Page 262 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Which realm, exactly?”

“Numen and Akkamel. A home of mine. A place where I store my treasures,” he said, his mouth twitched and widened. Was he grinning? “As you can tell.”

“Akkamel as in the heaven of Akkamel?”

He nodded.

What in the hells. If this was his home, that meant—

“You’re…Roto?” This was the god of waters?

He winked at me and did that grinning thing again before exaggerating a bow. “A pleasure, Caelum guardian.”

“And the sceptre? You guard it here?”

“You’re quick to the point. But, yes, it is here.”

I extended a hand to him, and he wrinkled his brows at the action. “Give it.”

He looked offended. Perhaps? I don't know, but his brows did a weird motion. “It is not in my power, young treasure. You have to complete the quest.”

“Gods be damned, what quest?”

He gapped and put a hand to his chest. That was…offended, perhaps? “To unearth a long, lost treasure of truth from the pool of ocean inside you. Will you prevail to it or lose to its depths?”

I looked around, searching for the others, and he laughed. “I have the rest. The rest passed the test and are waiting to leave my lands. Only you remain. Pass it and I will give you the sceptre. Fail it and there will be a consequence.”

He disappeared like smoke and water began rising from the floor and it soon reached up to my neck. Once it enveloped me above my height, its colour changed to a deep navy and every source of light vanished, leaving me in the middle of the dark depths. A vortex sucked me under and dropped me hard on a hard stone floor. I coughed my lungs out, sputtering a kilogram of water out of my stomach while searching my surroundings only to find nothing. I was in a small empty grey room the shape of a box with no light yet somehow it was bright enough for me to see all of its space.

A rustle of chains made me swirl around and clutch my daggers tight. I ran and kneeled before him. “Kilian, what are you doing here? That thing said you were at the portal. Fucking gods and their lies.” I tugged on the chains he was wrapped in, but the metal didn’t budge. The more I pulled, the more they tightened around him—the more he groaned in pain. Even the cloth over his mouth was tightly stuck to his face. Sweat beaded on my temples from how hard I was trying to free him. Was this the test? To find a way to break him free?

A numbness began settling at the tip of my fingers and it slowly spread all over my body, reining control of all of my movement. “What in the hells?” Panic struck me when I rose to my feet and struck Kilian hard across his face. What—what? “Kilian?”

Before he had a chance to reply or even move, I kicked him hard in the stomach, over and over and over till blood began staining the cloth over his mouth.

I tried to will my muscles back. Tried to command my body to stop, but nothing happened—only struck him harder.

“Stop!” I shouted when I raised two daggers up and nailed them deep in his flesh. And then again, and again. “Stop, stop, stop!” I roared, willing every fraction of my magic to pull open. Nothing. Nothing came out as I kicked and stabbed him, over and over. Nothing happened as I watched him bleed in front of me. “Please, please, please, stop. I can’t. I can’t do it. Just stop it. Don’t. Please, don’t make me kill him,” I begged, and suddenly my body was mine again.

I kneeled before him, reaching a shaking hand to check his pulse. “Kilian?”

He didn’t answer. Something else did, the cold, slimy voice was laced with amusement as he said, “You have finally done it. You kept your promise. The Night King is indeed dead by your hand.”

No. This was a game. A veil. I’d seen him die in the Isjordian temple too. It had to be the same. “Kilian?”

Blood pooled beneath his body, spreading all over the grey floor, soaking my knees and I felt bile rise to my throat. “No, please, no.” It couldn't be real.

“Wasn’t this what you wanted? Isn’t this your most inner truth—to want him dead?”

“No,” I whispered, too afraid to even touch his bleeding body. “No.”

“If I grant you a wish and a wish alone. What would it be?” He tilted his head to the side. “You can wish for the sceptre.”

I didn't even have to think about it. “Bring him back.”

A gust of water sloshed in the room and suddenly, I was submerged in water before surfacing in between the treasure labyrinth.

The ground beneath my palms was unsteady and the world spun furiously.