Page 73 of Shadows and Flames
The fire began to wane, to die.
He hissed, dropping his arm to his side, and the fire extinguished.
“Shit.” Meline watched Elián begin to pace. I’d not seen the reticent male display such naked emotion, save for when he held a dying Meline in his arms. His chest swelled and constricted quickly, and he was mumbling urgent words in what I assumed was Zonoran.
My cousin gripped his bare biceps, halting his pacing, and in his stillness, I choked on a gasp.
His irises were no longer glowing in the way I’d grown used to. Nor were they the vibrant shades of flames.
His eyes were a still brown, faintly amber, but that was it.
“What the fuck.” Tom noticed, too. “We need to go back. Fuck this.”
“I…I don’t think we can,” I whispered. Without my magic, I was cut off from any senses that could help me decipher how the portal worked. Unless the Folk allowed us, or we found another who had the power to open the door, we were stuck.
My cousin breathed with her Shadow, holding his gaze and wordlessly leading him to calm, but my morose statement caused his grimace to deepen. “It is finite.” He spoke it as if it pained him to utter the word.
Finite.
Meline bobbed her head in a shaky rhythm, smoothing her hands up and down her Shadow’s arms, but when she looked to me, I saw the fear. Her irises had returned to how they used tobe, a deep brown, almost black, and I knew her goddess gift was stoppered, too.
“What does this mean?”
We all flinched. Fenix’s coverings made him a mass of fabric, but even his typical sardonic quips were tempered. His deep voice was quiet with uncertainty, unaware of the situation but feeling the gravity all the same.
“Hush, you,” Tomás growled then leaned closer to his brother. “Do you otherwise feel healthy?”
The Fire Bringer without his Fire twitched a nod to both Tomás and Meline. She mirrored the affirmation.
“Right. So, we get them to open up the tree again, and we leave Blackwood the choice to stay or come with us.”
My instinct was to agree with the Shadow. Though he had no association with the powers of the Godyxes or the gift of the aether, he’d deduced the turmoil. We were trained fighters, them more than Fenix and myself, but to be without the whole of our abilities was more than concerning.
Meline’s jaw tightened, and I was perfectly able to decipher her thoughts, the squaring of her shoulders while the corners of her mouth turned down.
I didn’t object.
“Tana and I are staying to retrieve Francie. You all can go. You were never bound to this contract to begin with.”
Elián growled, taking hold of Meline, and uttering a single word. “Nâ.”
“Oh for godyx’s sake,” Tomás lamented.
I glanced at Fenix, and though I couldn’t tell where he was looking, he faced me. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but you all still have to make some things up to me. I’m staying.”
It didn’t make sense, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, but footsteps and a harsh bark stopped me. “You! Do your jobandhurry.” Blackwood glowered at us from the mouth of the bend, one of the Folk just beside him.
The leather pack on my back suddenly felt twenty times heavier, the weight of our new circumstances lead around my ankles.
And yet, I went forward. Meline and Elián separated but stayed beside each other as they moved with me. We were without our powers, cut at the knees, and with Tomás and Fenix with us, we went forward anyway.
Wonder and despair warred inside of me, creating a nauseating flutter in my lungs and stomach. My skin warmed and tingled with the foreign feel oflifein its most naked form, but the sweet scent of it was almost sour in my nostrils.
Water rushed in the distance, becoming a roar the longer we walked, and the silence was almost as deafening. No one spoke—not the Folk nor anyone from our party. Blackwood’s mouth was nearly watering, either blinded by his pursuit of riches or mortal senses leaving him disconnected from how such a world felt.
Because with each step, my giddiness dimmed. With each step through this enclosed pathway between trees, my body screamed that I did not belong here.
My cousin and Tomás rested their hands on their weapons, Elián held his clasped behind his back, and Fenix’s were stiffly stuffed in his pockets. Blackwood was the only one jauntily swinging his arms as he walked.
