He shook his head. How, for the love of the Mountain, was someone supposed to decide something like this? Every step he took closer to accepting what Raven was saying as true was a step away from the small peace he’d finally found in letting Maiara go. He stood and backed away from Gabriel. “What are the risks?”
Raven nodded. “Good question. We don’t have Maiara’s body. Together, we can make her one. I have a spell for it. But it’s possible she won’t look exactly as you remember her.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“She might not remember you.”
That made his heart drop into his stomach.
“She’s spent three hundred years inside a bird. I don’t know how much of her consciousness has been in control. If it’s been Nyx steering the ship, so to speak, I’m not sure what will be left of her mind.”
Alexander shook his head. “She’s in there.”
Tobias raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”
Folding his arms, he shook his head. “I just do. What else?” He pointed his chin at Raven.
“The spell, as written, is meant to be performed soon after the passing of a Midew. Maiara’s soul has been separated from her body for centuries. She’s effectively haunting the body of that bird. It’s possible that after I free her, she’ll choose to pass over to the Land of Souls rather than implant herself into the totem we make for her.”
For a long stretch, Alexander said nothing. He stared across the red rock and contemplated what it would be like to go through all this only for it not to work. He had to be prepared for that possibility. And if Maiara’s soul moved on, he knew intuitively that Nyx would move on as well. It was clear to him now that the only thing binding the hawk to him was Maiara. But his love deserved more than the half life she had now.
When he turned back toward them, his shoulders sagged. “Either way, this will be better for her. I can’t imagine what she’s endured these many years. If what you say is true, she deserves to m-move on.” His voice cracked.
Rowan stepped forward and tried to hug him, but Alexander avoided her embrace. He loved his sister, but he just couldn’t allow himself to crumble, and if she hugged him, he would crumble. “No. Rowan, not now.” He focused on Raven. “Is there anything else?”
Raven’s eyes shifted from side to side. “I’ll need blood.”
“Blood?”
“From you and Nyx. When I brought Gabriel back from the dead—”
“You resurrected Gabriel?”
She nodded. “I used my own blood because I’d swallowed his tooth. Maiara never had your tooth, just your bond. But Nyx has hosted her soul. Some of her blood and some of yours should be enough of a sacrifice for the magic to work.”
Alexander scrubbed his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes. It felt like someone had drained all his blood and refilled his veins with concrete. Everything felt heavy.
“I need an answer, Alexander. Are we going to do this? Will you trust me to try?” Raven asked.
“What do you need me to do?”
There was a collective release of breath. “You’re an artist. That should make this easier. I need to see exactly what she looked like. Paintings, sketches, all different angles. I need them all. The more real she seems in the art, the better. I will be rebuilding her using blood magic. If I can’t see it in my mind, I have to fill in the gaps. I need every detail. Do you understand?”
Rowan piped up. “That shouldn’t be a problem. You’ve probably painted ten thousand pictures of Maiara over the past twenty years alone.”
Alexander narrowed his eyes on her. “I’ll need a few hours to pull what I have together.”
“Take all night. I need to rest and prepare.” Raven rubbed her palms together in small circles. “I’ll also need a totem, a physical object that represents Maiara. Perhaps a carving or a statue that you think she’d be attracted to.”
That gave him pause. “I’ll come up with something.”
“This isn’t an easy spell, but I’d like to start first thing in the morning. Can you have both things ready by then?”
Alexander bowed his head. “I’ll do it.”
All at once, his knees buckled. One moment he was fine, normal, facing Raven the same as any other time, and the next, a wave of blackness seemed to plow into him. The family rushed in. Rowan caught him by his left shoulder, Tobias his right. Gabriel helped them get him into a chair.
“We’ve got you.” Gabriel tapped his cheeks with his hands. “You’re going to make it through this.”
The way Gabriel said it, Alexander wanted to believe it was true. But he wasn’t sure. If this didn’t work, if Raven failed and Maiara passed into the Land of Souls, Alexander didn’t think he’d survive it. If what was left of his heart shattered again, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Deep inside his treasure room in his secret sanctum, Alexander found the original sketchbook he’d brought to the New World. If Raven needed to see what Maiara really looked like, there was no better source than this. His sketchbook had been his comfort and constant companion up until her death.
After Maiara was killed and he fled to Sedona, Willow had brought him the sketchbook along with his other things, but he’d been too distraught to open it. For centuries it remained undisturbed, the tied leather binder becoming stiff from lack of use.
Now he carefully untied the leather straps and opened the book. Although the edges of the pages had yellowed, his drawings were perfectly preserved. But which ones should he choose for the spell?
The sketch of Maiara standing defiantly in the door to the Owl’s Roost showed her courage. He carefully turned the page and was back in the woods, watching her undress in front of a tree. This one captured her vulnerability. On the next page, she was leaning over the redcoat who’d been injured by the wendigo, compassion in her eyes. There was one of her in his arms and her hovering over him in his bed. And then there were dozens more of her, drinking from a stream, eating elk across the fire from him, holding a rabbit above her head that she’d shot with her bow.
So many memories. None of them alone adequately captured who she was. Every time he’d sketched or painted her image over the years, he’d done so with the intention of doing her justice. Only, no two-dimensional image could fully represent what it was like to be in her presence.
She was small in stature, but anyone who had been in her presence would hesitate to say so. She was formidable, flinty. She was a woman who’d lost everything but had survived through determination and perseverance. She was brave, strong, but vulnerable in a way that always reminded him she was human.
How could he show Raven how tall she seemed in person when her actual height in inches fell short of her personality? How could he represent how one look of her ebony eyes could bring a warrior to his knees? How her spine grew straight as a pine tree and her long limbs held the grace of a swan’s neck? Her legs were sturdy as the mighty oaks she favored, and her skin was lit-from-within amber, darker than his but a color all its own. Could he even replicate it?
No painting or sketch could. He tossed the sketchbook down on his bed. Nyx, who’d arrived home after everyone else had left, swooped down on the bed and started tugging at the book with her beak and crumpling the pages with her talons. He heard an ominous rip.
“Stop that,” Alexander said, shooing her away. She squawked at him and pecked the exposed page. A tight smile accompanied a prickle in his eyes. On that night, Maiara had sat beside him by the fire. It was after they were bound to one another, when they rarely parted company. He hadn’t spent much time looking at the picture before because it wasn’t of Maiara but of her perspective that night, the chief standing before the central fire, telling the story of Moowis, the snow husband.
At the time, he’d thought it a silly legend, the type of story told around the fire to keep children in line. But now he remembered it with new eyes. In the story, a highly esteemed warrior courted a beautiful w
oman. At first she invited his attention, but when he desired her as his wife, she rudely and publicly humiliated him, saying she thought her astounding beauty could attract someone better than the warrior.
Angered by her narcissistic ways, the warrior beseeched his spirit guide for help teaching her a lesson. His guide bade him to create a man out of snow, bones, and rags. With the help of his spirit guide, the man sculpted a handsome suitor, whom he brought to life and named Moowis.
The warrior took Moowis back to the woman, who fell in love with him instantly. But the snow husband rejected her. Sick with love, the woman followed Moowis from the village and traveled far from her people, until one spring day, her love disappeared. The snow husband had melted into the earth.
The story was a warning about pride, but that wasn’t the part that interested him. An idea came to him as he remembered the tale, and excitement made his breath quicken and his heart pound inside his chest. He straightened the page to get a better look, then narrowed his eyes on Nyx. “Are you really in there?”
The bird tilted her head and stared at him with soulful, amber eyes.
“Willow!” he called.
“Yes, my dragon?” The oread manifested beside him, his wings fluttering from whatever magical movement brought him there.
“I need clay. Lots of it.”
“We have four boxes of Blick earthenware in storage, left over from that sculpture you did for the circle at Artist’s Row.”
“Bring it and get me more.”
“I’ll have to use magic. None of the stores are open this time of night.”
“Do it. I’ll need roughly three hundred pounds… and half-inch rebar. No, bring me quarter-inch instead; she was petite.”
“That we have as well. I ordered in bulk last time.” Willow dissolved, off to retrieve his supplies.
Alexander walked into the main room of the cave, still gripping the drawing like a security blanket, his creative gears turning in a way that made his head tingle. With the ease that accompanied his dragon strength, he threw the couch across the room as if it weighed nothing and pushed the rest of the furniture aside.
There wasn’t enough light. Desperately he tore the shade off the floor lamp and tossed another log on the fire. It still wasn’t enough. The rug would have to go. He rolled it and sent it in the direction of the couch.
Willow returned with what he’d asked for, looking a little gray. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Bring every lamp in the cave. I need light. Lots of light from every direction.”
The oread nodded and retreated into the back rooms. He returned with extension cords and a hodgepodge of light sources he set up around the room. Now he looked positively drained. Alexander took him into his arms and didn’t let go until the color returned to his cheeks. “Thank you, my dragon.”
“Rest. Recuperate. I’ll handle this from here.”
Willow bowed. “I hope whatever this is, it brings you peace.” He faded away.
Alexander dug through the pieces of rebar and found what he was looking for, then drove one into the floor of the cave with his bare hands. About Maiara’s hip-width apart and slightly back, he anchored a second piece. These would form the bones of her legs. Using his dragon strength, and fire when he needed it, he formed a frame for the clay, a steel skeleton. He gave her a spine, shoulders, neck, and a head. Too short. He added to the frame, making the waist longer. Perfect. This was perfect.
A human artist might take weeks on a project like this. Alexander didn’t have weeks. What he had was superspeed, dragon fire, and nothing to lose. He formed her feet, remembering how his thumbs had once pressed into her graceful arches, then sculpted her ankles, long and narrow. They melded into muscular calves.
The hollow of the back of her knee was a place he’d kissed a thousand times. His hands smoothed along her thighs, his thumbs forming the folds between them. He’d known her body the way only a husband could. Wide, full hips narrowed to a muscular waist with a navel that had fascinated him, considering his kind did not naturally have one.
Two mounds of clay formed her buttocks. Along the rebar, he formed the muscles of her back, her shoulders, then filled in her breasts. One had been slightly larger than the other, and he concentrated on remembering every precious detail of their size and shape. Finally he formed her face, his thumbs sculpting her eyes, her nose with its slight hook at the end of the bridge, her jaw, her mouth. There she was. He saw her now in the clay. All he had to do was move the extra aside to reveal her. He formed her ears, the quirk of her cheek as she smiled.
At some point he noticed his hands were bleeding, his blood mixing with the red clay. Despite his dragon skin, his efforts had left them raw and they hurt now when he flexed his fingers. But once he’d sculpted her hair, using a comb to give it the texture he remembered, and glazed it and her eyes to ebony perfection, he walked around his creation and thought he couldn’t possibly have fashioned a more accurate portrayal. This was Maiara, exactly as he remembered her.
Nyx flew to the fireplace mantel to get a better look. She cried her approval.
“It’s her,” Alexander said, then narrowed his eyes on the bird. “You.”
The animal that stared back at him seemed no more human than before. Behind the hawk, the sun rose, its light warring with the lamps still glowing brightly around his work. He staggered from the room to his bed and collapsed facedown on the coverlet, his hands and body still covered in clay. He was asleep before he had a chance to doubt himself.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Raven and Gabriel arrived at Alexander’s cave just after nine and were thankful that Alexander had updated the wards to allow them to pass inside. After some discussion, they’d convinced the others to stay behind. The spell Raven would perform included complex and dark magic, and the chances it would be unintentionally disrupted, either from fear or distraction, increased with every observer.
Had Raven had her way, Gabriel would have stayed behind as well, but he’d refused, and she didn’t have the strength to fight him. Still, she’d made him swear not to break her concentration for any reason.
“Holy goddess of the Mountain,” Gabriel said.
Raven blinked to force her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light of the cave. Someone else was there, waiting for them. Only when her eyes regulated did she realize why Gabriel was so moved.
“It’s her,” he said. “Exactly her.”
A clay likeness of Maiara stood in front of the fire. Raven had never met the woman, but the sculpture was more detailed than any she’d ever seen before. When the light from the fire flickered over the form, it almost looked like she was breathing, a woman covered in clay rather than made of it. “It’s incredible. He must have stayed up all night sculpting this.”
Gabriel pointed his chin toward the bed inside Alexander’s treasure room. “He’s still sleeping.”
Gabriel’s brother lay prone, covered in clay. For a second, Raven worried he was dead, but then his back rose and fell with his breath. Nyx slept on her perch beside him, her head tucked under her wing.
“Let him sleep for now. I have to prepare. Put the pack here.” Raven pointed to a clear spot beside the clay woman. Gabriel lowered the duffel bag from his shoulder. She began to rummage through it.
“It feels like she’s staring at me,” Gabriel said.
“You can leave if it’s too weird for you.”
“Not a chance.”
Raven placed a silver bowl at Maiara’s feet and positioned a fresh orange, a silk handkerchief, and a lotus blossom inside it. This was an offering to try to keep the spirit on this plane until she could bind it to the totem.
She had expected to build Maiara’s image out of magic and intention and that the totem would simply be an abstract starting point. With Maiara’s likeness built for her, she’d have to adjust the spell slightly to pour her magic into the animation of it instead. Theoretically, it should be easier. But this was all theory and conjecture. She had only he
r faith and her instincts to trust when it came to actual practice.
Digging in the bag, she found the salt she’d prepared for the ritual. Infused with fennel, peppermint, black pepper, and cinnamon, as well as snakeroot and rosary pea, it filled the room with a heady scent as she poured it. Carefully she formed three intertwining circles around the clay version of Maiara. Boundaries.
The magical energy she was about to pour out should ricochet around these circles, partially feeding her and the spell. When she was done, she stood back and admired her handiwork. The loops weren’t perfectly round, but they were as good as they were going to get. She returned the salt to the bag and retrieved a pouch of powdered obsidian, using it to form three smaller circles, tangential to each of the rings. These would act as neutralizers in case there was an imbalance of power that was too much for her to handle.
She returned the pouch to the bag. One last touch. She’d brought four stones: howlite, for its ability to open a passageway to previous lives; moonstone, its dancing internal light irresistible to spirits; jasper, a source of spiritual energy; and turquoise, the stone that matched Alexander’s ring and his dragon’s heart.
She pressed the turquoise into the clay on the left side of the totem’s chest. “I give you a heart, Maiara, made of the same material as Alexander’s,” she whispered. “Soon I hope to make it beat.” She positioned the other three stones in the three circles around her.
“Paramoni,” she whispered, waving her emerald ring over the work. The salt and stones hugged together and to the floor. Now they wouldn’t be blown away, even by the strongest wind.
She inhaled deeply. She’d eaten too much again and her belly felt tight. Rubbing circles over it, she took a break, standing back to catch her breath. She could do this. If she successfully resurrected Maiara, Gabriel would have no trouble getting Alexander and his mate to return to New Orleans where Raven’s sophisticated network of wards could keep everyone safe and they could finally be a family.
The Dragon of Sedona (The Treasure of Paragon Book 4) Page 18