“You’re sure. Awesome.”
“There are...” He chuckled again. “There are mulgadí lining the walls of that drop, Jessica. Delicious when cooked correctly, but rather carnivorous in nature before harvested.”
“Carnivorous.”
“Yes. Mushrooms, if you like.”
“Oh my god.” Jessica closed her eyes too and tried to think of anything else but the green poison pouring down onto the top of the cave and the flesh-eating plants growing just a few feet away down a once-more deadly drop. “I knew those existed here.”
“They’re quite rare, actually. But seeing them is a good sign. For us. Though I imagine the smaller creatures gracing us with their skeletal presence would have a different opinion.”
“Seriously? If you can’t think of anything more positive than what dead animals would say if they weren’t dead and literally all around us, let’s just...not talk about anything.”
“Is there something you would prefer to discuss?”
Jessica opened one eye. The fae was busy studying a handful of the tiny bones littering the floor, his smirk fully returned as he glanced up at her.
He’d been all doom-and-gloom about their need to get the hell out of the forest and back to the Gateway, but now that they literally couldn’t make a move until the sky quit trying to kill every last bit of life in this world, everything was a joke again.
“How far are we from the Gateway?”
“Hmm.” The bones clattered to the floor, and he pulled his knees up to his chest again. “Not close enough for my liking.”
“Yeah, I got that part.” A bitter laugh escaped her, and she ran a hand through her hair. “There’s literally nothing we can do until the storm’s over, is there?”
Leandras’ thoughtful hum filled the tiny cave as he looked at the low ceiling leaving nowhere near enough room for either of them to comfortably stand. “I suppose we could cuddle.”
Jessica snorted, the fae man grinned, and their laughter filled the cramped shelter to rise over the pounding roar of the rain and the violent hiss of an entire world ravaged all over again by the storm.
A storm neither of them could even be sure would end in time for them to do what had to be done against the Dalu’Rázj.
Assuming, of course, that it didn’t last a lifetime, which would be cut extraordinarily short for both of them without food or water or a way to safely get out.
THERE WAS NO WAY TO tell how much time had passed, but once Jessica got used to the stench of the green rain outside, the constant roar of the storm lulled her to sleep. She drifted in and out, not really trying to stay awake but not exactly sure why she was so tired in the first place.
She’d wake up and see Leandras sitting across from her, sometimes staring at her with those luminous silver eyes, sometimes drifting into his own oblivion. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to pass the time, but there wasn’t much else they could do here, and it was harder than it should have been to stay awake. Even with the knowledge that time definitely wasn’t standing still anymore now the Laenmúr forest had met its end.
When she woke from another doze with a gasp and a start, it took a few seconds to figure out why everything felt so suddenly off.
The rain had stopped.
And she was freezing.
“Leandras.” She groaned and peeled herself away from the cave wall, stretching out the agonizing kink in her neck and shoulders. “Hey. Leandras.”
He snorted when she nudged his foot with her own, but it woke him fully. The fae man blinked, then turned toward the cave entrance. “Well. That’s a good sign.”
“Maybe not if we don’t get moving.” Jessica’s teeth chattered, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “Time to go, right?”
“No.” He nodded at the front of the cave. “Not yet.”
Well sure. Now that she looked, that much was clear.
The wasteland of Xahar’áhsh had become one giant, glowing-green puddle. Not exactly fitting for anyone to run across, even at full speed.
“Great.” She shifted on the ground and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her breath puffed out of her in shivering gusts of mist. “Christ, it’s cold.”
Leandras worked at the buttons of his shirt. “Most likely the aftermath of the storm.”
“Any idea how long we have to wait for the ocean of death to...you know. Disappear?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Okay. I’m open to any other suggestions, then.” She shook her head. “Except for getting naked in a freezing cave. What are you doing?”
He finished stripping off his shirt and raised an eyebrow. “Improvising one short-term solution, Jessica. Unless you’d rather I strip down completely, but then I’d be forced to suggest you join me.”
“What?” Her fingers felt numb, and she slapped them against her knees in an attempt to wake them up.
Leandras wiggled his eyebrows and lifted one of the longest bones from their wonderfully vast selection on the cave floor. “Observe.”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
He wrapped his shirt around one end of the bone and tied it off with the sleeves. “My supply of available clothing is limited, so here’s to hoping the weather takes a turn before I am forced to strip down all the way.”
“You didn’t try to eat one of those mushrooms, did you?”
Chuckling, Leandras half-crawled, half-walked toward the front of the cave and rolled his makeshift torch into the pool of Xaharí death-rain now two feet wide and blocking their exit anyway. A puff of steam rose from his shirt, then he brought the weird torch back with him and held it carefully over the pile of bones he’d created between them. Scattered all around the bones were what looked like two-inch purple jellyfish, their rounded tops quivering beneath the green splatter.
“What are you—”
“A little light, if you don’t mind.” He grinned. “Preferably the flaming kind.”
“So we can burn mushrooms.” Jessica turned away from the wall to stare at the weird fire.
“There’s nothing else to burn. But they won’t light directly, so please.” The fae gestured toward his green-slimed shirt, and Jessica rolled her eyes.
But she reached toward the bone torch with a shivering hand and summoned a quick burst of flame. She tossed it gently at the torch, and the thing ignited in green smoke and orange flame and the ungodly scent of the burning rainstorm mixed with singed cloth.
Leandras dropped the torch onto the pile of purple mushrooms on top of animal bones, and the entire thing caught immediately.
An inhuman shriek erupted from the pit at the back of the cave, and Jessica lurched away from the sound. “What the—”
The wailing continued, rising in one voice, then four, then dozens and hundreds as the fire’s immediate flare died down and the purple mushrooms crackled and spit beneath the heat.
“Shared consciousness in close proximity,” Leandras said, nodding toward the screeching pit. “Unfortunate for the mulgadí. A minor irritation for us.”
“Right. Conscious mushrooms.” Jessica scoffed. “Of course. And now we have to wait out the flood listening to them scream.”
“It will pass. I’m sure the land will dry out again before we run out of fuel.” He used another bone to pry a dry, shriveled mushroom more gray than purple now out of the flames. He picked it up and offered it to her.
“Nope.”
“Suit yourself.” He blew on the thing a few times, then popped it into his mouth and chewed noisily.
Jessica faced the fire, which burned hot enough now that her breath no longer misted, and ignored the dying wails from a pit full of mushrooms so she could focus on getting warm.
None of this really surprised her at this point. Xahar’áhsh was just a screwed-up place, plain and simple.
That would all change as soon as they could leave this damn cave.
SHE DID, IN FACT, END up eating a handful of cooked mulgadí once the smell made her mouth water and her stom
ach growl over the crackle of the fire, which Leandras fed with more mushrooms plucked from the wall of the pit. However the fae managed to harvest the flesh-eating fungi without getting his flesh eaten was just another one of his mysteries—or he’d been lying through his teeth.
Either way, the mulgadí tasted just as delicious as they smelled, Jessica was no longer freezing, and the warmth of the fire combined with a full belly brought a new wave of much more comfortable drowsiness over her. When Leandras shuffled wordlessly across the tiny cave to sit beside her again and wrapped his bare arms around her, it was impossible not to fall asleep. She didn’t argue against the aforementioned cuddling, and she didn’t try to fight off the drowsiness within such a strange comfort.
When she woke again, the fire had burned down to a low glow, and Jessica lay on the cave floor on her side. Alone.
She sat up abruptly and looked around. Just a quick glance, and yes, the fae man was gone.
“Leandras?”
His low, muttering voice reached her, and she peered through the cave’s entrance to find him a few yards away from their shelter, his back to her as he knelt on the dry dirt.
The green puddle both inside the cave and coating the landscape outside had dried up, which meant they could now get a move on.
So why hadn’t he woken her first?
Jessica crawled on her hands and knees toward the cave’s entrance, frowning at Leandras’ rigid posture on his knees, his arms hanging limply at his sides. “Hey. I appreciate sleeping in, but don’t you think...”
She stopped when he muttered something again, his voice low and unintelligible. Xaharí, of course, but the trancelike flatness of his voice sounded an awful lot like his spellwork chanting when she’d caught him finishing the anchoring stone in the bank’s lobby for the Hruandír spell.
They had to get back to the Gateway. They didn’t have time for spells, no matter what he thought.
“Okay, maybe hold off on that until we get back though the Gateway, huh? Leandras?”
Jessica grabbed the wall of the cave’s narrow entrance and pulled herself to her feet so she could slip through. The second her feet landed on the once-more parched earth beyond, a blaze of green light lit up the sky.
At least, she just assumed it came from the sky, but it didn’t fade, and there was no accompanying thunder.
Because the eerie green glow lined in burning black edges came from the empty air in front of the fae man on his knees. The rumbling growl emanating from the window of pulsing green light sounded an awful lot like the same growling, enticing whispers she’d heard from behind the Gateway. The same voice that had urged her to open that dungeon door before its time.
When a tendril of green smoke flickered away from the dark light and extended a ghostly claw toward Leandras, Jessica knew it wasn’t like the same voice.
It was the same voice.
Leandras was on his knees in the middle of nowhere, having some private meeting with the same entity that had tried to break free in the bank.
If it wasn’t the Dalu’-fucking-Rázj, Jessica Northwood was a hedge witch.
Another growl in a multitude of dark, grating voices rose from the green light, followed by the other end of the conversation in Xaharí. Then a monstrous face with burning black eyes materialized in the light, and whatever else the bastard had said, Jessica recognized one word at the very end.
Vem-da’án.
Which, when they weren’t referring to the Laen’aroth, was exactly what all the most dangerous magicals of this world had called Leandras right before he and Jessica blasted through the next obstacle just to save their own asses.
The fae man dipped his head, as if agreeing to some final command, and muttered, “Roth’akán.”
Jessica staggered back against the cave entrance and thought she was about to puke. Instead of fried mulgadí, the words spewed out of her instead. “What the fuck!”
Chapter 14
Green lightning ripped through the sky, joined by the crack of thunder and the deafening bellow of that hideous face within Leandras’ little window of talking green light. The vision burst into black flames and disappeared, specks like ash scattering into the wind before being pulled up into the roiling sky.
Leandras spun around on his knees to face her, a furious snarl contorting his features as the same green light—the source of all the death and destruction in this world—flared behind his eyes.
As soon as he saw her, the light vanished completely, and the fae man fell backward with a gasp. “Jessica.”
“You...” Her stomach heaved again, and she thought this would be the moment she finally hurled. But she didn’t. “That was...”
It was what? Her fae guide and now her lover having a little chat with the fucking enemy while Jessica was asleep? The absolute worst time to find out he’d been lying to her all along? The end of everything?
“Jessica,” he whispered again. “This is not what you think.”
A bitter laugh escaped her, because if she didn’t laugh, she’d end up tearing him limb from limb. Which, if she hadn’t grown so unfortunately attached to the guy, she would have done by now.
“I don’t even wanna hear whatever bullshit you’re about to feed me right now.” She lurched away from the cave wall and headed across the dead land beneath the poisonous green sky. Her legs trembled beneath her, but there was no way she could stop now. No fucking way.
Screw being a vestrohím from Earth who knew next to nothing about this world or all the things that could undoubtedly kill her. Screw not having any goddamn clue how to get back to the ruins of Cálindor and the Gateway. Screw the Gateway.
There was nothing left.
“Wait. Please.” The sound of Leandras scrabbling across the ground to get to his feet only made her walk faster. “Jessica, I did not intend for—”
“For me to find out. I get it. I’m just the fucking moron who thought she could trust you.”
“No. I thought I’d severed the connection. That you had severed it for me. When I died.”
“Shut up!” she screamed, and just when her legs seemed to get the hint they should start seriously booking it, Leandras caught her wrist in another vicelike grip and tried to hold her back. She tore her arm away and kept walking.
She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t fucking think now that she’d seen what she’d seen and the entire foundation of the one thing that had kept her moving forward had crumbled to dust like the rest of this world.
“I had no choice!” Leandras’ voice cracked across the unending wasteland, but there was no one else around to hear his lies. “Jessica, you must believe me. The second I stepped out of that cave, I had no control.”
No control. Coming from the son of a bitch who’d manipulated and lied and deceived his way out of every goddamn tight spot he’d dragged her through.
“If it were up to me, I would never have done it.”
“It is up to you!” She whirled around to face him and spread her arms. The dark outline that looked more like a fae than anything else around them moved slowly toward her in her blurred vision. “You’re the one who... You’ve been...”
Here came the nausea again, and the only thing that stopped her from spilling her literal guts across the dead earth was the feel of Leandras’ hands on her shoulders.
It made her skin crawl.
“I know what this looks like, Jessica. And I’m so deeply sorry you had to see that.”
She groaned and couldn’t get her body to respond to anything she wanted. Mostly to get the hell out of here so she wouldn’t have to listen to one more goddamn lie spill from his slippery fae mouth.
“He is far stronger than I’ll ever be alone. And right now, he still believes I’m—”
“He?” Finally, her arms regained their strength, and she slapped Leandras’ hands off her shoulders. “He? I just saw you on your knees talking to the fucking Dalu’Rázj. I don’t... No.”
She took off again, maybe in the same
direction, probably in a completely different one because she couldn’t see a damn thing through the fury of her tears blurring everything into one endless expanse of death.
That was all they had left. Both worlds. Death and that green light responsible for all of it. And Leandras would be one of the bastards left standing at the end, because he’d been playing for the other team this whole time.
“Jessica, stop,” Leandras snarled. “Stop walking away from me so I can explain what you saw!”
Over her dead body.
Which was apparently the same conclusion Leandras came to himself in that moment. He ran up behind her and grabbed her hand again. “Jessica—”
With a furious scream, she shoved him in the chest with both hands, the black tendrils of her magic bursting in smoking eruptions across her skin. Leandras sailed away from her and slid backward across the loose soil. When he stopped moving, he lay there on his back, blinking up at the storm of the sky and gasping for breath.
Everything that made Jessica Jessica—everything she’d tried to be even after she’d willingly returned her own magic, everything she’d tried to balance inside herself because there had still been a sliver of hope—disappeared. The rage consumed her. Her vestrohím power consumed her.
Her feet betrayed her and led her across the ground toward the panting, gasping filth lying before her in a fae’s body.
She lifted both hands toward him again. It didn’t matter that they trembled violently; she’d never miss a target from this close.
The purple rune on Leandras’ shoulder flashed with violet light and spun on his flesh before he lifted his own hand and shouted something in Xaharí. The same violet light burst from his palm just as Jessica lashed out with her own magic, fully intending to skewer him like the pig he was and leave him out here to die if he didn’t drop dead the way she wanted.
Their magic clashed together with an ear-shattering ring like the collision of swords, and the next thing Jessica knew, she was lying on her back in the dirt with her breath knocked out of her.
All she saw was the green sky.
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 14