She resembles a High Priestess, a timeless one. Her skin glows with energy, the white, positive kind, it glows even brighter than it had before I came back from the first battle against Samael’s forces in the Fire Realm. Before her act of betrayal had taken the glow away from her.
I step out from the snow and scan the place for the soldiers, and find them lying around on the ground like dolls.
“Cursed realms,” I growl as I step among their completely still bodies. They’re not dead, but they’re not sleeping either. It’s like they fell in some kind of coma.
“Did you—” I breathe, but Cerys doesn’t actually have to answer. I understand fully what she just did. Cerys is a magical energy worker that can replenish supernaturals’ tanks when they’ve been depleted of their power, but she can also drain them. My eyes rest on her glowing face.
“Did you take it within yourself?”
She shakes her head no, slowly. When she speaks, her voice is like that of an ethereal being, not a parahuman. The voice of a true priestess, a bridge between the world of matter and that of spirit.
“The glow is the residue of their positive energy. I discharged it into the walls, so we better get going. We don’t have long until this entire place starts turning against us.”
But I can’t move an inch. I stand here, among winter fae warriors lying in a coma, the blade of fire retracting back into my hand.
“But,” I whisper, the sound echoing against the walls of the catacombs. “Why? They wouldn’t have hurt you, in the end. You could have gone to Lysander, and from there you would have found your way to Samael.”
She doesn’t reply. She just stands there, staring more through me than at me. Things just don’t add up. But just as I frown at her, determined to get the truth out of her somehow, a sensation burns my back, something like burning white light.
I turn around just in time to see Lysander the King of Frost step out of the light—a portal—mail covering his warrior body, a sword in his hand. He stops, his ice blue eyes fixed on mine. For a moment he can’t believe I’m here, and I don’t really grasp that we’re face to face again either, not at first.
“Xerxes,” he says in his deep, rumbling voice, as if to ascertain his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him.
“Lysander,” I greet, his name almost a hiss from my mouth.
His pupils zero in on me, as if hearing my voice was all the confirmation he needed. He raises his blade, the energy exploding from his chest releasing a shock wave that could knock down a small army. I take my fighting stance leaning forward, against the force field, ready to take him on. His golden-and-silver hair billows in the wind, and he raises his blade against me with a war cry.
He attacks the same way he did the last time we met, and just like last time, I move out of the way. I don’t want to kill him now any more than I wanted to kill him then, so I plan to use my weapons on him as little as possible, hoping I can get him to listen as he tries to fight me. I usually see my next five moves in my head from the first moment I assess my opponent, and it all happens in a split second, but this time reality shifts.
The situations when I can’t foresee or properly react to an attack are extremely rare, but how could I have expected that Cerys would throw herself in front of Lysander’s blade. Time moves impossibly slowly as her body flies in front of mine like a shield, death glinting in Lysander’s icy irises. I can see the flash of recognition in them, but he won’t be able to stop in time.
All Cerys has is me, I am the only one who can save her life. I intercept her in the air, her shoulder slamming into my palm as I press in the opposite direction, hauling her forcefully to the side. She lands on a heap of snow, sinking in it. Pushing her to the side moved me back into the path of Lysander’s sword, and the blade grazes my arm, slicing the leather off of it.
My skin remains intact, but it was close. With Cerys out of the way I can focus on Lysander again but the rage seems to have left him, confusion replacing it. He looks at the pile of snow where Cerys had landed, watching her reemerge with messy hair, a glowing face, and the honey eyes of an angel.
My eyes lock on her as well. She is an angel. And she just risked her life to save mine, which makes the epiphany inevitable—There is no way this woman betrayed me. There must be a secret behind that story, a foul secret.
“Cerys, what in the high realms is happening here,” Lysander demands, watching the black cat Nazarean gracefully climb the mound of snow, pressing his nose lovingly to Cerys’ cheek.
“King Lysander, please,” she says, working her way out of there. “This isn’t what it looks like. It’s not an attack on you, much less on your people. We’re just here to talk.”
Lysander’s eyes wander from her to me with a frown as he holds the sword still firmly in his hand.
“You needed to infiltrate my castle like thieves in order to talk? You needed to creep in through the catacombs, injuring my guards, starting a fire that spreads through my castle like Hell flames?” Suspicion and anger grow in his voice with every word.
“We didn’t have time to go the official route with messengers and preparations,” I say. “Hell portals open up everywhere around the Fire Realm as we speak, and I need your help. How would you have reacted if I’d simply sent this message?”
Lysander stares at me like I’ve lost my mind for a second, then his mouth slowly curls up, and he bursts into laughter.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I manage through my teeth.
“King Lysander, please,” Cerys says, walking closer carefully, as if she were talking to a psychologically unstable person. And by the way Lysander inspects us, it looks like he could react either way. “Just hear us out. Let us go somewhere where we can talk.”
“You know I have respect and even affection for you, Cerys,” he says with warmth in his voice that is completely unspecific to creatures of the cold. “But there have been attempts on my part in the past to solve things diplomatically with the King of Flames, and they didn’t exactly go well.” He locks eyes with me, making a point. Just as I expected, considering the history between us, this was the only way to get to him.
“Xerxes needs your help in order to beat back the forces of Hell,” Cerys insists. “They attacked, and his realm is completely overwhelmed. Samael is leading the troops.”
“Xerxes,” he repeats, as if examining some hidden truth behind the tone of her voice. “The way you speak his name. I think you may be experiencing a little Stockholm Syndrome.”
Does that mean he heard love in the way she said my name?
“And why are the forces of Hell attacking you?” He addresses me, barely keeping his hostility in check. “What have you done to upset Samael like that? Because we all know that Hell doesn’t simply attack, they need a damned good reason to even consider doing it, which Samael must have had.”
“I... It was all my fault.” Cerys strokes Nazarean nervously, the way she always does when she’s under pressure. “I drained the dark power from the walking dead at the Cemetery of Doom, and because I needed an outlet for that power, I channeled it into Xerxes.”
“I see. So Xerxes now has the power of those creatures as well. How do you use it?” He addresses me again.