“I don’t know, Hansa, but it’s clear that the daemons know more about us than we thought,” he replied, his voice low and raspy as he caught his breath.
“Blaze needs to come through on this one, otherwise we’re screwed…” I managed, my knees getting weak.
“We’ll wait here until he does. We’ll hear it,” Jax said, moving closer.
He couldn’t see me, but he used his hands to feel his way up my arms and over my shoulders, to find my face and cup it in his palms. My breathing was ragged and uneven, my blood broiling from what had just happened. I barely registered what he said.
“Listen, Hansa, there’s a chance we won’t make it out of here alive,” he said gruffly, “though I’m really hoping it’s minimal. However, I’ll never forgive myself if we get killed in the next ten minutes and I don’t get a chance to do this…”
His lips crashed over mine, kissing me deeply. I instantly disintegrated. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. My mouth welcomed him, his tongue working mine as our souls touched one another and we dissolved into a single, extremely intense being. I’d been waiting for this for so long…
Despite the madness and horror waiting for us outside, we had a handful of minutes in a cellar, and Jax had chosen to do this. To kiss me, before anything else. I could feel him—all of him. The softness of his lips, his delicious taste, and his firm grip as he deepened our kiss. He groaned as I locked my arms around his neck and pulled him even closer.
We’d finally found each other. It just so happened that we’d found each other in the underground city of murderous daemons. And there was no way in hell I was letting him go this time.
“We are getting out of here, Jaxxon Dorchadas,” I breathed against his lips, running my fingers through his short hair. “Mark my words. I did not put up with all the uncertainty for three months, for just a peck on the lips!”
He chuckled lightly, and my whole being resonated with him. We held on tight, kissing each other’s faces as we waited in the darkness of that cellar.
“I’m not letting you go, Hansa,” he whispered, then covered my mouth with his and took me on another ride through the stars.
Sure, there were daemons outside looking for us. But we had a little time to communicate everything we’d kept from each other—every touch, every kiss, and every sigh was an unspoken declaration of love. Neither of us was good at putting our emotions into words, but damn, his lips knew how to get the message across…
Caia
(Daughter of Grace & Lawrence)
Everything happened incredibly fast from the moment Blaze squeezed my hand and guided us through the crowd. Our objective was the palace tower, but we were surrounded by bloodthirsty daemons who wanted us captured.
We both ran as fast as we could, steering clear of fiends lunging at us, dodging others who shouted as we moved forward, struggling to make our way to the palace stairs.
My heart viciously thudded in my chest as I flipped one of my lighters out. I caught a glimpse of a red lens to my right, accompanied by a snarl and followed by a spray of blood.
Damn it!
They’d managed to mark me, and it made me a visible target. My thumb pressed the lighter button, and I channeled a fraction of my focus into generating a defensive fire to help put some distance between us and the daemons.
Sparks came out and grew into a blazing sphere, but I never got to let it loose. The horde behind us was horrifyingly fast, and one of them slapped my hand. My lighter got lost in the scuffle.
All of a sudden, just as we dashed forward, the crowd moved back. Before I had a chance to realize what was going on, a thick cloud of yellow dust swallowed us.
Oh no…
I coughed and wheezed, but kept running for maybe a couple more seconds, before everything went dark.
“Blaze!” I cried out.
I heard him grunt just as my body turned to what felt like liquid. Losing control over my senses was the gateway to despair. Fear poured cold through my veins, and my throat closed up. I hit the stone pavement.
The daemons growled and cheered my fall. I couldn’t see anything, and, bit by bit, I started to shut down. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t hear myself speak. Soon enough, I couldn’t hear anything anymore…
I was lost in the darkness, in a sea of daemons, and all I could think of was…
What of the others?
Harper
(Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)
At least ten minutes went by. We sat there, hidden behind the half-wall of a terrace, lost in a maze of narrow streets, waiting to hear a dragon roaring and thousands of daemons screaming as they burned to a crisp in the city square. But those sounds never came.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered, my entire body trembling. “Where’s Blaze? Why hasn’t he transformed yet?”
Caspian didn’t answer, but I felt his fingers digging into my shoulder. It was too late, though. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing real panic. Shortness of breath, a rapid heartbeat, and a dizzying succession of hot and cold waves crashed into me as I began to fear the worst.
“What if they got to them?” I gasped, then used my True Sight to look around, until I found the city square, east of our position. “Oh, no…”
“What?” Caspian’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my head as I fell to my knees.
They’d caught them. Daemons had gathered back in the square, two bodies being carried up the stairs toward King Shaytan. They’d been covered in dirt and blood, and they were unconscious—Caia and Blaze, from their now-visible general features.
My heart sank and broke into thousands of little pieces. I gripped the edge of the half-wall so tight that pieces of it crumbled beneath my fingers.
“Harper,” Caspian said, “what do you see?”
“They… They got them,” I cried out, no longer able to hold it together. My eyes burned with tears, but I kept watching. The daemons tied Caia and Blaze with rope, and carried them inside the palace. King Shaytan gave more orders, his soldiers once again spreading out. They were going to look for us, probably turn the entire city upside down if they had to. “They got Blaze and Caia…”
Several seconds went by. Caspian’s arms came around me, pulling me close to his chest. I caved in, crying uncontrollably as my mind came to terms with what I’d just witnessed. I wanted to scream and go after them, but I also knew I didn’t stand a chance at this point. The rest of my team and an entire city of innocent Maras and Imen relied on me.
“Harper.” His voice was low and comforting as he held me tight, his lips moving against the top of my head. “Shaytan’s not going to kill them. You heard him. He wants them alive. He probably wants information before he does anything else with them…”
“Anything else?” I managed, sniffing and wiping at the stream of tears pouring out of my eyes.
“Don’t think about that for now,” he replied gently. “They’ve got time. Which means we’ve got time to make this right. They know we’re here, so chances are they won’t go into the city tonight. Let’s just focus on what we have to do next. The city is under a protection spell, anyway, so if daemons do go there tonight, they won’t be able to do anything.”
I sobbed against his chest for another minute, before my logic stepped in. It wasn’t in my nature to get emotional, and, as it turned out, my body had a defense mechanism against a potential complete meltdown.
“Okay,” I sighed, working my way back to my good old self, “we need to focus… I… We need to prioritize.”
“What are you thinking?” Caspian asked. His support and patience had not gone unnoticed. I knew I would reward him for his incredible support at some point. He held me up in ways I’d never even imagined until five minutes earlier.
“We need to find Hansa and Jax, ideally,” I replied, then gave the palace another glance with my True Sight. Caia and Blaze had been carried inside, but I couldn’t see where, exactly. Whether it was the distance or some invisibili
ty spell at work, I wasn’t sure yet. But at least I knew where they were keeping my friends. I knew where to go. “We need a safe spot to work out a plan, and get Blaze and Caia out of there.”
“Shaytan will probably have a way of containing the dragon,” Caspian said.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” I shook my head. “You’ve been in this city before. Where is it safe for us to be, at least for a couple of hours?”
“Mose’s hut is a good bet,” he murmured. “Nobody will think to look for us there because nobody knows about our connection to Mose. It’s also close to the safest route out of the city, so we might see Hansa and Jax around there, if we can’t find them in this area.”
As my head cleared, more questions popped up. The most burning one rolled off my tongue.
“Did they follow us all the way from the city? Did they know we were coming, Lord Kifo?”
“I wouldn’t exclude the possibility,” he muttered. Anger vibrated in his voice.
“GASP was betrayed, then… somehow…” I sighed, then rubbed my face. “Ugh! I don’t get it! Was the whole army parade from earlier just for show? Did he already know we’d be here? How… How did it get to this?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll get out of here. All of us.”
I wished I could see his face as he spoke those words of encouragement. I wanted to see his resolve, and draw strength from it. I couldn’t suspect Caspian of anything at this point—not anymore, as he was stuck with me, struggling by my side, while thousands of daemons lurked around, looking for us.
“I’ll get them out,” I whispered, as he held me tight.
“I have no doubt that you will, Harper…”
Hearing him call me by my first name felt strangely comforting. His encouragement coaxed my mind into overdrive, and I gathered the resolve I needed to stand up, taking his hand in mine.
“Let’s go to Mose’s hut,” I said, my heart filled with determination and anger. “We’ve got a dragon and a fae to rescue.”
And that was just at the top of my list, I realized as we snuck through the maze of stone buildings. We didn’t have just Caia and Blaze to release from Shaytan’s palace. We needed to find out how we’d been given away in the first place. Had someone betrayed us, or had they simply sent hunter daemons to follow us?
Our initial mission had been to gather intel—well, that had sunk to the bottom of my list of priorities, at least for the time being. Our presence here had already been given away, so, provided we managed to get Caia and Blaze out safely, we needed to get out of the daemon city and one of us would need to head back to Azure Heights to update our other team members. And then maybe we ought to head out to the western plains…
We’d been hitting our heads against a wall within the Mara city. But the Imen tribes living out in the plains could be instrumental in our investigation of everything that had been ailing Neraka. If we couldn’t get GASP to come in and help, we could try to rally the rogue Imen.
But the capture of Caia and Blaze had hit a soft spot in me, and it was all I could focus on in this moment. I’d already nearly lost Fiona to these fiends; I sure as heck wasn’t going to let them have our dragon and fire fae.
Blaze
Everything had happened so fast. One minute, I’d grabbed Caia’s hand, and we were running. The next, a puff of yellow dust and darkness.
My eyes peeled open, and saw nothing but metal surrounding me.
What the…
Caia!
I sat up with a groan, my head hurting. Sharp pain stabbed right through my brain as I tried to make sense of my environment. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Caia lying next to me, slowly coming to.
My pulse started racing as I understood exactly where we were. They’d captured us. Then, they’d crammed us into a metallic box of sorts. Caia’s moan caught my attention.
“Are you okay?” I asked, brushing her hair back with my fingers so I could see her face. She seemed all right, just mildly dazed as she looked up at me.
“What… What happened?” she managed.
“They got us,” I replied, then helped her up.
The box was just one head taller than me in a standing position, and several feet wide—enough for me to lie down, but not much else. The air felt heavy, my chest tightening as mild claustrophobia set in. I wasn’t used to such small spaces, and I knew I couldn’t stay in here for too long. My inner dragon was already roaring, begging for release.
“Blaze… the yellow powder,” she gasped, remembering our attempt to escape the crowd and get to the tower. “It’s the same as what Zane used on Fiona… Son of a… We were ‘Zaned’!”
She was getting angry. I placed my hands on her shoulders, needing her calm and composed.
“Caia, deep breaths,” I said softly. “We have to keep cool…”
She nodded slowly, then frowned as she looked around. “What is this place?”
“I don’t know.” I knocked on the metal wall, listening to the hollow clang. “But this is meranium.”
“So, daemons can’t get to us and eat our souls?” She seemed confused, and I couldn’t blame her. This didn’t make much sense to me either. What did make sense was the dire set of circumstances in which we’d found ourselves, as my limited options became clear.
“The answer to your question would be yes. This little box will stop daemons from eating our souls.” I sighed, then punched the wall to test its hardness. My knuckles hurt, and the metal did not bend. “And it looks like it will stop me from going dragon, too.”
“Wait, what?” She blinked a few times, horror draining the color from her face. “You… You can’t?”
“I could try.” I scratched the back of my neck. “But I might end up killing you in the process before I manage to break the box… I still have my fire breath, so I could try melting my way through one of the walls…”
“Blaze, we need to get out of here,” Caia murmured. “We… We can’t stay here… The others! Jax, Hansa… Harper… Lord Kifo… The city!”
“I doubt they’ll go after Azure Heights with us in here.” I shook my head, trying to maintain some positivity—enough to avoid despair. “I also doubt they caught the others. We’re the only ones in here.”
There was a loud screech beyond the wall to my right. We both stilled and stared toward it—there was a square opening at eye level, big enough for a petite creature like Caia to fit through. It extended into a long, dark tunnel, and a light shone at the end of it as someone opened the latch.
A pair of red eyes glimmered at us, and I recognized the face. King Shaytan was standing outside our meranium prison, grinning with tremendous satisfaction. My blood boiled, rage swelling my muscles. My desire to crush his skull was only outweighed by my anger at my inability to get us out of here. I’d told Caia the truth: if I were to turn into a dragon right here and now, I would crush her in the process.
And I was ready to die a thousand times, in horrific pain, before hurting a hair on her beautiful head…
“Well, someone’s up early!” King Shaytan’s voice boomed through the tunnel.
“What do you want from us?” I shouted, and he cackled with mocking delight.
“I already have what I want. I’ve got you two!”
There were at least fifty yards between us. I felt Caia’s hand on my arm, squeezing gently.
“Don’t let him get to you,” she whispered. “He’s gloating. For now, anyway. He won’t be once I’m done with him…”
I was a sucker for that fire blazing inside her. Shaytan put something into the tunnel, then pushed it toward us. It rolled down, and as it got closer, I realized it was a small barrel.
“So, what, you’ll keep us in here forever?” I shot back, catching the barrel as it fell out of the tunnel. I pulled the cork cap off and smelled its contents. It was filled with fresh water. I handed it over to Caia.
“I haven’t decided yet.” Shaytan shrugged, scratching his braided beard. “But you’ll
be staying in there for a while. Don’t think about using any fire in there. The box is charmed, and the meranium is an exquisite conductor. You’ll melt your flesh off. The walls are twenty yards thick, little dragon.”
“You’ve really thought this through, I see,” I replied, gritting my teeth.
Caia drank some of the water, then passed the barrel back to me.
“I’ve been watching you for a while.” Shaytan smirked. “I like your… spark! Now, drink up, and get comfortable. You’re not going anywhere.”
He shut the latch, and darkness poured through the tunnel. I breathed heavily and looked at Caia. Her wide teal eyes trembled with anger and fear, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. We only had each other, for the time being, and we were stuck in a box, deep below the surface of Neraka.
I had no idea where Harper and the others were. No way of breaking free without crushing Caia in the process…
“Blaze… what do we do?” Her voice was weak, barely audible.
It broke my heart to see her like that, especially since I didn’t have anything good to tell her. All I could do was keep her close and make sure no harm would come to her. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, gently kissing the top of her head.
I felt her arms around my waist as she responded quietly, gradually relaxing against my body. It was all she could do, too, for the time being.
“He’s not going to keep us in here forever,” I said. “The others are out there, Caia. We’ll get through this one way or another.”