Now he just had to figure out what to say to his drahi, because he still had no idea how to explain what she meant to him.
Farona had risen to leave, promising that she would call upon Sarah after the first turn of the following cycle, when a temple acolyte running along the lattice caused sharp rebukes from other pedestrians. The commotion drew both his and Farona’s attention, since it was unusual to see such rude behavior.
They both turned to see the acolyte rushing towards them. Jotaha jumped to his feet, his heart thudding as he recognized the panic in the young yan-kanat’s eyes.
The acolyte skidded to a halt in front of their table, his hands waving with his anxiousness. “The nixir! She has left her room and is wandering around the temple. No one knows what to do about it, and the elders said to find you so that you could contain her.”
“She is not a wild animal!” Jotaha snarled, exasperated by the behavior of elders who should know better. He wished Arokiv was around to calm their nerves. That elder seemed to be quite comfortable around nixirs.
“You should go quickly, Ha-tah,” Farona said, her expression sympathetic. “She might be distressed to find herself in such a foreign environment alone. She will need you, not a doddering elder, to comfort her.”
Farona was correct, as always. Her wisdom was as expansive as her kindness. He had been wrong to wait so long before returning to Sarah. Even if he couldn’t find the right words to speak to her, he could not simply ignore her until inspiration struck him. Sarah was not the kind of female to sit quietly in her quarters until her mate came knocking to escort her.
29
Sarah could feel eyes upon her as she made her way through the building where she was being kept. At least one of those pairs of eyes had to belong to the guard that had been stationed outside the rooms where she’d recovered. He’d seemed startled when she’d suddenly opened the door, and had backed away several feet when she’d walked out of it. He’d also stuttered when she’d asked him where Jotaha was, seeming not to have an answer.
She’d told him she would go exploring on her own then, growing truly irritated with Jotaha leaving her to her own devices for so long. Granted, the servants had brought her generous offerings, but if he thought he could just ignore her indefinitely while sending gifts and comforts her way, he had another think coming.
The building she was in filled her with awe as she roamed its wide corridors, beneath vaulted ceilings that stretched far overhead. She had seen the steeple from the sky lift, and had noted the similarity to gothic architecture even with as sick as she’d been then. The horns of the dragon skull had formed towers surrounded by the flying buttresses that supported the primary cathedral.
The rooms she passed were accessible through peaked archways, with sun-bleached wooden doors that towered above her head. Heavily carved stone columns supported the bases of the vaulted ceilings, and many of them glowed with light and warmth, clearly made of the same inferno stones Jotaha used in place of campfires.
Instead of gargoyle grotesques, dragons clung to every surface, carved from stone—glowing or simple granite— and crystals of ever color, or wood of many different shades, from the darkest ebony to the palest birch.
Gorgeous and intricate woven rugs, softly gleaming with silken threads, warmed the stone floors as light spilled through tall, multipaned windows. That sunlight seemed to nourish the multitude of potted plants tucked against every column and surrounding every stone bench. There were even trees planted within the corridors, their blossom-laden branches stretching towards the vaulted ceilings.
She could explore this place forever. It was so beautiful it was almost breathtaking. Elaborate architecture was rare in Arizona, limited primarily to a few city locations, and she’d seen nothing like this in her admittedly sparse travel experience.
Her surroundings reminded her unequivocally that she was in another world, and after seeing this place, she couldn’t imagine ever returning to her dull and sand colored world, with the boxy, flat-roofed buildings and metal pop-ups that were painfully utilitarian and obviously designed to be cheap rather than beautiful. Even expensive modern architecture lacked this kind of style and beauty, aiming for a futuristic design that seemed to defy the classical understanding of aesthetics.
This place spoke to her on some primal level that made her pause so often to soak in her surroundings that she could hear the frantic whispering of the small entourage of yan-kanat following at a safe distance. They would dart behind columns or plants or statues when she turned to look in their direction, but she knew they were there. It would be funny, if it wasn’t a stark reminder of how alone and isolated she felt. They were too afraid to approach her, and she didn’t think it was because of her veins faintly glowing beneath her skin.
She entered a massive room that had to be some kind of library. It was filled with shelves and cubbies groaning under the weight of thousands upon thousands of bound books and scrolls. Carved bas-relief images covered one entire wall, some of which glowed with inferno stones. She was drawn to that wall, despite the many distracting shelves and pedestals with carvings and intriguing objects upon them.
In the bas-relief, a beautiful woman writhed as though in pain, her hair floating around her head as if she were moving in water. The artist had managed to capture the motion of her body in the static stone with such brilliance that Sarah could almost see her struggles unfold. She might be floating like she was submerged, but a halo of flames surrounded her, glowing with the light and warmth of inlaid inferno stones, that could have been the cause of her pain.
Or it could have been the dragon that was rendered so small as to be the size of a brooch on the woman—though instead of clinging to the filmy fabric that barely concealed her naked body, it hung onto her throat, and close inspection showed that its teeth were embedded in her flesh.
Given the number of dragons that filled this building, it was strange to see one carved so tiny in comparison to a beautiful human woman, even though the little dragon appeared to be winning whatever battle they were locked in.
“That carving depicts the battle of Bal Goro and the titaness Theia,” Jotaha said from behind her.
She yelped and spun around to face him, realizing she’d been so entranced by the carving that she hadn’t even been aware of him approaching her. “You’re here! Finally.”
He stepped closer to her and the carving. “I’m sorry for leaving you alone so long. I had to take care of something that couldn’t wait.”
Before she could respond with the many questions she had, he gestured to the carving as if he wanted to distract her. “After the children of the titans—the cursed Olympians—created the nixirs who immediately decided to conquer Gaia, the elder god Bal Goro knew that his children—the yan-kanat—needed a refuge of their own to escape the massacre. He challenged the titaness, Theia, to a duel.”
Jotaha slowly shook his head as he stared at the carving. “She agreed, believing there was no way he could win. She vastly underestimated him. After he slayed her, he made her heart into our world, her ribs into the urvaka that protects it from the nixirs, and her flesh into the veil that binds us to Gaia through the urvaka.”
She couldn’t resist the distraction, even though that was what she knew it to be. Jotaha clearly wasn’t ready to talk about the whole “mate” thing yet. “So, the titans really existed, huh? Just like dragons. On Earth, we just assume they were all myths invented to explain natural phenomenon.” She cocked her head, studying Theia’s image with even more interest. “She looks like a human woman. A beautiful one.”