Citrine

  ***

  Tears and sobs of fear ripped through Eve when they approached the massive, smoldering pile of rocks that had been a mountain. What could survive being buried under all of it?

  Caleb stared, his whole body numb, the connection that he had felt with Kevan vanishing in an instant, shredding him, and he hadn’t said a word. His eyes turned dull and empty, as the one thing that he had always believed he would never find, was torn from him.

  The dragons circled lower and lower, as they all survived the crumbling remains of Silver Falls Mountain. They had been searching since sunrise, and still they had found nothing. What hope they had to begin with was rapidly vanishing. Sliding off the dragon, Eve paused to try and shore up her resolve, before she joined the others standing at the edge of the lake, a short time ago, a mountain had towered majestically, soaring into the sky. Roderic caught the sagging Eve, as she felt a huge gaping hole in her heart at the thought that they were gone. She had no idea how to even carry on without them in her life.

  “Please tell me they are okay,” she begged, as she looked into Roderic’s face. He held onto her, trying not to let her see how scared he really was. Caleb turned to her, his face telling her what she didn’t want to hear. Pushing away from Roderic, she ran at Caleb, beating her fists on his chest. “Tell me they’re okay, or else you tell me how we go about finding them!”

  “Eve,” his voice choked with emotion, as he pulled her into his arms, and the overwhelming loss began to seep into his body. “You know I would tear apart this whole slag heap, if I thought that there was any chance that we would find them.”

  “NO!” Eve screamed in denial. “Don’t say that,” she sobbed. “They aren’t gone. They can’t be.” Roderic pulled her away from Caleb.

  He staggered to the edge of the rock shelf, staring down at what used to be soaring rocks, and the emotion spilled over, as he dropped to his knees, holding his head in his hands, and silent sobs ruptured his soul. Was this to be his life, shown true happiness, only to have it ripped from him?

  “Caleb, please, we have to do something!” Eve pleaded with him, not giving up, needing him to help her. “We have to help them.”

  “Help who?” a familiar voice asked. “Because I think we’re kind of hoping that you have come here for us.”

  Eve whipped around, almost knocking Roderic on his ass, as she took in the dirty, bloodied, raggedy group, standing at the edge of an outcropping of rocks.

  “Oh gods!” Eve cried, as she scrambled over the rocks, grabbing onto her sisters, and holding on.

  “Eve, we’re really glad to see you and everything, but we are battered and bruised,” Kaitlyn gasped, as she squeezed her back, not wanting to let go.

  “Are you okay?” Eve questioned, as she stepped back wiping the tears from her cheeks. Kevan stepped away from sisters, her eyes landing on the kneeling man at the edge of the shelf.

  Caleb closed his eyes, and prayed that he wasn’t having a hallucination. Getting to his feet, he turned, opened his eyes, and cried when she slammed into his arms. He held her close, his arms around her, his lips covering hers, his fingers touching, relearning her. Leaning back, she stared into his face, as her shaking fingers traced his every feature, trying to memorize each one, with every one of her senses. Both had blurred vision from tears, and the emotional terror of never seeing each other again left them mumbling, incoherent from exhaustion.

  “Never again,” he informed her, his voice hoarse with unshed tears. Touching his lips with her fingers, she nodded, as the sobs started again.

  “Never again,” she agreed. He picked her up in his arms, and looked to his normally impeccable brother. Reaching out his hand, he pulled him into the embrace. Marcus welcomed the embrace, as he hugged his brother back.

  “Thank you,” Caleb whispered in his ear. Marcus stepped back, nodding his acknowledgement of Caleb’s words, not trusting himself to speak with his emotions betraying him.

  Eve looked from Kaitlyn to the others, wiped her tears of joy, and she hugged Wren, Ronan, and even the reluctant Joseph. Looking around, she thought she had just missed her, but she hadn’t, someone was missing.

  “Where’s Leila?” she questioned, as a feeling of dread slid over her, her eyes darting from one to the other, waiting for them to answer. “Where is Leila?” she demanded.

  Kevan turned in Caleb’s arms, as a fresh flow of tears started. She cleared her throat, attempting to tell them what had happened, as a look of horror flashed in Eve’s eyes.

  “No!” she cried, her hands covering her mouth, as she tried think of anything but what they were saying. “No, please tell me that it’s not true.”

  “Eve,” Kaitlyn spoke up, “I wish I could tell you that she was fine, but she’s not.”

  “Where is she?” Eve demanded. “I’m a doctor, I can help her.”

  “Eve, you can’t do anything to help her,” Marcus told her.

  “No, I can, tell me where she is!” Eve bellowed at him. “I can help her.” She headed for the hole they had crawled out of. “Where is she?” she shouted, as her heart sank.

  “Eve,” Kevan shouted, getting her attention.

  “Please, I have to help her.”

  “You can’t do anything for her,” Kevan whispered.

  “I have to,” Eve sobbed. “Don’t you understand, I did this to her. I was the one that insisted that we help her. If we had just left her alone, she would ...” Eve stopped, unable to even say the word.

  “Stop,” Kevan exclaimed, as she dropped to gather her sobbing sister into her arms. “Leila wouldn’t have traded the past few weeks for anything.” Kevan held Eve’s face, so that she could look into her eyes. “You know that,”

  “She’s right,” Marcus spoke up. “You weren’t able to see her, but it was amazing when she completely connected with the repository and the grimoire. She radiated, she was strong and happy, happier than she had ever been in her life.”

  “We’d be dead if not for Leila’s bravery,” Joseph admitted. “Dreyden was even more powerful than I had believed. He had been dabbling in the dark and black magic’s for even longer than we knew. He changed, and nothing that I did was stopping him.”

  “What do you mean, he changed?” Niall questioned.

  “I don’t exactly understand it myself,” Joseph explained, “He was being taken over by the magic that he had been playing with I have never seen or heard of anything like it before.”

  “Yeah, he kept going on about some curse,” Kaitlyn piped up. “What was he talking about? What curse?”

  “Now’s not the time, Kaitlyn,” Marcus stated, as he watched her. For a moment, he thought that she was going to argue, then she nodded, but the look on her face told him that she was letting it drop for the moment, not permanently. They would have to tell them everything, because if they didn’t, she would be like a dog with a bone, she wouldn’t let it go until she had it all, just not yet.

  “What about the grimoire?” Niall questioned, sighing when Joseph held up Leila’s tattered backpack. “So it’s safe.”

  “It will be once we get it back to L’Dern,” Joseph told them.

  “No way,” Kaitlyn stated. “You are not taking it anywhere.”

  “L’Dern is the safest place for it,” Joseph argued.

  “What about the repository?” Kaitlyn pointed out.

  “That would work, but there’s one small problem,” Marcus informed her. “It’s still missing.”

  “Then we find it,” Kaitlyn told them.

  “You make it sound so simple,” Marcus laughed, “People have been searching for it ever since it vanished in the first place.”

  “We found the grimoire, we’ll find it. We owe that to Leila for all that she did for us,” Kaitlyn stated firmly.

  “It’s going to be difficult,” Joseph argued with her.

  “Like this was such a cake walk?” Kaitlyn huffed.


  “And in the meantime, you think that you can stop everyone that is going to be coming after the grimoire?” Joseph spoke, with disbelief in his voice.

  “We can protect it until we find the repository,” Kaitlyn refused to budge.

  “How? You don’t know who the new claviger is, or where to even begin looking. It’s not like it vanished on earth somewhere, it could be anywhere, in any time.”

  “Stop telling me that we can’t find it, and start trying to help me figure out how to do it. We found the claviger once, we will find them again. I won’t stop until we do.”

  “Enough!” Kevan shouted at them. “This is stupid, we are fighting over who is keeping this goddamn book, and we don’t even know if we will be able to get back to either place. So I just need you to stop.” Kevan curled into Caleb’s arms; it felt so right, but something was still missing. She looked into his eyes. “Home, Caleb,” she murmured, “We need to go home.”