My heart beats wildly in my throat as I listen to him.
“Will you become my wife, Cerys?” He leans his face closer to mine, his scent of amber and wood seeping through my skin and becoming master of my senses. “I swear I’ll fight my own nature for you. I might not become a good guy overnight, but I will never stop trying, never stop improving, I promise.”
“Yes,” I answer, truthful to the core. My reasonable mind has shut down completely, and now all I can do is feel. “I will marry you, Xerxes.” I place my hands over his on the sides of my face, rising on my toes to invite him for a kiss.
He presses his hot mouth on mine, and I moan at the taste of him. We open our mouths against each other, kissing deeply. I wish we could stay like this forever, but Xerxes rips himself away from me, staring at me with eyes of fire.
“For us. And for our wedding night.”
With that, he turns to the well, and punches the side of it. The stone cracks, fissures spreading like broken rays all over the wall. It all happens so quickly that I’m in shock. Xerxes turns to me one last time, as if he draws strength from looking at me, and then plunges into the well.
“No,” I scream and run after him, but I stop before I touch the edge. It looks like a push would be enough for it to fall apart, chunks of it crashing into the abyss, and making it impossible for Xerxes to return.
Nazarean leaps softly on my shoulder, rubbing his wet nose gently against my cheek. His love brings tears to my eyes.
“No, Nazarean.” My voice cracks over the words. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
CHAPTER VII
Xerxes
I fall for a long time, the shadows emanating from my body curving over the air, enabling me to sail on it like a bird. I race along the stone sides of the well until the stone turns into rock. I’m deep into the Earth’s crust now, the air turning warm and dry the deeper I go, until it becomes hot and sooty. A human or even a parahuman wouldn’t be able to take the air and the pressure down here.
I don’t know for how long I’ve been falling when I see something sparkling in the distance, the most beautiful shade of red that ever existed. I recognize it immediately, because I’ve seen it before—the Firestone, taken from the crown of the Fire Court. I flip and land on my feet, bending my knees to buffer the fall. I’m skilled at landing, so I’m quiet despite my weight and my speed, but it’s been a long fall, and I skid to the side.
When I get up I realize that I landed on the Firestone itself. Buried here in the underground of the magic well, it’s grown roots into the ground and it’s grown from a jewel the size of an apple to one the size of a boulder. I inspect it quietly, standing on what I notice is a ring of dark, humid earth around it. It’s not what the Earth should look like so deep within the mantle, but as I observe, patiently, I notice the soft ripples moving along it.
I slide along the rocky wall, feeling a surge of energy. I’m close to the fire deep within the Earth’s mantle, and I can feel its energy humming. I open my arms and press myself against the hot rock, my veins activating and shining bright.
It seems the Wraiths haven’t sensed my presence yet, or they’re pretending not to. Whispers rise in the air, traveling up the well tunnel. I recognize their whispers as the echo that made Cerys’ skin crawl.
Cerys.
The mere thought of her is enough to raise power inside of me, motivating me. If I get out of this place alive, I will have her all to myself. I will feel her in my arms again. We will have a big wedding, at which she’ll be wearing a piece of this very stone. I’ll have my best jewelers craft it. And her wedding ring, it will have a piece of the Firestone as well, as a symbol for the fact that she was the only woman who ever experienced me vulnerable, and who brought me back to life. The only woman who’s ever mattered to me. She will have power over fire through the stone, and she will be protected even when I’m not by her side.
I look up the well. The top is much too far for me to see anything, it’s obscure. Motivated by the idea of her, I make a plan of how I’m going to get back up there.
It’s a risky one, but it will have to do. Problem is, there’s no way it’ll work without waking up the army of Wraiths swarming underneath my feet, and I’ll need my magic to fight them. But I’ll only have enough fire magic when I’ve integrated the Firestone, which means right now I can only rely on the dark energy from the souls serving Samael, those who crawled out of their graves to take us down. With every soul I’ve devoured I’ve become more powerful in the sense of Hell and death, but it’s too new, and I’m not sure how well I can use it.
Maybe if I’d devoured more of them. I lick my fangs, remembering their taste when I sucked their energy into me. When Cerys unloaded the first soul into me I must have become similar to a lich, dark sorcerers who feed on the souls of the living. Except that I hunger only for spirits from the Underworld, and I become sharply aware of that when the substance under my feet stirs, the waves and ripples stronger as they register my presence. A hunger for them rises inside me.
I’ll be damned. The Wraiths feel like food to me now. The more they move, their whispers turning to hisses and then wails, the sharper my fangs, and my hunger. But the snake’s poison is still flowing through my veins, which weakens me. I might not be able to take them head-on, there’s a good chance they’ll overwhelm me and, for the first time in thousands of years, I’m risk averse.
And that’s all because of my heart. Ever since I’ve stopped denying what I really feel for Cerys, the black cold stone I thought I had for a heart has become hot as lava. Turns out I don’t want to be as much of a daredevil.
I square my shoulders, ready to do this. I have a plan, but I’ll need to focus to make it work. I don’t know how long I have until the poison renders me too weak.
I bend down and push my fingers into the pasty black mass that keeps the Firestone encased in the ground. I still have my physical strength, which nothing can take away from me, not even the poison. The black substance starts taking shapes all around me as I sink my arms into the mass down to my elbows, veins of liquid fire swelling in my neck. I bare my teeth, rivulets of tar crisscrossing my face from the effort.
I finally uproot the stone, feeling its smooth texture on my palms, under the last slippery layer of this viscous material, but as soon as I do, a Wraith forms fully by my side. It’s a creature that seems made of shadow, but I know it’s the cosmic fabric of chaos. It opens its mouth, wailing in my ear. Cosmic wind blows from its open jaws, blowing through my hair.
Any human or even parahuman would crawl away, knees pulled up, losing their minds just from hearing these creatures, let alone seeing them. But I turn my head to it and hiss back, fangs bared, my eyes filled with tar and fire. The Wraith floats backwards, and all the others stop for a moment. None of them makes a single sound. Of course, they’re surprised to see the power of fire and that of Death radiating from me, but they smell the poison too. And that’s when they decide to attack again.
They fly over to me, the first Wraith opening its mouth to bite my head off and let it roll into the blackness in its mouth. But my fangs are fully sharpened. With my hands busy dragging the Firestone from under the dark paste, I rely on my fangs to take the Wraith’s soul.