by Ivy Asher
14
“She was dark purple when I first saw her, but she’s a solid silver right now. I’ve never seen a gryphon change colors completely after answering the call. Usually they become a mix of whatever color they’ve joined to; this is all new to me,” a tenor voice announces.
“Maybe it has to do with her Ouphe blood?” a female asks.
“It’s possible. Her color is strong though, no sign of fading or weakness like I’ve seen in passing gryphons.”
“She’s been out for a week, Ami. You keep saying that, but it doesn’t mean rut all if she never wakes up!” Ryn shouts.
“You should have warned me you were coming,” Zeph berates.
An irritated huff fills the room. “I told you, I didn’t have a choice. I only reacted to what I felt. If you had been protecting her better, she would have never forced me there!” Ryn accuses.
“Altern, Syta, please.”
My eyelids snap open, and I cringe against the bright light that assaults me. I blink back the brightness and find Zeph and Ryn squaring off with each other. Ami is watching them from the side of my bed, and Loa is moving to get between Ryn and Zeph. I sit up slowly with a groan, and all eyes in the room snap to mine. I quickly fist the falling sheet at my chest, realizing that I’m once again naked in my bed.
“Why the fuck am I always naked when I wake up in here? Which one of you perverts keeps making that happen?” I croak, my voice deep and gravelly from disuse.
“See, I told you she’d be fine eventually,” Ami proclaims.
A growl bubbles up out of my throat, and the next thing I know, I’m leaping for Ami. He scrambles away, and I don’t know how Ryn gets to me so quickly, but he intercepts my attack and pulls me back into him.
“You threw me off a cliff!” I shout at Ami, who doesn’t even have the good sense to look sorry. I fight to get out of Ryn’s vice like grip and get my hands on the little shit. “You owe me shoes, pants, a new shirt, and a bra,” I demand, my finger pointed threateningly at Ami. “And before you think you can get away with not paying up, these fuckers won’t always be here to keep me away from you. You hear me? Pants, shirt, boots, and bra by the end of the week, or I will hunt you down and shred you.”
Ami nods, but I don’t miss the glint of amusement in his eyes. I renew my efforts to get to him, swearing and driven by the need to slap that twinkle in his eyes off his face.
“Ami, out!” Zeph orders, and the teenage prick hurries out the door.
I breathe heavily and work to settle the rage pumping through me. I feel Ryn drop his face to my shoulder and inhale deeply. I’m about to turn and ask him what the fuck he’s doing, when I spot Loa glaring at me. I tense and focus on her.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I challenge, and her lips pull back from her teeth, and she snarls at me. “Oh no you fucking didn’t,” I growl back, and Pigeon sits up inside of me, responding to the clear challenge Loa is giving us. My vision shifts, and I feel the tips of my fingers elongate and sharpen. Tingles run up my back, and my wings pop out, breaking Ryn’s hold.
“Rutting fairies!” he shouts and tries to get a hold of me again, but I’m already just out of reach and charging Loa. Pigeon preens, satisfied by the hint of fear we see in Loa’s gaze before she masks it, but we can still smell it seeping off of her.
“Loa, out!” Ryn roars as Zeph slams into me, keeping me from connecting with Loa. I snap at him and watch as Loa ignores Ryn’s command. A snarl sounds off behind me, and that finally sends Loa scrambling out of the room.
Zeph shoves me against the cool stone wall of my room and gets in my face. I don’t know why I feel so fucking volatile, but I do. Rage, challenge, need, the drive to protect pounds through me, and I feel like I’m drowning in it. I try to bite Zeph, but he just chuckles and presses me into the wall even harder.
“Naughty little sparrow, you know you don’t want to hurt me,” he coos at me, and he nudges his knee between my legs. Suddenly, that’s all I can focus on, and I spread my thighs to make room for more of him. I breathe him in deeply, and Pigeon and I both start to settle.
“Good girl,” he praises, and that has me growling at him again.
“You’ve got the touch,” Ryn snarks as he leans against the wall next to me.
Zeph glares at him. Pigeon settles inside of me, and my vision and hands go back to normal. I use my wings to push away from the wall and challenge Zeph’s hold. He looks surprised for a moment, but he lets go and scrambles back away from me. “What is going on?” I demand, my head pounding and my stomach groaning for food. “What happened out there?”
Zeph and Ryn shoot a glance at each other, and something about it irritates the fuck out of me. I take a threatening step toward them, ready to lose it. What the hell is wrong with me?
“You were having a reaction to the rope that you touched when you freed me,” Zeph tells me. “It was Trammel magicked, which keeps whoever is bound by it from shifting. When you broke the magic by cutting it, it must have done something to you,” he adds, and Pigeon comes rearing up inside of me.
I blink, and her eyes snap into place. She stares at Zeph and then Ryn, looking for something, but I don’t understand what. Ryn looks away, and eventually Zeph does too. Despair fills Pigeon, and she slinks back and releases her hold. I gasp at the devastation that fills me and rub at my chest.
“What just happened?” I demand, but I get nothing from her.
“What did you just do?” I accuse, and my eyes prick with unexplainable tears.
Ryn steps toward me, and I step back away from him, confused. He looks pained, and it’s clear there’s something going on here that I’m not understanding. Ryn turns to Zeph, his mouth open like he’s about to say something, but the look on Zeph’s face has Ryn shutting his mouth.
“I told you, after the assignment is complete, we’ll figure everything out,” Zeph tells Ryn cryptically.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask quietly, pulling my wings back inside of me with ease as I try and fail to figure out what is happening.
“You’ve been asleep for a week, Falon. You’re hungry and weak, and you should rest and recover. You shouldn’t experience any more discomfort now that the toxin has been cleared of your system. You should feel like yourself soon,” Zeph reassures me, and then he heads for the door.
Ryn stares at me a beat longer, something I can’t identify in his eyes, before he follows Zeph out of the room. His shoulders sag as he leaves me in his wake, and I feel a tug in my gut that wants me to follow him, before I shut it down.
“They’re assholes, Pigeon, but so are you for leaving me in the dark. I know that you know what’s going on, and I hope this teaches you that they’re not for us.”
I feel like shit, and I have no idea why. My gryphon is silently lamenting something which makes no sense since Ryn and Zeph are treating me just as indifferently as they always have. I know she likes them—fuck, even I was itching to get Zeph between my thighs—but it is what it is. Hopefully, Pigeon will get over her first failed crush and move on.
Through my whole bath, I try to reassure her and myself that everything will be okay. I focus on Zeph’s promise that he would get me home, and I work through everything I need to do as soon as I get back to my world. I hope my bike isn’t under a couple feet of snow by now. I get caught up in my worry about the space time continuum, as I get dressed and brush out my wet hair. What if I go back and like fifty years have passed? I was counting on selling my gran’s house and using it to open up my own shop. Fuck knows my old job at Roy’s isn’t going to be waiting for me after I’ve been gone for at least a couple of months, or worse, maybe longer.
“Falon!” Moro shouts at me from down the hall as I make my way to the kitchens.
“Hey, Moro! How’s Tysa?” I ask as he hugs me, and Tysa’s tree of a man pats me hard on the back.
“She’ll be better now that you’re up and moving around. You gave us quite the worry. She’s been checking in on you wh
en Loa doesn’t chase her away,” he tells me, and I warm at his kindness. “She made you a few extra shirts she thinks will work better for you while you’re training.”
I warm all over at his words. I almost forgot what it was like to talk to people who actually want you around.
“I’m just headed down to fuel up, but when I’m done, I’ll come by the house. I think another day’s worth of work and everything should be up and running. Then I’ll have officially earned all your mate’s hard work on my clothes.”
“I think you’ll have earned a lifetime supply of clothing if you can get warm water out in the surrounding houses and not just here in the stronghold,” he admits on a laugh. “I’ll let Tysa know; she’ll be very excited to see you!” He hugs me again and then proceeds happily down the hall.
I watch him with a smile before my growling stomach reminds me of where I’m supposed to be headed. A child-like giggle pulls my attention away, and I look to find a toddler-sized kid bumbling down the hall to my left. I chuckle and wait for whoever is minding it to come chasing after the child, but no one is in sight. I look around just to double-check, but it’s just me and my angry stomach standing here in the hallway.
I frown and turn down the hall after the wobbly little kid. I’m met by echoes of the kid’s laughter and glee, but I don’t see it in the hall anymore. I hesitate for a second. I don’t really like kids all that much, mostly because I have no idea what to do with them. I’m a think-they’re-adorable-from-afar kind of girl, but clearly no one is watching this kid, and with open balconies all over the place in this cliff castle, I’d hate for it to have an accident I could have done something to stop.
I follow after the squeals and toddler giggles, picking up my pace as I round a corner, expecting to find the little tyke, but it’s once again empty. After a few minutes of repeating my gotchya just to have the winding hallway be empty, I start running to catch up. I’m almost at a full blown sprint when I spot the kid at the bottom of some dark stairs.
What the fuck? How the hell did it get down there?
I make my way cautiously down the long flight of stairs that, very ominously, dip down into dimly lit darkness. I’m no longer trusting that anything about this situation is what it seems, but I find myself—probably stupidly—curious about what the hell is going on. Just as I step off the last stair to reach the bottom, the dark hallway lights up with an eerie green light. I clear my throat and white knuckle grip my courage.
“Um… I know there’s not really a kid down here, so whoever you are and whatever you want…” I trail off, not sure what the fuck I’m even saying.
A figure, backlit by the green light in the hallway, steps out of nowhere and smiles at me. “Welcome, Daughter of the Shadows. We have been waiting for you,” she tells me, her tone ethereal and her movements graceful as she turns around and motions for me to follow her.
“Right, because that’s not creepy as fuck,” I mumble and then look around, not sure what to do.
If I were in a sketchy movie right now, everyone in the audience would be screaming at me not to follow the creepy glowing chick. I take a step back, intent on fleeing up the stairs and away from The Ghost of Christmas No Fucking Thank You, but I slam up against a wall behind me. I turn around, panicked, and run my hands over the cool stone that now exists where there was just a flight of stairs. You took your eyes off of her! She’s probably right behind you with a fucking axe now! I whirl around, listening to my inner terrified voice, but to my relief the ghost is still floating down the hallway.
I take another minute to feel around the wall behind me for some latch that might trip the trick door, but all I find is the same smooth, cream-colored stone that the rest of the cliff castle is made out of. Well, shit. I scan the rest of the hallway, but there’s no other way out. I take a reluctant step forward and then another, internally screaming about how I’m not ready to die.
“You are safe here, child, do not fear. We have been waiting for you,” the glowing woman repeats, and I balk, worried she can read my mind.
Where’s a tin foil hat when you need one?
“Where exactly is here?” I ask as I follow her down what feels like a never-ending hallway.
She doesn’t say anything, just continues to do her floaty walk thing until an archway lights up out of nowhere to our left. I gasp as lime green light shines out of symbols and pictures that have been carved into the tall arched stone doors. I suddenly feel sad as I run my eyes over what I think is writing, and I’m driven by the need to reach out and run my hands over every symbol, like I need them to feel me, to know that I’m here. I furrow my brow, puzzled by this odd onslaught of emotion. I check in on Pigeon, but she’s asleep at my center, and the feelings don’t seem to be radiating out from her.
The green glowing figure moves in front of the doors and leans forward and places a kiss in their middle. She whispers something against the seam of the doors, but I can’t make out much of what she was saying. What I can understand strikes a chord of familiarity in me, and I try to place exactly where I’ve heard it before. A deep boom vibrates around me, making me jump. I crouch, suddenly sure that the walls and ceiling are going to come down on my head at any second. Instead, the old stone doors rumble open slowly, and I stare open-mouthed at what they reveal.
I follow the ghost through the now open archway and look around to find a stone city that’s overgrown with vegetation. Moss and climbing greenery are slowly swallowing the cream stone up, but it’s massive and stretches as far as I can see. I take another step forward in awe of everything I’m surrounded by.
The green ghostly figure now looks more corporeal. Her smile lights up her whole face, and I gasp, overcome by her beauty. “Welcome, Daughter of the Shadows, to Vedan, the lost city of The Dark Ouphe.”
15
Her words bounce around my brain as they try to sink in, and all I can think is do Zeph and Ryn know this is here? I look around and stare at the inside of the cliffs. Houses are carved into the walls, and tall buildings rise up and look like they’re trying to compete with the massive trees. Light pours in from the open top of the mountain, and I spot other massive sealed doors around me that look exactly like the one I just walked through.
“My name is Nadi, and I was once part of the Ouphe council. My essence was left here to help guide a worthy Bond Breaker such as yourself so that our people can rise from the shadows and once again take their place in this world.”
Nadi tells me all of that and then gestures out to the dead city like she’s the Vanna White of the Ouphe world. I stare at her warily.
“And exactly how am I supposed to do that?” I ask, not at all liking the sound of Bond Breaker and the underlying you’re our only hope. I’m also not sure that the Ouphe deserve a place in the world if what the Hidden say about them is true.
“You must speak it into existence, and the binding will be undone,” she tells me, her face and tone serene.
“And what does that mean? What happens when the binding is undone?”
“Then the Gryphons will be free, and the Ouphe and their magic will no longer be a threat. If the Ouphe people are free from being hunted, then we can once again thrive and rebuild and take our place as the Sentinels of the realm as it should always be,” Nadi explains.
“And what keeps you from enslaving the Gryphon like you did before?” I press, not trusting the kumbaya, everyone will be happy and love each other part of her plan.
Her silver eyes grow sad, and she motions for me to walk with her toward an overgrown gazebo. I fall into step at her side, watching her white robes sway as she walks. “Our error in judgement has left us on the brink of extinction. We have learned our lesson and have vowed to never repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.”
We make our way slowly up the steps of the gazebo, the moss-covered stairs cushioning my steps. I run my hand over a tall clump of heather flowers growing next to the entrance, and the contact fortifies me in a strange way. “Then why haven’t
you broken the oath and the magic binding the Gryphons to you before?”
“Others have tried,” she tells me, her voice pained, and she sits gracefully on a grass-covered bench. “The branch of magic with the ability to break the vow, once and for all, has all but been destroyed. The last full blooded wielder of Bonding Magic was killed twenty sun cycles ago.”
She looks at me poignantly, and the hair on my arms stands on end. My father’s face rises up in my memories, his green twinkling eyes suddenly reminding me of the green glow of the symbols on the door.
“Your mother’s mixed blood held the key, too,” Nadi informs me, and I look away from her hopeful eyes.
“How do you know that? How do you know I can even do what you’re saying?” I challenge, skepticism pooling inside of me. This all feels a little too convenient for my liking.
“Because, Daughter of the Shadows, you were able to wake me. Only Bond-laced blood can pull my essence to them, can wake up the Ouphe magic woven in the stones of this mountain and every other Ouphe stronghold that has ever been built. Your people know that you are here, that the Bond Breaker once again walks among them. Help them, daughter. They have been waiting so long for you.”
I glare at Nadi. “No pressure, right?” I snark and then step back away from her. “I appreciate that your essence has been waiting for me,” I tell her, raising my hands and putting air quotes around the word essence. “But this is all a little too Lord of the Rings, if you catch my drift. You’ll have to forgive me for not just taking your word for it, but given everything that’s happened, I think it’s best to approach all of this with a serious dose of caution.”