The cave was dark.
There were no lanterns, no sources of light, making it difficult for Cassi to distinguish any detail. She only knew she was following a hollow hall because of the lack of friction on her spirit, something that was always present when she forced her way through solid barriers. She moved slowly, trying to draw a map with her mind as she reached out, using the subtle resistance of stone as her only guide.
The thunder of water grew soft and distant after a while, a clue as to how far she’d traveled down the winding path, but that wasn’t what made her smile. As she turned another bend, the buzzing current in the air strengthened, and a new sound echoed down the empty corridor. It was the somewhat grating chirp of ravens, though tonight, the guttural caws were music to her ears.
She was close.
A soft bluish light blinked to life at the far reaches of her vision, but it was enough. Cassi abandoned her careful trek and flew toward the source of the light. Golden bars blocked her path, a gate like the one before the sacred nest in the House of Peace, but Cassi slid right through.
The onyx orb hovering in the center of the room caught her attention immediately. It was surrounded by a layer of undulating shadow, so thick the moonlight shining through the open ceiling couldn’t penetrate it. Not that Cassi expected it would.
God stone, she thought, snorting at the idea as she made her way closer, stretching out with her spirit, pressing her invisible hand against the smooth surface of the stone and letting the energy sizzle where it touched her soul. If they only knew the truth.
The avians worshipped these floating orbs, associating each with a different deity, believing they thrummed with divine power. According to their legends, the gods had sacrificed their immortal bodies to lift the isles into the air, caging themselves within these stones to give their faithful servants a free, peaceful life high in the sky where no enemies could ever find them. And they believed these myths so strongly, they were willing to kill for them, to murder anyone who showed any hint of magic for fear it was an affront to their almighty gods.
That irony hit Cassi particularly hard.
She would be dead if her dormi’kine magic, her dreamwalking, was ever discovered.
Lyana too—their own beloved princess.
Cassi’s mother had been a victim of the persecution. At the age of five, her power had been discovered. They had stabbed her in the chest and sawed off one of her wings before hurling her over the edge to fall to her death. But she was an aero’kine. Wind was her power, and while her family abandoned her, the magic never did. It cradled her, held her, softened the fall, and a captain from the world below had seen her through the fog as she gently splashed into the ocean. He pulled her from the water and tended to her wounds, saving her life, giving her a better one where her magic was appreciated, even exalted, the way it deserved to be.
Because the truth was there were no gods.
The energy pulsing through the stone beneath her fingers wasn’t Taetanos, god of death—it was shadow magic. Pure and simple. There was no Aethios, only spirit magic like Cassi’s, like Lyana’s, the strongest kind of all. And Erhea, the god of love, revered by the songbirds? That beating red stone wasn’t a heart. It was the thing those of the world above feared most—fire magic.
There were seven elements, not seven gods, and each stone was one of those elements bottled up and sealed in an elaborate web that had been woven a thousand years ago through the sort of power that no longer existed. No one, not even her king, truly understood how the isles had come to rise into the air or why. The truth had faded into myth and legend in both the world above and the one below, but the past mattered very little.
The future, however, was still in flux.
The future was what Cassi fought to preserve.
Reluctantly, she pulled her spirit hands from the stone and blinked away the thrall of so much magic as she tried to focus on her surroundings. The sacred nest of the House of Whispers was, she quickly realized, a collapsed cavern. Impenetrable stone walls towered at least fifty feet high, curving in toward an open spot where the ground must have long ago given way. The stars glittered overhead, and the moon was bright as it filled the room, shining through the bars across the opening, keeping the squawking ravens inside. The area was thick with trees, as dense as the forest they’d flown across, though there were a few open passages leading from the orb toward the exterior sides of the nest—one led to the gate where Cassi had entered, and the others had to lead somewhere, too.
She had a hard time believing that any time the royal family wanted to visit the nest, they were first soaked by splashing water. There had to be another entrance, an easier one, even if only to deliver food and supplies to the priests and priestesses who were most likely asleep in their beds. The sacred nest at the House of Peace had an elaborate scheme of rooms and secret hallways used for the same purpose. This place would be no different.
Cassi just needed time—time and daylight, neither of which she’d find tonight. She put her hand to the orb one more time and breathed in the powerful aura, pausing for a beat to let it fill her, before reluctantly letting go.
Soon, she thought. Her new mantra.
Soon. Soon. Soon.
42
Lyana
He was so kind—so kind and caring and chivalrous—and he deserved more.
That was all Lyana thought as the rest of the week passed, and her feeling of suffocation grew, while his affectionate smile never wavered.
He deserves more than me, she thought, in his library for the third time that week. Xander leaned over a table, mind deep in the scrolls he’d unrolled, while she stood off to the side, staring out the window at the town below—a town that called out to her, whispering her name, urging she open the window, spread her wings, escape the castle, and join them in the streets below.
Or maybe not more, she corrected, idly rubbing the glass pane with her fingers. Just different. A girl who will stand beside him, not across from him. A girl who is content with being safe and secure, not always dreaming of adventure. A girl who… Her gaze drifted down, down, down to the raven all alone at the far side of the practice field, visible even from this distance. A girl who isn’t staring at his brother, remembering the way his magic sizzled beneath his skin, the way he watched her through firelight.
Lyana jerked away from the glass as if it stung her and spun, squaring her shoulders and facing her mate, determined to find a common ground.
“What are you reading?” she asked casually, stepping to his desk and pressing her palms against the worn wood to keep grounded.
“Huh?” He glanced up, surprised. “Oh, um, nothing really. It’s, well… I’m not actually reading per se, just reviewing some old maps of the isles.”
“Maps?” Lyana leaned over to peek.
Xander tilted his head as if perplexed but turned the spine of his book so she could see. Lyana touched the smooth parchment, following the contours of the mountains, the lines marking where land gave way to sky. But all she could think was, Why? Why sit in a tower and stare at old maps, when everything on that page was waiting just outside the window?
“Hmm.” Her murmur was half a sigh, half feigned interest.
Xander latched on to the latter. A rush of color flooded his cheeks and he leaned closer, their shoulders and wings brushing as he put his finger next to hers on the page. “You see this, here?” he asked in the animated voice of a scholar. “You see the edge, there, on the other side of the isle? Not where the castle is, but on the more uninhabited part. You see how it juts out? Now…”