And they were gone.
Caleb felt Skye fade and knew she had successfully transported. He was filled with a ridiculous amount of relief. So much so that his head swam.
He waited to feel her reconnect with them when she materialized in the meadow. Gabriel had already ascertained that the Waresti were in place. They had found the location while Skye had been in Quincy’s cell. So they would just need to collect her and Quincy and bring them back to Central.
Suddenly, the connection was disrupted.
His eyes flew open. Amber was scrambling to her feet. Gabriel hurriedly got up so he could assist her, though he wore a puzzled expression.
“What are you doing?” Caleb asked frantically. “We need to make sure she gets to the meadow safely.”
“We don’t have time,” Amber argued. “And Skye won’t be conscious when she finishes her transport, anyway. We won’t be able to connect with her.”
Caleb swiftly got to his feet as James and Olivia did the same. The elders all stopped cycling their powers, as well, and retracted their wings. Amber turned and started running. Caleb’s fear spiked as he hurried after her. Everyone else followed.
“Amber, what are you talking about?” he demanded, pulling ahead of the others to pace her. “Do you think she’ll be drained of energy due to the transport?”
“Did you see the discs?” she asked. She was barely winded as they reached the welcome area, which led to the platform allowing entrance and exit from the Wymzesti homeland.
“Yes, of course,” he said, his mind struggling to catch up with hers.
They reached the platform. One leap would put them out into the darkness of the night.
“You saw what color they were, right?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but her gold eyes held his with deep intensity.
“Yes, they were—”
He stopped. He heard Olivia gasp and saw her bring a hand to her mouth. The thoughts of Gabriel and James flooded his mind as realization hit them. He felt his head moving back and forth in denial.
No. No. No.
Amber saw his expression. Her eyes were filled with sympathy that he didn’t want to see. Then she said softly, “I’ve felt the pain Skye was trying to keep from us. Those discs were made of the same cursed material as Angius’ sword.”
His mind suddenly conjured images of Amber suffering from the effects of the deadly cursed weapon after Angius struck her with it. He remembered her unbearable screams of pain…remembered her body writhing on the ground…remembered her eyes turning black and her injuries seeping the same color as the curse tried to take her body and her soul. He remembered that she was in a place of darkness for a full month, even after they had all joined together to heal her with their blood and their tears.
“No,” he said in barely a whisper. He couldn’t seem to get past that word. His heart thundered in his chest. “No.”
“We have to get to her,” Olivia said. Her voice shook. “My God. If we don’t—”
“It’ll take us hours to get to their location,” Gabriel said. He turned to look at the elders. Received their nods. “But we can go to Central and hope Harold acts quickly to bring her to us.”
Caleb stared at his family. He had to brace himself against a nearby column to remain upright as what they said fully registered.
They were saying that even as they stood there, Skye was falling victim to the horrific curse placed on the discs. They were saying she would be left alone to battle that curse with only a weakened Corgloresti and contingent of Waresti with her who might not know what to do to help her or even have the capability to do so. They were saying that they likely wouldn’t get to her in time to heal her.
They were saying she was going to die.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Quincy felt the high, soft grass forming against his bare skin. He felt the chains fade from around his wrists. He scented fresh air replacing the stink of his cell. He knew immediately when they were no longer surrounded by four walls and were instead underneath the vast night sky.
He took a moment to just lay with his eyes closed, enjoying this true miracle. He had no idea how he had been deemed worthy, but he wasn’t about to question it.
Only when he sensed movement around him did he open his eyes.
“Quincy,” said a deep voice.
Sitting up and looking over the tall grass, he spotted Harold, the Waresti commander. There were at least fifty Waresti behind him.
“Good to see you, Harold,” Quincy said with a smile. Then he looked around. “Where’s Skye?”
They found her a few feet away. She was lying on her back, hidden by the tall grass. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t stirring.
“I imagine she is very low on energy,” Quincy said. “She used a great deal of it to get us here. I have never felt anything like it.”
Shaking his head in wonder, he sent out a quick thought to his paired Lekwuesti and was immediately rewarded with some clothing and water. Food could wait.
Harold bent down to scoop Skye up from the ground as Quincy quickly dressed himself. Every movement hurt like a searing brand being pressed into his skin, but he was alive. And he had Skye to thank for it.
“I see they did something atrocious to her hair,” Harold said quietly as Quincy drank from the waterskin. “As well as yours.”
“Well, the bastard who did it is dead,” he replied flatly.
“Excellent,” Harold said. Then he shifted her weight and held up his right arm. Blood covered it. “She is bleeding freely from an injury of some kind.”
Quincy frowned and lowered the waterskin. “I find that strange. She was healing me as well as herself while we were in the cell. That injury occurred well before we transitioned here. I would think she would have had time to heal herself.”
“But Skye is not the sister who has healing ability,” Harold said. “That would be Amber.”
Raising an eyebrow, Quincy considered this. His gaze fell on the mark decorating the inside of her dangling right wrist. Lifting her hand, he studied the triquetra design with interest. It consisted of three interwoven, pointed loops. The light blue loop pointed up her forearm. The other two loops were gold and light green.
“She is joined to her sisters?” he asked, catching Harold’s burnt orange gaze.
“Yes. As well as with archigos Gabriel and the Gloresti James and Caleb.”
He nodded in understanding. “This is how they healed us, then. They must have somehow sent Amber’s healing energy through Skye.”
“Then why would they not heal this injury?” Harold asked. “What caused it?”
“Some flying discs. They were thrown by the same Mercesti who cut her hair. He enjoyed wielding weapons with cursed properties. Maybe that is preventing a proper healing.”
Frowning, Harold said, “We should get her to the travel platform with all haste. Amber can heal her when we get to Central.”
Nodding, Quincy extended his wings. The Waresti commander did the same, his burnt orange wings flickering like flames. They all took flight, soaring along the quickest path to the express travel platform that had brought several of them there.
The travel platforms were enchanted. They could only be seen by non-Mercesti Estilorians, and the moment a being stepped off of one, he completely forgot where he had just come from. Still, all non-Mercesti instinctively knew how to find them. When they neared the edge of the body of water at the base of the cliff next to the meadow, Quincy saw the outline of the platform on the moonlit water.
“Quincy and I will travel with Skye,” Harold said. He turned to his second commander. “Alexius, select three who will ride with us. You lead the others in the hunt for Grolkinei.”
“Yes, sir,” Alexius replied. He turned to the group and began calling names.
Quincy stared at Skye’s pale face as he sat on the travel platform beside Harold and the remaining Waresti filed on beside them. A feeling of foreboding had settled in his mind after the Waresti commander as
ked what had caused her injuries. Combined with the fact that she hadn’t healed from the disc wound, he found his subconscious tingling in warning.
Before he could give it more thought, they were airborne. He always enjoyed heading back to his homeland after transitioning to the human plane. After what he had just gone through, he could admit it felt better now than ever before.
“Something is happening,” Harold said after they had traveled a while in silence.
Quincy glanced over and noticed that the Waresti commander was looking down at Skye, where she rested on the platform. Her head was moving slowly side to side. She grimaced in obvious pain. She made a mewling sound in the back of her throat, like an injured animal. He looked up with dread and caught Harold’s gaze.
“Those discs,” Harold said slowly. “Was there anything peculiar about them?”
The simple question made Quincy’s blood run cold. He felt every bit of euphoria he had experienced over his freedom drain completely away.
“They were black,” he said hoarsely.
There were murmurs and some swearing from the Waresti on the platform when they heard him. Harold looked blank, as if he couldn’t quite process what he had just been told.
But when Skye suddenly started twisting agitatedly and let out a sharp cry of pain, the Waresti commander’s eyes widened in alarm as realization sank in. Quincy had never seen such a reaction from the stalwart Estilorian.
“She has been cursed,” Harold said with disbelief, reaching over and placing a hand on her forehead as her nails dug into the bottom of the platform and her body arched. “Like Amber was.”
“Amber?” How could Amber have been cursed like this and still be alive? Any Estilorian he had heard of who had been struck by a black cursed blade had died a very gruesome and exceedingly slow and painful death.
Just like Skye was now.
“After the Becoming ceremony,” Harold explained, “Amber was struck several times by Angius’ sword. The elders were able to help offset some of the effects of the blade by engaging in a circle of power. And then, together with her sisters, they were all able to heal her wounds by combining their tears with their blood and touching the combination to the injuries.”
Skye screamed again and thrashed violently. There was moisture on her cheeks and Quincy realized she was crying.
Then her eyes flew open. They were almost entirely black. They all realized then that the blood on the platform was no longer red, but black. The curse was progressing rapidly and they still had quite a distance to travel to get her to the Estilorian stronghold.
Horrified and sickened as he watched her twist in agony, Quincy repeated, “Tears and blood, you said?”
Harold nodded. He looked greatly distressed. Quincy certainly knew why. The Waresti as a class were known for their emotional control. He didn’t think he had ever seen one of them shed a tear for any reason, even for the death of someone they cared about.
He understood then that if Skye was going to have any chance at all of surviving, he was going to have to do it alone.
As he thought of her courage in coming to rescue him and the sacrifices she had made to save his life, he found the emotion relatively easy to summon forth. He had lived through the deaths of her father and her mother.
He refused to be the cause of hers.
Caleb soared through the night sky from the Wymzesti homeland toward Central at a rate that was considerably unwise. Although all of the homelands themselves were lit up because the elders had sent out the thought to make it happen, there was always the possibility of birds, bats or even insects entering the flight path. A collision with even the smallest particle at his rate of speed would pierce him like a bolt from a crossbow.
That thought didn’t slow him in the least.
His family and the elders were not far behind him. They had followed him as soon as he recovered enough from his shock to leap from the Wymzesti platform. He tried to focus on not killing himself as he all but plummeted toward Central. He really tried. But Skye’s face kept flashing through his mind.
He saw her smiling. Saw her laughing. Saw her singing badly and dancing beautifully.
Then he saw her writhing in unimaginable pain, dying by inches. It made him want to roar with helpless anguish.
And he heard her voice. “You should know how much I love you, Caleb.”
He hadn’t understood. Although over the past few months he had indirectly experienced Gabriel’s emotions as well as James’, those emotions had been exclusively theirs. Their powerful feelings of love and attraction were directed toward Amber and Olivia, whom he thought of as close friends…sisters. He hadn’t been able to reconcile his brothers’ feelings with anything in his emotional spectrum.
And their emotions toward Skye were sisterly. His were anything but. The discrepancies between what he felt and what his brothers felt had resulted in a mass of confusion and uncertainty for him. He had admittedly found it easier not to analyze it too closely. But he could easily classify everything he felt for her every single day.
She frequently frustrated him. She consistently made him want to tear his hair out with impatience. She even managed to anger him more than any other being he had ever met, largely because her uninhibited nature frequently put her in harm’s way.
But she also awed him. She more often than not surprised him. She made him smile and laugh. She made him think in ways he had never considered. She inspired him with her unfailing faith and bright spirit. She always brought out the very best in those around her. She was the most giving being on the entire Estilorian plane. She was blissfully naïve and innocent and everything he could only ever wish to be.
And he had been an absolute idiot not to acknowledge what she meant to him.
Why had he worked so hard to convince himself otherwise? He continually told himself that he was just her Gloresti and she just the being he was paired with for protection. He told himself that having a physical relationship wasn’t of interest to him. He told himself that he was much better off not having her in his thoughts or having access to hers.
But he easily remembered how much he had wanted to throttle Xavier the Wymzesti simply for treating Skye like she deserved, like Caleb knew she wanted to be treated by someone romantically interested in her, but he was uncomfortable doing himself. He thought of how very much he enjoyed kissing her, how curious he had become about the intimacy shared by a male and female who were attracted to each other ever since she had pressured him into kissing her that first time.
And he thought of the many ways he could have prevented her from being in the situation she was now if only he’d had access to her thoughts before she had acted.
As that thought entered his mind, Central came into view. He slowed his descent and then angled his wings so he could more easily guide himself to the entrance. The entire trip down had probably taken about fifteen minutes. It normally took a couple hours. It had felt like days.
He landed on the platform that had been readied for them. He saw a number of Estilorians awaiting their arrival and glanced around until he found a familiar face.
The Lekwuesti commander, Caoilinn, stood calmly among the crowd. She was tall, pale and slender and had a head of long, vibrant red hair. Her lavender eyes settled on him when he advanced. Although he knew she had caused Gabriel some concerns when they first arrived at Central, she seemed to have satisfactorily made it known she meant none of the sisters any harm. She had taken it upon herself to create a subtle wardrobe for Amber to mask her pregnancy. She had also been very focused on ensuring the Lekwuesti respected the privacy of the sisters.
When he walked up to her, she took his arm and led him away from the crowd. He knew from the slight shake of her head that Skye hadn’t arrived yet, which didn’t surprise him.
They walked together in silence for a few minutes. He sensed she wanted to be helpful and comforting. He had seen her laughing with Skye, had heard Skye give her suggestions on colors for his clothing
that had obviously been passed along to his paired Lekwuesti, as his wardrobe had expanded to include colors beyond black, brown and gray. He knew she and Skye were friends.
“Their platform is still quite a distance from here,” she said at last in her lilting voice as they reached another docking station. “I sense it will be here within the hour. You are welcome to wait here. I will keep everyone but your family and the elders away.”
He nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
“Caleb, I am sorry for your suffering,” she said softly. And with a brief touch on his arm, she turned and walked back to the area where he had arrived so she could direct his family to him.
He couldn’t even appreciate her words for the kindness she meant. Sorry for what he was suffering? He shook his head at the thought. Nothing he felt would come close to what Skye was suffering.
His family arrived shortly thereafter. They stood behind him as he waited near the edge of the loading platform with his arms crossed over his chest.
After what seemed an eternity, Sebastian said, “They are here.”
Caleb dropped his arms and watched the platform approach. The fear and emotion he had been fighting surged to the surface. He saw the males on the platform huddled around its center. He recognized Harold and saw the Waresti commander look up and catch Uriel’s gaze. Whatever thought he conveyed had the elder looking unbelievably bleak. Caleb’s already besieged heart suffered a mighty blow over the exchange.
Finally, the platform stopped. The Waresti parted and leaped onto the loading dock to make room as Caleb and the others hurried forward. But Caleb staggered to a halt when he saw Quincy repeatedly pressing down on Skye’s chest.
Her lifeless eyes were open and staring. The whites of her eyes were visible, but the irises were black. He felt the whole room tip sideways as he registered her condition. Gabriel and James grabbed his arms to support him. Olivia issued a sob.