Page 76 of Soul of Fire

The priestess smiled, as if she could sense my dragon’s reticence. “Come. Sigrid is waiting.”

I glanced at Arik, who took my hand firmly in his and shrugged. “We’ve come this far.”

“Goddess save me.” I was really beginning to dislike secret doorways.

We followed Amaya down a spiraling stone staircase, the faint pink light of her fire bobbing along in front of us.

Arik’s hand gripped mine tightly as he walked ahead of me, as if afraid he might lose me in the dark.

We walked in silence for several minutes. I wished I could reassure him, but it felt somehow sacrilegious to whisper in this space. Like Elysia herself might curse us and send the walls crumbling in on top of us.

“You can speak freely,” Amaya said, her voice echoing strangely. “It’s perfectly sturdy.”

Arik and I glanced at each other, and he cleared his throat. “How long has this been here?”

“The temple? Almost five thousand years, I believe.” Amaya disappeared momentarily around a bend before appearing again before an ancient wooden door at the base of the stairs. “Possibly even longer. Would you mind?”

“What the—“ She passed the flame to Arik, her hand tipping the small blaze into his palm, where it floated. “How in the—”

“I’ve never met drage before,” Amaya continued as if passing fire off to someone were a perfectly normal thing. She fiddled with the latch on the door, which clicked as the door swung open, “But Sigrid said the fire wouldn’t bother you.”

“This is…völva magic?” Arik moved his hand, and the flame danced merrily between his fingers.

“Witchfire.” Amaya beamed as she turned and tipped his hand. The fire flowed back into her outstretched palm without a sound. “One of my gifts from the Goddess. Useless on the odemarksdyr, but it’s enough for cooking soup and lighting corridors.”

She smiled at my mate, and Idunn growled possessively in my chest.

Stop that,I chided as we followed the priestess.

She smiles at our mate. He isoursfor smiling at.

My impatient reply was cut short when I saw where the spiral staircase had led us.

Before us was a cavern as large as the Great Hall in Stormhold, its walls carved completely from the stone beneath the island. The only visible light came from the torches interspersed around the walls, all with the same pink witchfire in Amaya’s hand, and a great skylight in the center of the room that gave the darkening evening light a strange, wavering quality.

“Sigrid is probably in the kitchens,” Amaya explained, extinguishing the light in her palm with a flick of her fingers. “This way.”

My gaze was so fixed on the wavering skylight in the ceiling, I barely registered Arik tugging me after her.

“It’s the pool. The mirror,” Arik clarified, giving my hand a squeeze as he dragged me away from the center of the chamber. “That’s why the light is shifting.”

“How is that possible?” The words came out as an awed whisper, and Arik chuckled.

“Magic, Kjære.”

“That can’t be your answer for everything now,” I muttered as Amaya led us toward one of several archways built into the walls of the cavern.

“The rest of the temple runs around the perimeter of the sanctum,” Amaya explained as she glided past walls, bare but for the sconces of witchfire that lit the way. “Dormitories are at this end. The archives are at the farthest end on the other side of the sanctum. And the kitchens are just here.”

Amaya led us through one of the arched doorways and into a secondary chamber. The ceilings were lower here, and they tapered to meet the floor as if the temple were one giant dome split into an inner and outer circle.

Two other forms in blue robes were present. One, a stern-faced woman who looked to be at least two decades older than me, was stirring a huge, copper pot over the hearth.

The other was older, her face lined and her hair a bright silver. She offered me a knowing smile.

“Sigrid!” I ran and threw my arms around her as I had done a thousand times before. She seemed to have shrunk in our months apart, but the fierceness with which she hugged me back was just like I remembered.

“Ah, my Eisa,” she murmured, her voice sounding older and more cracked as well. I frowned down at her, noticing deep grooves of age in her precious face that I had never noticed at Henrik’s. Of course, she had always been old, ever since I was little. But she hadnever seemed so ancient before. So frail. “I see he has brought you back in one piece. I suppose I shall not have to poison him, then.”