Page 81

My heart stopped. The world around me seemed to tilt, the roar of the volcano dimming to a distant hum.

“No,” I breathed, my voice barely audible. “No, he’s the High Captain of the Black Guard, the Heir to Ilasari. He’s... he’s—.”

“I tried to get back to the canyon,” Dax continued, his voice tight. “I searched for two hours, but the lava tubes were completely sealed by stone. I haven’t seen him since, Tauriel. I don’t know if he dug his way out... or if he’s buried under that mountain.”

A cold terror settled deep into my marrow—a darkness far more terrifying than the Nyxalith or the ancient wild dragons.

Caspian was gone. Buried beneath a collapsed mountain, isolated in the volcanic dark, while Kaelor stalked the caldera edges and the remaining candidates slaughtered one another for a chance at glory.

I pushed myself up onto my feet, my daggers drawn, my jaw set into a wall of icy steel as I looked toward the high volcanic pass leading into the heart of the interior crater.

“He’s alive,” I said, my voice vibrating with an unyielding certainty that defied the island itself. “He told me he would find me. And Caspian never breaks a command.”

THIRTY-SIX

The final ascent did not feel like a climb; it felt like an executioner hauling us toward the block.

Every yard gained up the narrow, ice-slicked spine of the summit ridge was paid for in blood and agonizing breaths. My roughly mended ribs throbbed with a sickening heat beneath my leathers, the magic forced into the fracture wearing thin against the unrelenting wind ripping off the northern sea.

Beside me, Dax stumbled every few paces, his left arm useless, his face a pale mask of smeared soot and dried crimson, but he refused to let go of my collar. We leaned into each other; two broken, battered specters dragging ourselves through the freezing ash.

When our boots finally cleared the last jagged shelf of volcanic basalt, the world opened up into a breathtaking, terrifying abyss.

We stood atop the Precipice of the Sovereign. The absolute apex of Isath Nalore.

It was a narrow, horseshoe-shaped ledge of polished obsidian jutting out over the cloud line, thousands of feet above the valley floor. The drop was staggering, an absolute vertical cliff face falling into a churning sea of boiling sulfur lakes, jagged stone spires, and swirling banks of crimson-tinted volcanic fog. Down there, the colossal dragon bones we had navigated through the black forest looked like tiny white splinters scattered in the dirt.

Up here, there was no cover. No trees. No stone walls to hide behind. There was only the howling, freezing wind, the thin air that burned the back of the throat, and the wide, indifferent sky.

I looked around the ledge, my eyes frantically counting the survivors who had managed to claw their way to the top.

A heavy, sickening weight dropped into my gut.

Out of the twenty elite souls who had boarded the sea-drakes, only a tiny fraction remained standing.

Kaelor Ashborne stood near the far curve of the ledge, his stolen cloak snapping wildly in the wind, his pale, washed-out eyes locked on me with depraved amusement. Mal was there too, standing twenty paces away, his tall frame rigid, his broadsword sheathed, his hazel eyes fixed on the horizon as if he had already detached himself from the mortal realm. Beside them were five other candidates—transfers and lower vanguard officers—their faces grey with hypothermia, their hands shaking violently as they gripped their weapons.

Nine. Only nine candidates left alive out of twenty.

My gaze swept the empty stone, again and again, a frantic panic clawing at my chest.

Caspian wasn’t there.

My mind screamed against the reality, refusing to accept the hollow void at the center of the ledge. The High Captain of the Black Guard—the towering, immovable monolith who had dominated my every thought—was absent. I looked at the edge of the trail, half-expecting his massive, leather-clad frame to emerge from the swirling mist. His sapphire eyes burning through the gloom. His deep, gravelly voice commanding me to find my feet.

Nothing emerged. Only the howling wind.

He’s alive, I told myself, locking my jaw until my molars throbbed, He has to be alive. He told me he would find me. He wouldn’t leave me alone on this rock.

“Tauriel...” Dax rasped beside me, his voice barely audible over the roar of the gale. He was staring past me, up into the bruised, twilight sky above the crater. “Look.”

The storm clouds above the precipice did not part; they dissolved.

A blinding, celestial light burst through the dark clouds, illuminating the black obsidian of the ledge with a radiance so pure, so brilliant, it hurt the eyes. The oppressive scent of sulfur and ozone was instantly replaced by the sharp fragrance of mountain frost and untamed ley-line magic.

Descending from the heavens like a star falling to ground was the High Priestess.

She sat atop the broad, majestic shoulders of a Celestryx—the legendary Lightbringer of the northern peaks.