by Jaymin Eve
He tripped then, and it almost looked like a branch had slid across the ground where he’d been standing. Laous recovered quickly, his head darting around as he tried to figure out what he had fallen over. I saw Maya hide a smile, letting her head drop forward so her dark hair covered her face.
Chase.
I managed not to laugh, even though I really wanted to. It was the little things, seriously. We started to descend, the ground getting quite steep, and by the time Lexen stopped we were in a small gorge, a cliff face on one side and a creek on the other.
For the first time since we’d stepped into this land, there was evidence of humans: a fire pit, huge stones arranged in a circle with half-burned sticks inside. I could feel no heat from it though, and I hoped that meant this was just an occasional camping spot. There were also markings on the side of the wall. Emma went straight for them, her eyes alight.
“Amazing,” she whispered. “It’s like discovering hieroglyphics from an ancient tribe.”
She paused then, leaning closer. “Actually….”
I realized what she’d noticed, and I turned to Xander, lifting some of his blond hair so I could see the marks. He nodded. “Yes, they’re definitely Daelighter symbols.”
Laous regarded the wall, scowling. “Lucky you’re all so diligent in helping me with my task. I never would have found this location otherwise. There are a lot of wards here blocking the network energy, among other things.”
“Guess someone saw your evil ways coming a long time ago,” Callie said, staring daggers at him.
He moved in a flash, reached out to smack her in the face … or maybe grab her; it was hard to tell in the dark. Before he could touch her though, Daniel’s hand shot out and wrapped around Laous’s throat. He lifted the man with almost no effort, throwing him solidly back against the wall with the wardings.
Laous’s people—except Rao—immediately went into attack mode, lashing out with something that flashed brightly in the darkness. Lexen’s hand become a blur of white light; it looked like a path of ice followed the movement of his palm. He intercepted whatever had been thrown at us, sending it shooting off across the water that ran nearby.
“Stop,” Laous shouted, stumbling to his feet. “Let’s just get the damn stone.”
He eyeballed both of his people, sending them a silent message. The woman looked furious, but she backed up without another word, lowering her hands.
“So,” Emma said wryly, breaking the last of the tension. “Anyone bring a shovel?”
Lexen, still looking all muscled up and pissed off, shook his head before sending a half smile toward his mate. “Always underestimating me,” he grumbled, his voice very deep.
The white lights in his eyes were there again. They spread out across his body and down his arms. He grew larger but didn’t do the full shift. His hands started to change first, scales almost completely covering them, which hadn’t happened last time. His fingers curved into long, razor-sharp-looking talons.
“That’s a little more dragon than usual,” Emma said breathlessly, her eyes very wide.
He winked at her but didn’t speak. I wondered if the more dragon he went, the fewer human abilities he had. His phone slipped out of the clawed hand and would have hit the ground if Chase’s branch arm didn’t shoot out and capture it.
It really said a lot about my life recently that my friends were dragons and trees and I barely even blinked when it happened.
“A little closer to the river,” Chase told Lexen, examining the screen.
Lexen took two steps forward, his longer legs crossing the distance to the river in no time.
Chase nodded. “Start there.”
The moonlight didn’t show us a lot of details, but I could certainly hear Lexen tearing up the ground with ease. “What’s the time?” I whispered to Xander. “Is it nearing dawn?”
“Maybe forty minutes until, judging by the feel in air,” he replied, his voice a whisper across my neck.
That low tone immediately brought me back to our afternoon together. He’d whispered words across my skin the entire time we were together. Xander was very open and free with compliments, and at no time had any of them felt fake or cheesy. I had felt beautiful with him, sexy and desirable in a way I never had with any other man. Xander brought out a side in me I didn’t even know was there. Wanton. Needy. Sex-addicted, apparently.
Lexen looked to be about three feet deep now, digging very fast. “I’m not sure this is the right spot,” Callie said, leaning over the hole. “Shouldn’t the stone like … give off a lot of energy if it’s as powerful as rumor says?”
We all leaned in closer, and just like Callie, I didn’t notice a change in energy at all.
“Maybe the wardings block that?” Maya offered.
Lexen continued on for some time—at about ten feet down he gave up, jumping back onto the land in a single powerful leap.
“So, what do we do now?” Emma asked. “Should we just keep digging around here? Maybe the coordinates are a little off because the area has shifted in the years since the Draygo buried the stone?”
No one disagreed with her theory. Lexen moved to another section. For the next twenty minutes, Lexen dug one hole after another, but there was no sign of the stone.
Laous was also growing frustrated. “Do not make me go to war over this,” he said finally, after huffing around for five minutes, staring at the symbols on the wall. “I’m very close to the completion of my plan. I will not let anyone stand in my way.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Maya snapped, and I wasn’t the only one blinking at her. Maya was not really the swearing type. She seemed to be much calmer in general than the rest of us. Her and Chase both. “We’re all here because of you and your bullshit. You’re a selfish asshole, and while I am sympathetic to your childhood, that gives you no excuse for your actions.”
Flames licked up and down Laous’s arms, but he didn’t even seem to notice, his gaze locked on Maya. “I never should have told you that story,” he admitted roughly. “I never expected you to escape and be able to relay that to anyone else.”
Daniel opened his mouth but Laous cut him off before he could speak. “No, nephew, I do not have any interest in your thoughts on it. No one cared when I was locked in hell, and I will never be in that position again. There is only one way to assure that, only one power strong enough to mean I’ll never be truly powerless again. And you have five minutes to find it or I’m going to start killing humans.”
No one immediately piped up and said that he no longer controlled Astoria, which made me wonder if maybe we weren’t 100 percent sure that he didn’t still have hostages there. Or somewhere else we didn’t know about.
Lexen moved to another section of land and started to dig again. His chest was heaving a little, and that was no surprise, considering he’d dug halfway to Australia by now. Needing to move, because I was starting to get sleepy again, I walked back toward the Daelighter symbols on the wall, making sure not to fall into any holes half-hidden in the darkness.
A shadow moved when I was close and I jumped. It was Rao, facing the wall, staring very intently at it, both hands pressed to the rock. I took a step closer, wondering what he was doing.
It looked like he was … tracing the symbols—this guy, who apparently saw the future, was very focused on those symbols. Should we have looked closer at what was written on the wall? Was there a clue there that we had missed?
I stopped about ten feet further along the cliff than Rao.
He didn’t lift his head or acknowledge me in any way, and I made sure to do the same, because drawing Laous’s attention felt like a bad move. I didn’t want this poor guy to suffer any more than he already had.
Rao was still tracing his fingers across the symbols. I reached out to do that same with the ones in front of me. They were scattered across the wall as far as I could see along the cliff, but there were a lot the same. Repeated over and over.
The marks felt familiar to me�
��no doubt because I’d seen them recently on the overlords’ skin and on the platform between all the houses. Xander’s energy hit me a moment before he stopped at my side.
“What do they mean?” I whispered, continuing to trace one particular pattern that I was most drawn to. It was etched in a deep red clay, baked onto the stone.
“This is legreto,” he said, his hand coming up to rest on top of mine, stopping my almost obsessing rubbing of the top part of the curved shape.
He lifted both of our hands, moving on to another symbol close by. “And this is caramina. The pair represents our people. Royales.”
The caramina symbol looked like a continuation of the legreto symbol, flowing lines reaching for each other between the two. Like … they should be joined, not separate.
“What symbols are for the other houses?” I asked. “Do they all have specific symbols like Royale?”
Xander nodded, lifting his hands up to a dark ocher pair. “This is Leights. They have the Galinta’s symbols.” He traced the first, then moved to another close by. “This one is to symbolize their bond to the tree gods.”
They had two symbols as well, and just like Royale they were intersected with each other. Two parts forming one whole.
“That is Imperial,” a deep voice said from close by. I turned to find Daniel pointing toward the wall. Two symbols were there, their color in shades of blue. One was a flame, the other like a swirling staircase. “The justices and our energy from below.”
“Which leaves Darken,” I murmured, my eyes resting on the final two symbols in this part of the wall. “Theirs looks like a mountain, and the other is slashes of lightning.”
I noticed something, when I leaned back to see all eight marks together. “Your symbols … there’s symmetry here. Like what we have in our group,” I whispered. “Eight marks, eight of us. Each symbol blends into the next, and doesn’t it look to all of you like the eight of these could link together to form a single image?” I kept seeing the lines and swirls linking to each other, and it all looked similar to me.
Xander and Daniel wore confused expressions as they stepped closer, and then further back to see the entire wall.
“The eight are not supposed to be one,” Daniel said, tilting his head. “Our houses are not that closely bound.”
“But they were,” I reminded them. “You said the original overlords were leaders of a single house. House of Daelighter.”
“Could this be a part of our history lost?” Xander murmured. He pulled his focus from the wall, searching the ground, leaning down to forage through the stones and dirt. When he rose, he held a white piece of rock. He placed it on the wall, close to where the symbols were, and began to sketch. He started with House of Royale, and this time he drew them all close together, joining the lines instead of leaving gaps.
“There,” I said, pointing to where I thought Imperial should go.
He looked for a second, and then nodded. A few times it didn’t fit, but once the first five were in place, the rest became very clear.
By the time he was finished, the others had drifted over to us—except Lexen, who was still digging, and Laous, who was not leaving the dragon dude’s side.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Daniel said, staring.
The symbols did all fit together, and no one had noticed before now because the houses normally had very little to do with each other. They did not draw their marks together.
“I think this is the reason we can’t find the stone,” I told them. “The Draygo clearly knew there was no safer security measure than forcing the four houses to work together. That only the eight of us, who are bonded for the first time in their history, would be able to do it.”
Maya was bouncing on her toes. “Like the secret keepers led to the location, but all houses are needed to find the stone.”
“How though?” Chase asked, his hand resting on the rock wall. “I can’t feel any energy. What do we do with the symbol now?”
“What if we needed those crystals?” I asked. “The ones with energy from the ancients?” From the time the four houses were joined as one.
Xander shook his head. “No one has seen them in years, not since…”
“We were born?” I guessed.
He blinked a few times, nodding. “Actually … yes. Shit. I’m not sure anyone put that information together, because of the year timespan between your births. I remember seeing the crystal as a child. Mother used to keep it in a special glass on the mantel.”
Chase nodded. “Ours was embedded in an old Galinta, sitting in the center of our land. Stories say it’s the first. I haven’t visited there since I was very young … the stone could definitely be gone.”
“They’re here,” I decided, bursts of excitement filling me. “We need to find the crystals first, and then we’ll find the starslight.”
I don’t know how I knew that, but everything inside of me was urging me to follow this path. We just had to figure out where the crystals were.
Chapter 21
Dawn was stealing away the last of the darkness, which at least made it easier to stare out across the pocket of land we were in. I stumbled away from the wall, stepping around my friends—and all Lexen’s holes in the ground—and crossing to the small stream. When I reached the edge of the water, I just went on instinct.
“Legreto,” I mumbled, before I kicked off my shoes.
The moment I stepped into the water, a shock of energy hit me—which I hadn’t been expecting—and I fell to my knees. Water splashed up, soaking me thoroughly.
“Avalon,” Xander called, reaching the edge of the water in about an eighth of a second. “Are you oka—”
His words cut off when he entered the stream. More energy rocked through us both. I cried out as I was slammed forward, my hands stopping me from faceplanting against the rocky bottom of the shallow water.
“It’s in here,” I groaned, pushing myself up. Or attempting to. “Or something powerful is.”
Xander recovered much quicker, lifting me up to his side. My feet were off the ground but still dangling in the water, and the two of us together was enough, apparently, to start the ground shaking.
I was just freaking out that my theory was very wrong, when a fissure appeared just before us, extending about six feet long and two inches wide. A sparkle of blue glinted in the early morning light as a crystal slowly rose to the surface.
Xander didn’t let me go. He held me against him as he reached out and lifted the stone, bringing it toward us. Emotion clogged my throat, and I tried to swallow down the newly formed lump in there. The crystal was so beautiful, colored like the ocean, the blues and greens swirling into each other in an almost mesmerizing pattern.
“It looks like Hawaiian waters,” I choked out, my chest so tight that breathing was painful.
My hand reached for it before I could think the action through. The moment Xander and I were both touching it, a hot, almost sharp pain rocketed through my chest. My body suddenly felt so much larger … filled with life and energy and warmth.
Emotions hit me hard, so many that I couldn’t really filter through them to know what I was feeling.
“What just happened?” I asked, slowly, softly, attempting to swallow the lump in my throat.
I wasn’t the only one asking questions either—our friends were on the edge of the water, shouting at us.
“We bonded,” Xander said hoarsely. The voices died off—either everyone was in shock too or my ears had stopped working. “And not like the secret keepers and overlord bond we already share, but the bond that is a marriage in our world.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never heard of a Royale bonding like this without an overlord blessing the sanction. I was there with my sister....”
“Was it the crystal?” Lexen asked. I blinked in his direction, still trying to figure out what had just happened. I knew what Xander had said, but my mind wasn’t quite ready to accept it. “It contains the energy of ancient overlords, which
is more than enough to cement a Royale bond.”
“Your—” I choked. “Your mother is going to kill you,” I managed to finish hoarsely.
Xander just lifted me higher, burying his face into my neck. “I don’t give a fuck,” he all but growled. “Even without the bond, there’s no way I could have let you go. I planned on challenging her for you. I won’t give this up without a fight … I can’t.”
What? Had he just…. What!
What had changed since we were in Royale half a day ago and he all but told me that he could only offer me a few years at best?
Xander let out a low laugh against my neck. “I know what you’re thinking, and I promise you … I mean every word. I might have told you that politics would hold us apart, and at the time I was sure I’d have to choose duty over love. I was prepared to do it as well, because my people mean a lot to me. But then I realized something very important … maybe the moment you swam into the sacred legreto, rainbow hues spreading around your beautiful face. I realized that without you I would not be the sort of leader my people need. You make me care. You make me a better Daelighter. I can’t lead without you.”
I felt too emotional to articulate my feelings, but I had to say something. “Xander, I … I won’t be the reason you fight with your family. The reason you might be forced to step away as overlord.”
The others started murmuring behind us, talking about finding the other crystals. They wandered off, probably to give us some privacy.
“Do you want this bond?” Xander asked me, his blue eyes killing me with their intensity.
I nodded before I even had a chance to really think about it. It was the truth. “More than anything,” I admitted. “It’s been killing me thinking about not having a chance to explore the connection between us. But even with our bond you still have to deal with your mother. She hates me. She’s never going to accept a human as your mate.”
“We will figure it out,” he said, kissing me hard. “But first, let’s deal with the stone and Laous.”