“That’s not possible,” I breathed.
“Meet my cerberus, Ophelia,” Echnid purred, and though I still couldn’t see the answers, it felt like his plans were unraveling around me, and I was caught in his trap. The beast stopped just in front of me, its warm breath pouring over my skin. “She likes you.”
She sniffed, lips pulling back into a growl. I wasn’t sure Echnid’s statement was correct. She looked ready to devour me with one sudden movement. Ready to tear my limbs from my body. But…I had to play the game.
Standing my ground in front of Malakai, I didn’t look away from the cerberus. “She is lovely.” Hesitantly, but not fearfully, Iheld a hand out for the creature to sniff. “I’m sure she likes the fresh air after being locked up. Where is she from?”
I had no recollection of waking this beast, but long stretches of my days were blurs. I dared a glance back at Echnid, where the woman was now running her hands over her body in his lap. He only watched me, like he was getting as much sick satisfaction from this sight as she was from him.
“You’ll find that in realms beyond Ambrisk, not all myths have been exiled,” Echnid said, as vague as ever. “It is unfair, is it not? Perhaps it’s a blessing that you and your sister have returned to right that balance.”
This time I didn’t disagree with Echnid. Itwasunfair that so many creatures suffered. That Sapphire had been denied her true form and the khrysaor were sent to sleep for such long years.
But that only made me think theremustbe a reason. One Echnid was clearly not going to state, because he continued with an adoring stare at the cerberus, “Hythana was the guard of my imprisonment. She was kept outside the bounds of my Stone Realm to ensure no one but the Chosen could free me.” His hand tightened on the hip of the woman still writhing atop him as he spoke of the mythical beast. “But I have such a way with wary souls, and my precious here has quite a story. I lulled her with music slowly, over many centuries, before even the Angels Ascended to me there. We did not meet but through stone until recently.”
Were the women of similar origin? From another realm? How?
Hythana, as he called the cerberus, nudged me sharply enough to knock me over. Malakai put a steadying, chained hand to my back, the links clanking against marble.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You’re welcome.” His words were intense. Heavy with a message I didn’t understand.
“Now, Ophelia,” Echnid said. “Let’s begin. Or Hythana will be allowed time to play.”
My gut tumbled and churned, the power of seven Angels colliding within me, but when I looked back to Echnid, calm swept over my being.
“What is it you brought me here for?” I asked again, the haze creeping tighter across my mind. It dug into my bones and veins, sewing strings to pull like I was some puppet. I could practically see them, and yet I was useless against them. A complete absorption of my independence and command of my autonomy that turned my stomach.
“You said yourself you have been training,” Echnid reminded me.
His praise erased my unease in a wash of clouded belief. “I have,” I answered obediently, a bird’s chirping echoing in my mind.
As if he read my mind, the god said, “Perhaps we had the wrong source.”
The Curse mark on my wrist throbbed. The twittering sliced into a deathly silence.
Echnid is here to help us, that voice said as a string pulled.
Listen to him. Another rough tug, and my stomach rolled.
Trust him.
Lifting the woman off his lap, the god floated about the room. The mist dug deeper into my being.
Echnid paused behind Malakai, my attention drifting on the heels of his mist, my mind slipping further away. Malakai’s chains scraped against the marble floor, a high sound that reminded me so much of the caged bird’s singing Echnid had me silence.
“You alone woke a seraph after they’d been slaughtered, revived the line of Angelic guards wrongfully killed, who shared many traits and magical lines with warriors.”
Angellight mounted in my veins with each tug of those strings.
But Echnid smiled spitefully, desperation and hunger bleeding from his every move.
“I want you to turn Malakai into a seraph.”
And my light shattered in a high-pitched explosion, searing the fog.
Chapter Twelve
