. They needed sunlight, and she doubted the rays even reached the bottom of the mountain pass.
“Stay together,” Valerio ordered, voice firm. “We do not know what we’ll find within.”
The slide of swords against their sheathes sounded as they brandished their weapons. With the iron weakening them, they’d need to fight using other means. While Shula felt more confident now with a sword than with her powers, that wasn’t a problem. The same couldn’t be said for her companions.
They entered the pass and were swallowed up by the darkness.
* * *
Hours morphed into days.Or so Shula thought. One lost all sense of time within The Iron Mountains. They could have very well been walking for hours or days and she wouldn’t have known. All she knew was that the pain was catching up to them.
The further they walked, the more iron made itself known. It eroded from the ground like the roots of tree trunks, creating a maze against the ground. Every time Shula stepped down, jolts of pain zapped up her legs like never-ending strikes of lightning.
She took a step over an iron ridge only to slip. She fell, throwing her hands out and barely breaking her fall. The dagger slipped from her grip, lost within the iron roots. Her face slammed onto iron, and she tasted copper on her tongue.
Groaning, she pushed herself up and her elbows shook with the effort. Heaving a breath, she sat on a piece of iron. “Let me catch my breath,” she pleaded. “Just a moment.”
“You okay, Fire Dancer?” Clay sat next to her. His face was pale, and there were shadows beneath his eyes. “You’re bleeding.”
It wasn’t until the blood dropped from her nose to her top lip that she realized she’d hurt her nose, too. She moved to wipe it off, but before she could, Ryker dropped to his knees in front of her and swiped the blood away with the pad of his thumb.
“Shula…You’re hurt.” Ryker’s palm started to emit a soft glow
