Page 39 of Shadows of Air and Earth
I inhaled sharply, watching transfixed as she rose, her gaze meeting the lowered great eyes of the basilisk. "What? What other towns?"
Riley grunted beside me. "She did say we needed to hurry to get here."
"No. Goddess no." My hand covered my mouth. All those fae…we could have saved them if I hadn’t been so foolish. Guilt burned through my veins like the acidic poison dripping from the beast’s mouth.
"There was no way we could have known, terrella," Riley said softly, his voice solemn and distant, straying just as mine did with the thoughts of hundreds of fae meeting their end, frozen in stone, becausewewere too late.
Swallowing hard, my breath caught when Remnant’s hand stretched blindly outward. Gaze steady, she stroked the fierce beak of the basilisk without hesitation. I did not need Riley's hearing ability to know that she was cooing to an original beast like a babe.
Opening its jaw wide in invitation, her arm disappeared inside the beast’s mouth, amongst the serrated fangs. Tail coiling around her defensively, my heart began to pound in my ears right before my hearing was shattered by a blood curdling screech.
I didn't wait. I didn't hesitate. I jumped straight from the bell tower, the air roaring around me while I dropped, the ground rising up, rumbling beneath my feet, propelling me into a forward sprint. “No!” I screamed, watching fire burst around both beast and fae, its brightness blurring my vision. Blindly I continued to run, praying that I was not too late, that there would be something left of the shadow fae that I now had the honor of calling my friend.
When my feet came to a hard stop and my body abruptly pitched forward, I cried out. Reacting on instinct, I softened theearth, weaving it into coarse sand before landing with a muffled grunt, saving my face from being crushed by marbled stone. Sputtering out the gritty earth, I stilled, tasting a unique energy within the ground—a pure, concentrated form of smoldering hot rock.
"You've got to be goddess damn kidding me," I sputtered, thrusting my hand deep into the sand, my pulse thundering in my head. Coaxing the earth to shift beneath, I soon felt a disk-like object, heavy and thick, settling into it. I grinned in the dirt, chuckling madly at my bit of luck—except there was no luck in Faerie.
"Uh Xi," Riley said dryly, "I hardly think this is the best moment for playtime in the sandbox."
Wrenching my hand from the ground, I held out the pure concentrated form of firestone, gold and glittering against the darkened sky where the rolling clouds still waited ominously.
Riley pointed, "Is that—"
"Ah, you have found the seal, well done." Remnant's calm, unfazed voice drew both of our attention forward. A pale arm stretched out to me, blocking my vision. I blinked at the beautiful and precise scrolling tattoos etched along the flawless skin, following it up to Remnant’s soft smile.
It was then that I knew I was getting better at reading her—because beneath her bright emerald eyes, I caught a flicker of trepidation before it disappeared into a careful mask.
She wriggled her fingers at me, indicating to take her hand, "I can't help but think you were worried about me, Xi. Apologies for tripping you up. I did not want the basilisk to be frightened by your presence." She tilted her head, “Or were you just looking for an excuse to play in the dirt?”
I snorted and heard Riley's failed attempt to smother his laughter. "I think that is very much an understatement, Rem," I drawled, slapping my hand in her own, the shadows releasingmy feet while she hauled me up effortlessly, despite my being almost double her height.
Riley stepped closer to us both, his eyes first scanning her body for injury before turning to the street behind her where one very pissed-off basilisk was now missing. "What in the goddess fuck happened?"
Remnant waved a large fang, forcing us both to rear back from the venom flicking off it. "Rotten tooth. Once I removed it, the basilisk left. I suggested the far southern mountain ranges for its new home. Hopefully the Roc won't mind. They are closely related, you know."
I gaped at her and the tooth she held proudly in her hand, happiness glittering in her emerald green eyes. "Right, they may as well be twins even. I'm sure the eagles would love to know they are comparable to an unsightly half-rooster snake."
Tossing the fang up into the storm ridden air, she chuckled as she watched the shadows hungrily snatch the deadly tooth, pulling it into their dark embrace.
Shifting uncomfortably, my eyes narrowed. "So that's it, then?"
She nodded, biting at her lip before releasing it with a pop. "Yup that's it."
I tugged on my hair, pulling it back across my face. "Goddess help us," I breathed exasperatedly.
"Hate to break up our cute little team bonding moment, but this is certainly not it and there is no goddess who can help us now," Riley said, staring upwards, the rolling thunderclouds we had seen earlier blooming over us. Faerie's cobalt sky faded into shades of deep blue and black, as if the very atmosphere had been brutalized and bruised. Riley had been right before, this stormwasunnatural but so was the rage spreading across his handsome features. My stomach fell. Our past had caught up with us…in the form offamilywe wished we‘d never had.
I narrowed my eyes at the town’s gates, sensing her there, waiting. Birth bitch had come to play but this time I would make sure her games ended here.
Chapter 27
Iknew Xi sawit, the disquiet in my eyes when she held up the seal of Hell. It wasn’t the artifact itself that gave me pause—whatever awaited beyond the gateway of Hell, it hadn’t met me yet—no, it was itsunnaturalhiding place.
As if it had been perfectly placed there for the exact moment Xi would fall.
A lucky break, a coincidence—something I sure as goddess never subscribed to. This was fucking Faerie. Coincidences were nothing more than intricate webs of fate, a concept that captured and ensnared those who were not prepared for the cruelty of time to play by a new set of rules.
Rules only its taunting passing knew.
