Guards were still coming after me, but they were far away thanks to Inky and its speedy flight process, so I was able to walk around to find the entrance I needed. It didn’t take long, the literal oozing energy coming from it the first giveaway.
The only issue was the door appeared to be embedded into the wall of the castle, and there was no obvious handle or way to push through. Just the outline of a door, and the sense that I needed to get down there. Shoving the stone didn’t help, kicking the stone didn’t help, screaming and calling it a dumb fucking fuck didn’t help, and when I slumped against the castle, knowing my time was almost up, and we were about to once again be ass-deep in guards, I let out a long sigh.
My wolf pushed up to the surface, and I let her come. There was no other option, and honestly, what could it hurt? She’d always been much more adept at calling the creatures, and she was stronger, able to attack beings that would destroy me.
It was her time to shine.
Inky intercepted the guards, as I shifted in a swift, semi-painful moment. My clothes were destroyed, as always when I didn’t take them off first—a combination of magic and heat literally disintegrated them to nothing more than some scraps and buttons. It was all good, since my fur would do the job of keeping me covered, at least until we finished our quest.
As soon as I was in my wolf form, we picked up so many things I hadn’t had a hope of seeing with human eyes. The monochromatic vision was able to detect a gap in the corner of the door, and I could taste the breeze coming from there.
This was the key here.
Inky!
It must have sensed that I needed it, and as it zoomed to my side, I nosed the small opening, jerking my head to indicate that it needed to go through there and see if the mechanism to open this door was on the other side.
Inky didn’t want to at first, as it shot more energy toward the guards. My wolf growled, pawing at the ground, and our flames shimmered across the red and white of our fur. We could handle the guards; Inky just had to hurry.
Thankful my energy was stronger in this form; I attacked the front line, and like before, I needed no training to know how to fight as a wolf. She was brutal, using flames, claws, and teeth to bounce across them, ripping throats out. She held none of that human hesitance about taking life. It was them versus us, and in that situation, she was without mercy. Without morality questions.
She was death, relishing in the power.
As we bit into one of the freilds, she started to drain their life, stealing it and sucking it deep into the well that was sustaining us and our creatures. I’d done this before, even if I hadn’t quite known it at the time.
Whatever Dannie had created when she’d bonded a mist born with a shifter had formed a being that no one had ever seen before. A being with the potential to destroy worlds.
If it hadn’t been me, I would have feared that being, and I knew that one day someone would come after me. Worried I’d go rogue and be a true threat. I’d deal with that then; for now, I was fighting, all the while hoping that Inky had figured out how to open the door—
I heard the whoosh of air behind me, and that beautiful amazing cloud of fucking smoke had done exactly what I’d needed. It had gotten me into the passage that would lead me down under the mists. Down to my creatures.
Now we just had to get there before an entire fucking army descended on us. Even a mist and a fire wolf would be screwed if that happened.
Ripping out my last throat—the bitter taste of the blood had the human side of us gagging until it cleared from our mouth—we bounced away from the guards and toward the open doorway.
Inky was waiting for me on the inside, and when I leapt in, it slammed the door closed again, shutting off the dying light from outside. My flames were still sprinkled across my fur, brighter in some places, giving us enough illumination to see the stairs that we had to descend.
Another creature death hit me, and then another, and whoever was killing them was going for gold now, sensing I was on my way. Fucking fuck. Inky swept my wolf up and we tried to rip it to pieces—don’t startle the wolf, apparently—but there was no way to hurt the mist. Thankfully.
We settled a moment later, since this was the fastest way down the stairs, all the while trying not to howl at the agony of losing more of my creatures.
The curve of the stairs widened as we zoomed toward the bottom, round and round, until I was dizzy and wondering how fucking deep this chamber went.
Another death hit me. One of my abervoqs.
My howl split the air, and even Inky flinched at the guttural sound, ripped from the center of my being; from my own pain and loss; from my power.
We flew wonky for a beat, but we’d finally reached the lowest level, so I was able to jump off, running toward my creatures.
The heat down here was intense, and it was only when I rounded a stone corner that I understood why. The lava was everywhere, spilling in rivers down the walls, across the floor, and puddling into a huge lava pit. It was also in a curtain separating me from the thousands of creatures, and that was why they hadn’t been able to get to me.
They couldn’t cross the lava barrier.
As I closed in, another one was thrown into the large pool of red, burning lava below, and a cry tore from me. I was a mother losing her children, a part of me dying with each of their deaths.
Stalking across the stone, I had to walk a fine line between lava and rock to make it closer to the massive platform where all the creatures gathered. Only pausing when the bitch of the day stepped into view.
I felt not a single flicker of surprise when Ixana appeared, part of me knowing all along that she was more than Shadow’s poor broken true mate. She had an evil streak, and now we were going to know exactly what her game was.
“If it isn’t the whore who stole my true mate,” she said with a raspy laugh. Truth be told, she did actually look a little pissed off by that.
Wanting to speak, I drew on my human side, and my wolf let me change back. When I was naked and on two legs, I felt my hair fall in long strands to my thighs. Each shift near the mists was giving me vitality and life.
Hopefully it would be enough to get me, and the beings I loved, through this.
“Where is Cristell?” I asked.
Ixana laughed. “Dead.”
Hmm, okay. “When did she die?”
If Shadow was watching this through Inky, then this was important information for him to have.
“She died the day I barred Shadow from the realm.”
This truth did take me by surprise.
It had been her all along.
From the first betrayal, when she must have created an illusion to make Shadow think it was his sister who’d given him the spelled cup. To the spell on the doorway, her energy powering it all.
I held a finger up, furrowing my brow. “You’re gonna have to bad guy monologue for me here because I’m confused about why you’d tear your true mate from this world. You could have just ruled with him.”
Ixana didn’t answer, but she did attack, her power barreling across the lava and into my chest, sending me flying into a nearby wall. She was beyond strong, and the simpering annoying ice queen was nowhere to be seen, her true form blossoming to life. This was the being who had ruled for thousands of years, stealing energy and destroying my creatures.
Inky rushed to help me up, and by the time I got back to the divide, Ixana managed to toss a bunch of my creatures into the lava pool below her. As each died an agonizing death, my stomach swirled, and I turned my head to the side to throw up. There was nothing solid in there, so I got the fun of gagging and choking on bile.
“Stop!” I screamed. “If you kill them all, the Nexus will fall!”
Ixana laughed, blasting more power my way, like a wall of bullets raining across Inky and me. “I want the damn Nexus to fall. No power can stand against mine then, and I’ve built enough down here to sustain us all.”
What? She was freaking insane.
“The Nexus falls, so does Shadow Realm.”
Inky was trying to get me closer to Ixana and the creatures, but her power was too great. I was about to wolf out again and hope that made a difference, when I felt Angel closing in through our bond.
Relief smashed through me when she burst into the underground, Shadow right behind her, covered in flames. He didn’t stop for a beat, tearing through the lava and crashing into Ixana. The pair disappeared behind another flowing wall of lava, gone from sight.
Inky took off after its bonded master, and I sent a quick hope and wish into the universe that I wouldn’t lose both of them to this insane bitch.
There was nothing I could do to help him. Well, not directly, but indirectly… if I freed the creatures, some of her power would be voided.
Angel reached my side, and without words, she knew what I needed. I needed my creatures. Even as Ixana had destroyed so many, there were thousands still trapped. “We can’t get through that,” Angel shouted, her gaze darting down the fall of lava. “It’s lava born of the mists. And Ixana has been powering it for years.”
She had, by throwing living, breathing beings into her fucking sacrifice pool.
“She said she had the power to keep this world running even if the Nexus fell,” I told her in an angry snarl of words. “How? How could she possibly manage that?”
Angel paused, and I could tell that she was running her computer brain through every possible scenario of how that would work, cataloguing the most likely scenario. Before she could spit out her results, a new energy filtered through the space. More than one, actually, and the only reason we didn’t panic at power like that racing toward us, was that I recognized it.
Shadow had called in extra backup; we just had to pray they weren’t too late to save their best friend. “Let’s get you some clothing,” Angel said, her energy weaving together a shirt and pants. They were different to what Shadow created, the clothing rougher, as if they’d been pulled from the raw materials that existed here, but at least my ass was covered.
“Mera!” Len shouted, the first one to appear just as I finished getting dressed. His skin glowed silver as power surrounded him in the same manner as his cloak. “Where is Shadow?”
He stopped at my side, and right behind him were Alstair, bringing a sense of calm with him. He wore a full armored outfit this time, brandishing deadly gold-and-bronze, long-bladed knives. Then there was Reece, the dry winds of change coming with him, and the desert deity had never looked larger or angrier as he did storming forward, literal dust flying around him. Gallilei was last, silent and deadly as always, and I felt the caress of his energy in my mind as he greeted me.
No Lucien, and I was grateful that not only had they arrived to help us, but they were still taking my request to protect Simone seriously.
“Shadow is fighting his mate,” I said in a rush, pointing to where they’d disappeared. “In the lavafalls.”
Alstair placed his hand on my shoulder, and against my will, I calmed. “He’s alive, and he’s fighting strongly like the warrior he is. You do not need to panic.”
Thank fuck.
I was about to say something else when Len froze. It was noticeable because he always moved fluidly, with the sort of grace that only the fae had, but this had been a jagged, jarring movement.
“What is it?” Reece snapped, picking up on the distress on his friend’s face.
“My stone,” he breathed, his skin ashen. “It’s here, and it’s brimming with power.”
“Fuck.”
We all looked at Angel as she breathed out a human curse, her eyes wide and shiny. She met my gaze and in that second, I knew exactly what Ixana had that gave her confidence to keep this world running even without the Nexus.
The sunburst stone.
She had the sunburst and the bloodstone, and between the two, she was going to take all the power for herself. She wanted to be the next Nexus. The next goddess of all.
Len grabbed at me, and I could have sworn that Shadow let out a raging bellow from somewhere in the depths. It was so nice to hear that sound. “What do you know?” Len demanded, uncaring that his friend was going to beat his ass for throwing me around like this.
“Ixana has your stone,” I confirmed, hurrying to explain what I’d learned from Dannie about Shadow and me, and the ice queen herself.
“Ixana had this entire elaborate illusion set up to trick Shadow and… well, me. Once she felt us return to her realm, she knew she could use our power to fulfill the goal she’d been working toward for thousands of years. Destroy the Nexus and become the only true power here.”
“That’s why the land is so drained,” Angel said, her voice shaking. “She’s been gathering as much power, sacrificing as many as she can, all on this quest.”
Len lifted his hands then, his eyes closed as he called power to his being, and my mouth went dry at the wash of energy that felt as ancient as the worlds themselves. A high-pitched, ringing sound started low before picking up intensity.
A beat later, the stone came into view. It was suspended over the lava pit, above the sacrifice pool, and it was the most brilliant gem I’d ever seen. About the size of two fists, the bright yellow orb twinkled and spun, visible energy trailing up to it from the sacrifice pool.
Len took a step forward, his arm shaking as he lifted it, twirling his hand like he was feeling for an energy in the air. “She’s been hiding it; the stone’s natural energy has been meshing to the mists so no one could tell it was here.” He sucked in a deep breath. “It’s so powerful. Enough power to destroy this world… even create new worlds. The mists are the power of creation, and this stone is now that as well.”
I placed my hand on his arm, both of us needing the fortification. “This is why you never found any information,” I breathed. “This world was blocked from the Library of Knowledge, making the realm the perfect place to contain it in secret.”
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed. “But it was stolen by fae. By a family friend who tricked us all into thinking they were on our side.”
“Ixana,” I growled, “is the queen of deception. Of illusion. And she alone has controlled the spell on the door that kept the realm barred from the other worlds.”
There was a decent chance, that even Kristoff was part of her elaborate scheme to get us exactly where she needed us, to ensure all of this would happen. He was probably dead, despite what the others had seen.
“Why didn’t she just collect all the creatures herself?” I wondered out loud. “She obviously had the time and power to get it done.”
Angel’s wings shot out behind her as her face darkened into furious lines. “She was trying to, but even with her considerable power, there was one part always off limits to her. The land and creatures near the Nexus.”
And I’d come along and just handed them all to her on a silver platter.
Flames of my fury licked around me, and it took concerted effort not to rage and kill everything in this room. That would be a little counterproductive to what I wanted to achieve here today.
“How do we stop her?” Reece bit out, his hands clenched at his sides. He was watching for Shadow, that much was clear as he scanned that unbroken lavafall through which the beast and the bitch had disappeared.
At this point, I was done waiting. Shadow hadn’t been destroyed by the fire, so I had a shot. A shot was enough today.
